Abstract

At the core of what Schopenhauer took from Kant is transcendental idealism. An understanding of this calls not only for intelligence but for what might be called ‘intellectual imagination’. The nature of whatever faculties we have must limit what they can do, and therefore, unless reality is itself a product of our minds, it is almost certain that there are aspects of an independent reality that we cannot apprehend. Schopenhauer follows Kant in using the word ‘noumenal’ for these and the word ‘phenomenal’ for those aspects of reality that are accessible to experience.