Nick Richter
PHIL 3322
Mar. 10, 2001
Literary
Review:
Van Cleve, James. Problems
from Kant. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Van Cleve makes an important point in beginning his discussion of things in themselves. He succinctly and lucidly explains the etymological issues surrounding the terms noumena and phenomena and the distinctions between them and appearances and things in themselves. Van Cleve then proceeds to outline the beliefs Kant held about noumena and phenomena, their relation, and the reasons why we must assume that there is a noumenal element to the world. The balance of the chapter is divided up into several sections elucidating the varying aspects of the debate. On the whole this is the best resource I have found.
Ewing, A.C.. A Short
Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Chicago : The University of
Chicago Press, 1938.
Ewing outlines the debate between many of Kant’s initial followers and Kant himself. Many readers of Kant object to his doctrine of things in themselves on the following grounds. Kant says that we can have no knowledge about things in themselves but in stating this we must mean something by “things in themselves.” This implies knowledge about things in themselves. Also, if physical objects are appearances of things in themselves, things in themselves must be subject to the category of reality. Ewing contends that Kant implicitly refutes these objections. The way in which Ewing does this is by pointing out Kant’s distinction between determinate knowledge and indeterminate thought. We have no knowledge of things in themselves, but it is useful to have thoughts about them. These thoughts are not based on any positive assumptions but rather on a lack of any features, spatial or temporal, that make up knowledge. Also sense human thought is subject to the categories, our thoughts about things in themselves will be defined in terms of the categories. I found Ewing’s discussion of the issue to be the most lucid and accessible thus far. This book gave me my initial understanding of the issues, and was a most valuable introduction to the field.
Schultz, Johann. Exposition
of Kant’s Critique of Reason. Canada: University of Ottawa Press, 1995.
Schultz was an acquaintance as well as a colleague of Kant’s. He offered to review Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and the 1784 result is this book. Basically, the Exposition breaks into two sections. The first, the one with which I largely dealt, attempts to explain and make clear much of what the Critique of Pure Reason says. He goes over much of the material in the Critique of Pure Reason in a clearer and more straightforward manner than did Kant. The layout is confusing because Schultz does not seem to include all of the divisions that Kant uses. It is a useful text as an auxiliary explanation given by a contemporary colleague of Kant’s.
Matthews, H.E., “Strawson on
Transcendental Idealism”, Kant on Pure Reason. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1982.
Matthews’ essay focuses not so much on Kant, as it does on refuting Strawson’s interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism. Strawson wants to say that Kant believes that there are two separate worlds, one of phenomenal appearance that exists in our minds, and the real world which is supersensible and consists of things in themselves. What we call real objects are only in our mind and have no reality outside the mind. Matthews wants to reject this reading of Kant and substitute in its place a more useful, and he thinks, more Kantian theory. To over generalize, Matthews takes the view that appearance and things in themselves are different aspects of the same ultimate reality. The essay is very involved and complex, but exceedingly useful, but only after having read other sources.
Schaper, Eva. “The Kantian Thing-in-Itself as a
Philosophical Fiction”, Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 64, History
of Philosophy Number. Jul., 1966, pp. 233-243.
Schaper discusses the thing in itself, as the title states, as a philosophical fiction. By this she means that Kant was not advancing the thing in itself as a truth that is evident from what he had proven in his theories, but a useful tool to understand phenomena. The thing in itself is a theoretical limit on noumena. What I am finding the more that I read, is that most scholars seem to want to find some value in the concept of things in themselves, and continually defend them against philosophers that attack them. I have yet to read an article that seriously doubts the usefulness or non-contradictory status of the things in themselves, only about such articles.
Oizerman, T. I., “Kant's
Doctrine of the "Things in Themselves" and Noumena”, Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 41, No. 3, Mar., 1981, 333-350.
In this article, Oizerman attempts to differentiate the idea of the things in themselves and noumena. In my initial reading of Kant, I was under the impression that these were indeed the same thing. (Upon further reading I fail to see how they can be viewed as the same thing, directly from what Kant says about them) Oizerman argues that while Kant did often relate the noumena to things in themselves, noumena are objects of pure reason, and have no relation to our sense perceptions. As such they lie outside the realm of knowledge and are unable to be proved. Things in themselves, however are not objects of pure reason, they affect our sensibilities through phenomena, or the world of appearances. Because we perceive these appearances, there must be something that is appearing. Since they are linked to the world of appearances, things in themselves are subject to the categories of unity, plurality, causality, community, possibility, actuality and necessity. This assertion is exactly why many people object to the idea of things in themselves. Kant states that we can have no knowledge of them, yet Oizerman says that we can think of them in the terms of those categories.
Moore, A.W.. “Aspects of the
Infinite in Kant”, Mind, Vol. 97, Issue 386, Apr. 1988, 205-223.
Moore presupposes a “two-world”
interpretation of transcendental idealism.
He argues that some concepts only apply to the empirical reality, while
others apply to transcendental reality.
Moore wants to add a third class of concept, which has elements that
rely on both the transcendental and empirical realities. Moore thinks that the idea of the infinite
is one such concept and uses Kant’s belief that space and time were neither
finite or infinite to support his claim.
Findlay, J.N.. Kant and
the Transcendental Object: A Hermeneutic Study. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1981.
In his book, J.N. Findlay approaches the problem of the transcendental object, the thing in itself. He defends Kant concept of it on many different grounds and states that the transcendental object is necessary for a complete understanding of appearances. Findlay also argues that Leibniz’s notion of the monad, while unacceptable as an account of the phenomenal experience, is a perfectly acceptable way in which to conceive of the transcendental object, not necessarily true, but an acceptable conception none the less.
Overview and Explanation
of Issues
“There is something strange and even nonsensical in there being a concept that must have some significance but is not capable of definition.” (Kant A243)
Kant’s conception of metaphysics is an extremely complicated one. Many of the problems I ran into are overlapping ideas and terminology about which I am still unsure. Here it is, as I understand it. The debate about appearances and things in themselves is essentially this: are appearances something in the mind that is caused by something outside the mind, the things in themselves, or are appearances and things in themselves different aspects of the same thing, one things as they appear and the other things as they are? This seems to summarize, with extreme brevity, parameters in which most scholars approach these ideas. There is an auxiliary debate going on here as well. This debate focuses on the validity of Kant’s very conception of the things in themselves. Many scholars believe that the manner in which Kant conceives of them contradicts his own statements about knowledge of them.
Kant is fond of bifurcations: synthetic – analytic, a priori – a posterior, noumena – phenomena, and appearances – things in themselves. There is a lot of overlap in these different sets of opposition. The set of oppositions at hand, the appearances – things in themselves, contains aspects of all of the other concepts mentioned above. Kant defines appearance in the following manner. “The effect of an object on the capacity for representation, insofar as we are affected by it, is sensation. That intuition which is related to the object through sensation is called empirical. The undetermined object of an empirical intuition is called appearance.” (Kant A20/B34)
With regard to these two concepts, appearance is certainly the least provocative. We rely on appearance, no matter what its source, for the entirety of our empirical knowledge. The mere idea of things in themselves in themselves is challenged as being self contradictory and problematic. Much of the scholarly work proceeds from there, taking appearances for granted, and trying to reconcile Kant’s statements about things in themselves to the rest of his critical philosophy.
To further complicate matters, it is necessary to understand how appearances and things in themselves relate to the other components (noumena, phenomena, etc.) These relationships are under constant debate between scholars, and even Kant seems to be unsure of how they relate. The word noumena has two senses, the positive sense which states the any knowledge of noumena is nonsensible, and a negative sense in which there can not be any knowledge of noumena through sensible means. Things in themselves can be thought about as noumena in the negative sense, but have no relation to the positive sense of the word. Scholars, much to my disdain, tend to use the words interchangeably. Phenomena, much like appearance, is a much simpler term, and means that which is evident to the senses. Appearance then, can be understood as a phenomenon.
In considering this field of Kantian research and looking for possible sides and conclusions it is imperative to distinguish the two main areas of debate. The question of whether Kant’s formulation of things in themselves as any merit, while much is written on topic, there seems to be a consensus. Most Kantian scholars want to accept things in themselves as non-contradictory and then proceed to explore the consequences of its place in Kant’s transcendental idealism. The main debate about whether appearances and things in themselves represent two separate worlds, or merely different aspects of the same reality, seems to be the area where real contention is going on.