Kant on the Inapplicability of the Categories to Things in Themselves

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of what we can legitimately say about things in themselves in Kant's critical doctrine. Many Kant scholars believe that Kant allows that things in themselves can be characterized through the unschematized or ‘pure’ concepts of our understanding such as ‘substance’ or ‘causality’. However, I show that on Kant's view things in themselves do not conform to the unschematized categories (given their standard discursive meaning): the pure categories, like space and time, are merely subjective forms of finite, discursive cognition. I then examine what this interpretation might entail for central aspects of Kant's system such as his doctrine of noumenal freedom.