Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T22:40:36.291Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Two Worlds and Two Aspects: on Kant’s Distinction between Things in Themselves and Appearances

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2015

Michael Oberst
Michael Oberst*
Affiliation:
Humboldt University of Berlin
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism, a textual stalemate between two camps has evolved: two-world interpretations regard things in themselves and appearances as two numerically distinct entities, whereas two-aspect interpretations take this distinction as one between two aspects of the same thing. I try to develop an account which can overcome this dispute. On the one hand, things in themselves are numerically distinct from appearances, but on the other hand, things in themselves can be regarded as they exist in themselves and as they appear. This reveals a mutual entailment of both accounts. Finally, I suggest that this approach most naturally leads to a kind of ‘phenomenalism’, but of a sort not normally attributed to Kant.

Keywords

transcendental idealismthing in itselfphenomenalism
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 53 - 75
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abela, Paul (2002) Kant’s Empirical Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Adelung, J. C. (1774–86) Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart: mit beständiger Vergleichung der übrigen Mundarten besonders aber der Oberdeutschen. Electronic version. Berlin: Direktmedia-Publishing, 2000.Google Scholar
Allais, Lucy (2004) ‘Kant’s One World’. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 12, 655–684.Google Scholar
Allais, Lucy (2007) ‘Kant’s Idealism and the Secondary Quality Analogy’. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 45, 459–484.Google Scholar
Allison, Henry E. (2004) Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: Revised and Enlarged Edition. New Haven: Yale University Press (1st edn 1983).Google Scholar
Ameriks, Karl (2011) ‘Kant’s Idealism on a Moderate Interpretation’. In D. Schulting and J. Verburgt (eds), Kant’s Idealism: New Interpretations of a Controversial Doctrine (Dordrecht: Springer), pp. 29–53.Google Scholar
Aquila, Richard E. (1979) ‘Things in Themselves and Appearances: Intentionality and Reality in Kant’. Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 61, 293–308.Google Scholar
Aquila, Richard E. (1983) Representational Mind: A Study of Kant’s Theory of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Ayer, Alfred J. (1940) The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Archive Press.Google Scholar
Barker, Stephen F. (1967) ‘Appearances and Appearing in Kant’. The Monist, 51, 426–441.Google Scholar
Chisholm, Roderick M. (1963) ‘The Theory of Appearing’. In Max Black (ed.), Philosophical Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall), pp. 168–186.Google Scholar
Collins, Arthur W. (1999) Possible Experience: Understanding Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Langton, Rae (1998) Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Longuenesse, Béatrice (1998) Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the ‘Critic of Pure Reason’. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Longuenesse, Béatrice (2008) ‘Kant’s “I Think” versus Descartes’ “I Am a Thing That Thinks”’. In D. Garber and B. Longuenesse (eds), Kant and the Early Moderns (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 9–31.Google Scholar
McCarty, Richard (2009) Kant’s Theory of Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McLear, Colin (forthcoming) ‘Kant on Perceptual Content’. Mind.Google Scholar
Prauss, Gerold (1971) Erscheinung: ein Problem der Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Prauss, Gerold (1974) Kant und das Problem der Dinge an sich. Bonn: Bouvier.Google Scholar
Robinson, Hoke (1994) ‘Two Perspectives on Kant’s Appearances and Things in Themselves’. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 32, 411–441.Google Scholar
Rosefeldt, Tobias (2007) ‘Dinge an sich und sekundäre Qualitäten’. In J. Stolzenberg (ed.), Kant in der Gegenwart (Berlin: de Gruyter), pp. 167–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sellars, Wilfrid (1968) Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Underwood, Lori J. (2003) Kant’s Correspondence Theory of Truth: An Analysis and Critique of Anglo-American Alternatives. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Van Cleve, James (1999) Problems from Kant. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, Ralph C. S. (2010) ‘Kant on the Number of Worlds’. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 18, 821–843.Google Scholar
Willaschek, Marcus (2001) ‘Die Mehrdeutigkeit der Unterscheidung zwischen Erscheinungen und Dingen an sich bei Kant. Zur Debatte um Zwei-Welten- und Zwei-Aspekte-Interpretationen des transzendentalen Idealismus’. In V. Gerhardt, R.-P. Horstmann and R. Schumacher (eds), Akten des IX. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses ii (Berlin: De Gruyter), pp. 679–690.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen W. (2005) Kant. Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar