Themes in Kant's Metaphysics and Ethics

8. Kant on Things in Themselves

8 Kant on Things in Themselves Understanding Kant’s doctrine of things in themselves involves understanding three claims he makes. First, we do not cognize things in themselves. Second, they are not in space and time, and third, the categories do not apply to them. These claims, I contend, are utterly central to Kant’s entire theory of cognition in the Critique and cannot be discarded without discarding the Critique itself. In the first section of this essay I shall clarify and defend Kant’s claims. In the second section I shall discuss variations in Kant’s thinking regarding these claims that are evident in certain passages of the text. 1. cognition of phenomena In order to understand even what Kant means by the claim that we do not cognize things in themselves but only phenomena, we have to understand the basics of Kant’s account of cognition. The basic elements involve the nature of space and time, and then the nature of thought or representation. Space and time for Kant are not objective realities but rather mere activities or constructions or motions of the subject by which it is liable to be affected by things (A26, B42, p. 71).1 Thus, in order to be affected by something, I must move and thereby make the object present. This moving gives the object location as being presented that far along in the motion of the subject. The location, then, is in terms of the activity of the subject. As an analogy, consider the idea of there being an order to the several objects on my desk (so that one of them is first, another second , etc.). Apart from an activity or procedure of mine that orders the items, they themselves have no intrinsic order. Similarly, for Kant, apart from being manifest or present at stages of motion, objects have no intrinsic location. This is just Kant’s denial of both absolute and relational theories of space. Similar remarks apply to time, which for Kant is nothing but constructions or activities of timing (marking time). We shall 1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (Boston: Bedford , 1965). All references are to this edition. 147 not consider time in this essay since the essence of Kant’s three claims regarding things in themselves can be revealed for the case of space. So far we merely have a subject moving about and getting affected (being bombarded), then moving further along and getting further affected , etc. This much characterizes what Kant calls sensibility (A22, B36, p. 67; A494, B522, p. 441), which consists of sensation (getting affected ), and space or the form of sensation (the moving about that enables and precedes getting affected). Cognition or thought, for Kant, is the unity of sensible intuition. The unity of an activity (such as moving about and getting affected) is a rule that governs it (A103, p. 133). The rule gives the activity a beginning and an end and a unity of stages. If so, then thought is a unity of sensible intuition by being a rule for it, viz., a rule for moving about and getting affected. This, I claim, is Kant’s basic notion of cognition of the world. Cognition is nothing other than rules for moving about and getting affected in various ways or obtaining presentations. Cognition, we note, goes beyond actual presentations since it is in the form of rules for how it is proper to move about and be affected (obtain presentations), whether one actually does it or not. In this sense cognition pertains to actual and possible presentations, where possible presentation means proper or legitimate or correct presentation. In sum, for Kant a cognition is nothing more than a rule that we can set out as: (1) It is proper to take k steps to (thereupon) be affected and react in such and such a way. With this account of cognition we are now ready to clarify Kant’s contention that we cognize phenomena, not things in themselves. Phenomena are things whose entire existence is in their “showing up” or being manifest. Their whole existence, that is, is their presentability (their being presentable). This “phenomenality” or manifestability is all there is to their existence. In particular, they have no intrinsic existence beyond, or in addition to, their properly entering into relations of presentation or manifestation. A rule for moving about and being affected as in (1) above does not represent any existence or reality of things beyond...