In the fourth Immanuel Kant Lecture, Quine summons the specter of Kant’s Ding an sich, the thing in itself. Clearly antithetical to his naturalism, Quine quickly dismisses it as having feet of clay. Despite this short shrift, it is worth examining what he did say about the Ding an sich—in the Kant Lectures, in “Things and Their Place in Theories”, and in “Structure and Nature”. I offer a critical reading of these passages in the context of Quine’s proxy (...) functions, ontological relativity, and structure. I argue that Quine uses the Ding an sich as a foil for his anti-metaphysical, deflationary structuralism—a view that grounds objectivity in true statements, without any transcendental notion of objects, without the Ding an sich. (shrink)

Dinge an sich sind unerkennbar. So lernen wir es in den Proseminaren; und dieser Eindruck ist auch beinahe unvermeidbar,wenn man die Kritik der reinen Vernunft zum ersten Mal liest. Doch bei einem genaueren Blick drängen sich Zweifel auf: Sind Dinge an sich wirklich absolut unerkennbar? Denn Kant macht darüber hinaus auch Aussagen über Eigenschaften von Dingen an sich, die ihnen...

Članek skuša ponazoriti zagato, ki jo za intepretaeijo Kantove filozofije kot razmejitvene geste predstavlja reč na sebi. Če namreč drži, da imamo v Kantovi filozofiji vselej opravka z razmejitvijo dveh področij in če drži, daje ta razmejitev, čeravno predpostavljena, šele vnazajšnji produkt, se zdi, da obstaja vsaj ena ločnica, vsaj en primer, kjer ta interpretacija ne drži - ločnica med pojavi in rečmi na sebi. Ta ločnica je paradoksna, kolikor prvi člen, pojav, za Kanta še zdaleč ni sporen, medtem ko (...) je drugi člen, reč na sebi, nekaj najbolj spornega v Kantovi filozofiji sploh. Kantove izjave o statusu reči na sebi močno variirajo, tako, daje mogoče reč na sebi razumeti na različne načine, izmed katerih pa nobeden ni združljiv s temeljnimi premisami Kantove teoretične filozofije in videti je, da je Kantu uspelo nastalo zagato razrešiti šele v svojem zadnjem, a neobjavljenem delu Opuspostumum. (shrink)

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This study deals with the conceptual pair of ‘Erscheinung/Ding an sich’ (appearance/thing-in-itself) in Kant's philosophy and tries to reinterpret it. Previous interpretations have neglected the metaphysical critical intention of the three themes in Kant's critical philosophy: epistemology, doctrine of ideas and practical philosophy. This book discusses the perspective of metaphysical criticism in the context of six ways of using the faculties of thought (understanding and reason or practical reason) and their relation to the conceptual pair. After that, the author (...) elucidates the general meanings of this conceptual pair in connection with Kant's chemical method. (shrink)

A revised version of my dissertation will soon appear (in German) under the title "Der Streit um das Ding an sich: Systematische Analysen zur Rezeption des kantischen Idealismus 1781–1794" (de Gruyter, vol. 150 “Quellen und Studien zur Philosophie” series). -/- My dissertation is focused on Kant’s transcendental idealism and the early, pre-Fichtean criticism thereof. It takes up the problem of the thing in itself in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and analyzes the most influential criticisms by Kant’s very first (...) readers (J. G. Feder, C. Garve, F. H. Jacobi, H. A. Pistorius, J. A. Eberhard, G. E. Schulze, and S. Maimon), who challenged the coherence and plausibility of Kant’s overall idealist conception. In reconstructing and discussing these early reactions to Kant’s idealism, I analyze and assess their criticism against the background of new scholarship on transcendental idealism, pursuing two central goals: (i) I defend Kant’s idealism –– and in particular, the status of the Kantian thing in itself –– against these early critics; (ii) nonetheless, I argue that by engaging with their texts, there are valuable lessons to be learnt which can and should inform our contemporary understanding of Kant. Consequently, the claims and arguments of this thesis have implications for both contemporary Kant scholarship, as well as research on the reception of Kant and/or the origins of German Idealism. With respect to Kant scholarship, I do not regard the endorsement of one-world readings of Kant’s idealism as an indispensable move for a defense of Kant against his early critics; the interpretive and argumentative strategies I develop are mostly neutral with respect to the debate between one- and two-world readings. From the perspective of research on the reception of Kant and/or the origins of German Idealism, my dissertation goes against a widespread tendency within the historiography of German philosophy: the tendency to distinguish between “conservative”, “backward-looking” early critics of Kant on the one hand, and more “progressive”, “forward-looking” ones –– who pave the way for German Idealism –– on the other hand. I argue instead that Kant’s pre-Fichtean readers form a far more homogeneous group than is often thought: rather than considering their arguments in isolation, where they can easily be overlooked philosophically, placing them in context with one another helps us better appreciate the interesting philosophical points they contain. -/- . (shrink)

Nietzsche vs. Kant? Der siebzehnte Aphorismus aus dem ersten Teil von Menschliches, Allzumenschliches schliesst mit der korrosiven Bemerkung, das Ding an sich [sei] eines homerischen Gelachters werth. Aufgrund dieser Passage nun aber zu vermuten, Nietzsche habe diesen von Kant stammenden Terminus einfach so ad acta gelegt, ware jedoch ubereilt, denn die Auseinandersetzung mit der Unterscheidung zwischen Erscheinung und Ding an sich lasst sich als Konstante durch Nietzsches gesamtes Werk verfolgen. Mattia Riccardi widmet sich in seiner Studie den verschiedenen (...) Positionen, die Nietzsche im Zusammenhang mit dieser Problematik eingenommen hat: von der im Hintergrund der Geburt der Tragodie prasenten Artisten-Metaphysik bis zur radikalen Infragestellung des kantischen Denkmusters in den Jahren nach 1880. Riccardi beschrankt sich aber nicht auf eine historisch akkurate, direkte und indirekte Textquelle mit einbeziehender Rekonstruktion von Nietzsches kampferischer Lekturepraxis. Vielmehr stellen die wiederholt auftretenden Bezuge auf Kants Begrifflichkeit fur ihn ein geeignetes Instrument dar, um die Entfaltung von Nietzsches Denken in aller Scharfe sichtbar zu machen. Die Kritik an Kant wird auf diese Weise zum Ausgangspunkt einer differenzierten Interpretation von Nietzsches perspektivistischer Philosophie der Macht im Sinne einer relationalen Ontologie. Damit versteht sich das Buch auch als Beitrag zur - vor allem im englischsprachigen Raum sehr lebendigen - Debatte um das Verhaltnis Nietzsches zu Kant. (shrink)

The question of the world in itself — the world beyond its correlation with experience in the broadest sense — is one of the sore points of phenomenology and becomes especially acute in the light of modern discussions around correlationism. These discussions, in one way or another, make phenomenology come around to the classical distinction between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, with the help of which Kant outlines the field of ethics as a special world lying on the other side (...) of the correlation of knowledge and object constitutive for nature. Philosophy deals with the thing-in-itself in the proper, positive sense of the word, not as phenomenology (transcendental philosophy, which reveals the correlation of knowledge and reality in the world of phenomena and the futility of attempts by theoretical reason to know anything beyond phenomena), but as a critique of practical reason. The article attempts to consider the opposition of the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon in the context of the criticism that Kant’s practical philosophy is subjected to in Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit and to explicate the arguments that this criticism makes available to phenomenology for rethinking the problem of Ding an sich and the ethical dimension of the epoche. The first part of the article examines the Hegelian analysis of the main contradiction contained in the Kantian opposition of duty as something that is in itself, and nature as a phenomenon (this opposition forms what Hegel calls the moral worldview): duty does not depend on nature and therefore does not need natural (phenomenal) realization in actions, but at the same time, duty is nothing but the necessity of actions and, consequently, the necessity of a phenomenon. This contradiction, as Hegel shows, leads to the disintegration of the moral worldview and, thus, turns into the sublation of the absolute separation of duty (thing in itself) and nature (phenomenon). The restitution of the difference between the moral an sich and the phenomenon within conscience — a phenomenon that arises as a result of the destruction of the moral worldview — turns into a new paradox, which demonstrates that the thing-in-itself (ethical good), since it is freed from the phenomenon, is not only unreal, but also turns into its own opposite. The paradox consists in the fact that the consciousness of duty, taken in its independence from the phenomenal realization in actions, becomes evil itself, turning to hypocrisy in the moral judgment about other people’s actions. In the second part of the article, the significance of the Hegelian critique of Kant’s practical philosophy for the phenomenological destruction of the difference between the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon and the problematization of the ethical dimension of the phenomenological method is explicated. Tracing the naive origins of this difference in the natural attitude and their transformation in Kantian philosophy, the author tries to consider the sublation of the opposition of the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon in the field of ethics as one of the possible paths to phenomenology. It is shown how the necessary relation of the supra-worldly an sich with the situational nature of its phenomenal realization in actions calls into question the possibility of a phenomenological epoche. The author also seeks to demonstrate that the problematization of the difference between the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon does not turn phenomenology into a system in the Hegelian sense. (shrink)