How is inquiry possible? Since Meno’s paradox, it has seemed that inquiry requires some intuitive grasp of ultimate explanations. Yet a core tenet of Kant’s philosophy is that reason is discursive, i.e. conceptual. While some scholars argue that discursivity accounts for the demand for explanation, I contend that this thesis cannot explain the possibility of inquiry—for it fails to generate its goals. To address this gap, I propose an alternative approach. Rather than collapsing discursivity and the demand for explanation, I isolate them as distinct aspects of reason, which allows us to understand how they interact in generating goals of inquiry. First, I argue that the logical use of reason, tied to discursivity, fails to guide inquiry toward explanations. Second, I propose that the real use of reason, which generates concepts of totalities of grounds, is the source of the demand for explanation. Finally, I introduce two models for understanding such totalities—ontological and representational—and argue that the latter enables us to treat totalities as goals, rather than given realities—thereby making inquiry purposive. This provides a Kantian solution to Meno’s paradox by reconceptualizing inquiry as an active process that generates knowledge through the approximation of explanations.