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What did Kant mean by transcendental metaphysics?

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Marble bust of Aristotle with a beard and draped robe, showing detailed facial features and wavy hair, set against a dark background. — metaphysics Detail of a Roman copy (2nd century bce) of a Greek alabaster portrait bust of Aristotle (c. 325 bce); in the collection of the Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome.

For Immanuel Kant, "transcendental" refers to an analysis of the roots of all knowledge and the necessary conditions that make human experience possible. His transcendental metaphysics is not a traditional attempt to describe reality beyond experience, but rather a critical investigation into the framework of the human mind.123

Kant’s approach, detailed in his Critique of Pure Reason, seeks to establish how synthetic a priori judgments are possible—that is, how we can have universal and necessary knowledge that also provides substantive information about the world. He argued that the mind is not a passive observer; instead, it actively structures experience by imposing a priori forms, such as space and time, and categories (like causality) onto sensory data.12453

Kant famously described this as a "Copernican revolution" in philosophy: rather than the mind conforming to objects, objects must conform to the mind’s own cognitive structure. Consequently, while this framework explains our scientific knowledge of phenomena, it also sets a strict limit: we can never know things-in-themselves (noumena) as they exist independently of our perception.15243