The Thing in Itself

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Having established that the world is representation, and assuming that a “real something” is being represented (as opposed to “nothing”), we are confronted by this mysterious thing-in-itself. Kant (as I understand it) said we can’t know anything about it full-stop, and Schopenhauer labelled it as the will, a singular entity, ever struggling with itself. These are the only views I’ve come across so far relating to das Ding an sich.

I’m aware that there are dozens upon dozens of well-known philsophers (alive and dead) - have any of them said anything substantial about this subject? And does anyone on this board have an opinion?

I believe that “mapping” from the phenomenal world to the “noumenal world” constitutes the prime challenge of all philosophy.

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almost all of them have said something about appearance versus the thing (both before and after kant.) the ones before just didn’t put it in a kantian context and the ones after do.

I have lots of opinions, but they are things in themselves and you can’t have access to them…

-Imp

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Hegel, Marx, and Lacan all deal with das Ding in various forms that you might find enlightening.

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Here’s an opinion - we can have our own experiences. We can’t have the experiences that other things that have experiences have. We can’t have the experience of being a table, because tables don’t have experiences, and because we can only have our own experiences.

You could call this a challenge, or you could call thinking about this a passtime. You could call this an interesting passtime, or you could just call it a passtime.

Personally, and this is just an opinion, I think there are more fruitful and interesting things to do than try to imagine what it is like to be a table - for this is all that the Great Question of the Thing-in-Itself is.

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Not in Lacanian theory, Faust. In Lacan’s conceptualization of das Ding we have perhaps the most revolutionary idea of the relation between desire and the object-cause of desire to date, which has nothing to do with what an object experiences, but how we experience and desire an object.

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Can someone summarize Kant’s theory on this matter? I know it is impossible to summarize such knowledge, but I never read anything of Kant and will immediately pick up a book on him next time I’m at school. Maybe he has some theories that I have figured out?

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Yes; and to share it is the meaning of life.

I agree 100%

The Thing is the Truth; and our meaning is how we move wrt It.

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Candy - There have been many thinkers who have had many theories about this. I generally present my own. I would love to know your own. But I thank you for the information.

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Incandescence:
Hegel, Marx, Lacan - that’s an interesting list. I’m grossly prejudiced against Hegel due to Schopenhauer, I always thought that Marx was confined to political and social philosophy, and I’ve never heard of Lacan! I’ll try to look into them sometime nevertheless.

faust:
I’m not so much interested in what it would be like to be other things (presumably I would cease to be me in the transition) as what their characteristics are.

valdas:
I think there was a thread on this from a little while ago, where I wrote such a summary.

jeffl:
I’m glad you share my opinion on the importance of this matter :slight_smile:

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While not an introductory article, this piece on Symposia is well worth reading.

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Chimney - the characteristics that we can perceive are the ones we know. I cannot tell how this is a particular philosphical problem, then, but a scientific one - one of observation. I would suggest that you examine them closely.

Of course, you question contains some assumptions, which you spell out. I will admit here that I do not understand this question, in light of your responses so far.

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The ‘Thing in itself’ came into existence with the word, whenever that was. (in the beginning, I heard - but in the beginning of what? Of the thing, in any case) But is the word a thing? Is there such a thing as the word-in-itself?

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In other words, faust, my question is this: what can we say about das Ding other than that it exists? How can we relate it to teleology, for example.

JM - what do you mean?

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Oh. Well, there are those that will tell you we can’t even say that. I would consider myself lucky, if I were you. But we either rely on our perceptions or we don’t. We rely on a more-or-less scientific model, or we rely on a metaphysical one.

Or shall I say a Lockean-Humean model, or a Cartesian one. While both models, in the end, require a sort of subjectivism, only Descartes’ requires this teleologically - Descartes begins with scepticism, but doesn’t really mean it, and Hume ends with it, and doesn’t really mean it.

Or, you could split the diference, and take the approach of phenomenology, which I find incoherent, precisely because it splits the difference.

My best advice, which you have not asked for, is the take a Nietzschean approach - post-epistemology - ignore it completely, which all of these philosophers did, in practise. Nietzsche was different only in that he admitted it - he was the most consistent of all, for it.

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What I believe thing-in-itself means is the following. We do not see the real reality that exists because our mind formulates a kind of personal reality, based on our thoughts and reactions to external stimuli. This personal reality is a hindrance to seeing reality; i.e. things for what they are. When you try to describe something-in-itself then what you are doing is putting into thought the reality you perceive of the object. However, it is impossible to describe something as it is because you are trying to create a thought that captures the thoughtless; reality must be thoughtless or we are, again, mistaken about personal reality.

Although we cannot describe something-in-itself, maybe we can, through thought, point the finger at the reality. How do we do this? Become aware that such a personal reality exists and how false it is.

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Valdas: “When you try to describe something-in-itself then what you are doing is putting into thought the reality you perceive of the object.”

Faust “the characteristics that we can perceive are the ones we know…”

These sound the most like what I understand of Kant’s position.

For Kant, all we can know is appearances (ie, phenomena) and possible experience of them. But the concepts that we use to understand and know the objects of phenomena can be used to speculate about objects in themselves (‘behind’ phenomena and possible experience). These might be quite precisely like that suggested by appearances; or they might be radically different (specifically, without space, time, substance, or causality). But we can’t ever experience it, or understand it with any certainty (ie, know it).

Chimney Sweep: “I believe that “mapping” from the phenomenal world to the “noumenal world” constitutes the prime challenge of all philosophy”.

In Kant’s sense of ‘the thing in itself’ this wouldn’t be possible; we can, however, coherently map a course from actually known phenomena to further potentially knowable phenomena (ie, possible experience).

I’m think things in themselves and the noumenal exactly correlate though - noumenal means something like ‘mental’. Hence why mental speculation about things in themselves is possible, highly tempting - but irresolvable.

Impenitent: “I have lots of opinions, but they are things in themselves and you can’t have access to them…”

Wittgenstein (who was influenced heavily by Schopenhauer) turned the notion of the thing in itself into what was beyond the limits of language. (So obviously, he kept his trap shut about it, usually). Anway, for him opinions which you cannot express would be truly private experiences (as opposed to public language and communicable experience) - so maybe things in themselves in the classic sense.

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baadog - Hume woke Kant up, yes. Then Kant fell asleep again, and dreamt the rest up. I present here just basic materialist empiricism. The kind of stuff grandma might tell you.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. Do not attempt to swallow it whole.

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faust:
I have no plans whatsover to do what Nietschze and others did and work from unknown grounds - these grounds are one of the key areas of interest for me. I don’t know much about N, but it seems to me that he did a reasonable job with various topics which are only of secondary importance to me.

valdas:
I think it’s more profound than seeing things are they really are, because even seeing is a big step away from them. In a similar vein, a question I ask is: can the thing-in-itself be perceived in other ways besides ours?

baadog:
Yes, I’ve pretty much given up on “knowing” the thing, but I’m convinced we can at least point to aspects of the phenomenal world and say things about them which are rooted in the thing.

Nice last post, faust :slight_smile:

I’d like to add that my main area of thinking at the moment is the extremes: the big bang (and the very old universe), the universe as a whole (spatial extent) and the miniscule. I think science needs help from metaphysics/philosophy here.

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Nietzsche was the Anti-Christ, but he was equally the Anti-Epistemologist. That which is unkown is a matter of opinion, it seems. I think you’ll find, if you read him, that he thought reasoning from unknown grounds was stupid. Who knows, you might find a kindred spirit.

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I intend to investigate Nietschze one day, so when that time comes, we’ll see if that’s the case :slight_smile: