Knowra Thing-in-itself Thing-in-itself In Kantian philosophy, reality considered independently of the forms of intuition and categories through which humans experience it. Kant holds that things in themselves cannot be known as they are.
Phenomenon : An object as it appears within human experience, structured by sensibility and understanding. It is the knowable counterpart to a thing considered independently of appearance.
Transcendental aesthetic : The part of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason that examines space and time as forms of sensible intuition. It shows how sensibility gives appearances their spatial and temporal form.
Dogmatic metaphysics : Metaphysical inquiry that claims knowledge of supersensible realities through reason without first establishing reason’s limits. Kant rejects its claims to know objects beyond possible experience.
Immanuel Kant : An eighteenth-century German philosopher whose critical philosophy examines the conditions and limits of human knowledge. He made the distinction between appearances and things in themselves central to critical philosophy.
Kantian ethics : Kant’s moral philosophy, grounded in rational autonomy and principles that hold universally for rational agents. Kant connects freedom, which cannot be established as an appearance, to practical rather than theoretical reason.
Transcendental idealism : Kant’s view that objects of experience conform to human forms of cognition, while things in themselves remain distinct. This framework explains why appearances and things in themselves must be distinguished.
Transcendental analytic : The part of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason that explains the understanding’s concepts and principles. It explains how categories structure experience without licensing knowledge of things in themselves.
Empirical realism : The view that objects in space are empirically real rather than merely private representations. Kant combines empirical realism about appearances with transcendental idealism about their conditions.
Critique of Pure Reason : Kant’s 1781 work, revised in 1787, investigating the sources, scope, and limits of theoretical reason. It develops the distinction through its account of experience and the limits of metaphysics.
German idealism : A philosophical movement after Kant that developed idealist accounts of reality, knowledge, and subjectivity. Kant’s distinction became a central challenge for philosophers seeking to overcome the gap between thought and reality.
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