Things in Themselves and their Relation to Appearances

Abstract

The theses that things in themselves exist and ground appearances by affecting sensibility are discussed, a discussion that includes an examination of the difference between the empirical and transcendental distinction between things in themselves and appearances and of the role of the analogy between secondary qualities and spatiotemporal determinations in Kant’s explanation of critical idealism. The relation between the transcendental and the empirical self is revisited, and the two-world reading of this relation is confirmed and integrated with an account of Kant’s conception of human beings as composed of various distinct parts, including a body, an empirical self, and a transcendental self. The account, begun in chapter 3, of how critical idealism differs from ordinary idealism is further refined, and Kant’s arguments for the existence and grounding theses are reconstructed and shown to ultimately rely on the assumption that the human mind is essentially finite. Finally, two versions of critical idealism are distinguished—bold critical idealism and timid critical idealism—and it is argued that Kant is a bold critical idealist.