The proposition that things in themselves cannot be known, has often, and
perhaps justly, been proclaimed as the central idea of Kant’s philosophy.
Kant concludes the first section of his “Transcendentale Elementarlehre”
with this “critical admonition”:
“That in general nothing which is intuited in space is a thing
in itself, and that space is not a form which belongs as a
property to things; but that objects are quite unknown to us
in themselves, and what we call outward objects are nothing
else but mere representations of our sensibility, whose form
is space, but whose real correlate, the thing in itself, is
not known by means of these representations, nor ever can be.”
(“Kritik d. r. V.” § 4.)
The term “thing in itself” means originally the object as it is,
independent of the thinking subject’s cognition. For instance: A rainbow
appears in the clouds; the rainbow is not a thing in itself, but the
appearance of a thing in itself. The rainbow exists in man’s sensibility
only. The colors of the spectrum, indeed all colors, the colors of the
sky, of the clouds, of trees, of living beings, are sensations only;
they are subjective phenomena, they are certain kinds of feelings
representing objective realities, but they are not these objective
realities themselves. They are perceived in the brain and are projected
to a place outside the organism. The rainbow, as it is seen, is not a
thing, but it is something seen, it is an appearance only. And this is
true of all things seen and heard and perceived by any one of the senses.
The sense-pictures are localised in space, they are projected outside to
a spot where the combined experience of the senses has taught a sentient
being to expect them. But all the objects of the objective world as they
are perceived are and remain subjective sense-perceptions. The world of
our senses around us is woven of our sensations. It is mere appearance.
This is not a question concerning which there is any doubt, this is
simply a matter of fact. But the question arises, “Can we know things as
they are independent of sensation? Can we know things in themselves?”
The physicist and every scientist is engaged with the problem, What are
natural phenomena independent of sensation? Light is a sensation of
vision, but what is the objective process that takes place when a human
eye perceives light? The physicist answers this problem by eliminating
in his mind the sense-element and by describing the facts of the process
in terms of matter and motion. His answer is that light, objectively
considered, is a certain vibration of the ether. If we can rely upon
physical science, the thing in itself of a rainbow would be a certain
refraction of ether-waves. These vibrations of the ether-waves are
transmitted from the sun, and being broken in the falling raindrops
actually take place independent of cognition, they are real whether we
look at them or not.
The ultimate aim of science is a description of the natural phenomena
not in terms of sense-elements, but in terms of form. That feature of a
thing which we call its matter, constitutes its reality, but the form
of a thing, of a motion, or of a process makes the thing that which it
is; every act of causation is a change of form, and the forms of things
are determined with the assistance of the operations of purely formal
thought, i. e. through measuring or counting. Such is science, not only
as it ought to be, but also as it actually is. All our scientists, each
one in his field, are consciously or unconsciously working out a solution
of this problem. And a solution of this problem means, in our conception,
the objective cognition of the world—i. e., a description of the natural
processes as they are independent of sensibility.
Kant knew very well that a description of things and of natural processes
in terms of form was possible. He clung, nevertheless, to the proposition
that things in themselves are unknowable. And why? A description of
things and of natural processes in terms of form was in his opinion
not as yet a description of things in themselves, for—and here we are
confronted with the original idea and the fundamental error of Kantian
thought—Kant did not consider the forms of things as an objective quality
of theirs, he maintained that the formal element is purely mental and
merely subjective. The thinking mind, he declared, attributes them to the
object. Space and time, the pure forms of existence, together with all
other forms, such as causation, are, according to Kant, not qualities
of the objective world, but of the thinking subject. The thinking
subject cannot help viewing the world in the form of its own cognition,
it transfers these forms to the objects. Therefore the thing in itself
according to Kant would not be represented in a description of the thing
purely in terms of form, the thing in itself would mean the thing as it
would be, independent of time and space.
Let us here point out a distinction between the thing in itself and
noumenon. Noumenon means “a thing of thought.” The noumenal world is the
world of thoughts in a thinking being’s mind. The noumenon must not be
identified with the thing in itself. The two terms are often confounded,
but they have to be distinguished. The idea of reflected ether-vibrations
is a “noumenon,” but the reflected ether-vibrations themselves, the
objective process are a thing, i. e. an objective reality, and in so far
as they are a reality, considered as being independent of sensation, we
may call them “a thing in itself.” Now when Kant denies the objectivity
of time and space, he must, implicitly, also deny the objective
validity of a description made in terms of measuring and counting. The
pictorial world of our sense-perception is subjective, it is built up of
sensations, it is not objective; and the world of thought is the attempt
to reduce the subjective world of sense-imagery to terms of objective
validity, i. e. to terms of form. But this world of thought is according
to Kant purely mental, it is purely noumenal, or, in other words, noumena
do not represent things independent of cognition, they represent things
as our mind thinks them. The sensory world is mere appearance, it is a
subjective phenomenon, but the world of thought, says Kant, is no less
subjective, it is a world of thought which describes things in terms of
purely mental properties and not in properties of the things themselves.
This is tantamount to the proposition, that things in themselves cannot
be known.
The term “thing in itself,” in the sense of a thing as it is independent
of sensibility, would better be called “the objective thing,” and we
shall so call it when we wish to distinguish it from Kant’s thing in
itself. The objective thing is the thing, not expressed in terms of
subjective elements, such as feelings or sensibility, but in terms of
objective elements, i. e. in terms of form. That a description of things
in terms of forms is possible has never been denied either by Kant or by
any Kantian; but they deny that these descriptions are anything more than
mere noumena; Kant and the orthodox Kantians deny that they represent the
things as they are in themselves. Thus the term thing in itself in the
Kantian sense comes to mean the thing as it is independent of space and
time.
That every noumenon is a mental sign is a matter of course; the noumenal
world is ideal. But we maintain that these mental signs represent real
qualities of the objective world; they have a meaning; the things
represented by them are actual features of reality. Kant denies this.
To him the noumenal world is purely noumenal. To Kant there is no space
outside the space-conception, and so he declares that space is ideal;
it is not an objective quality of things. However, we maintain, that
our space-conception describes, i. e. depicts, or represents space, our
space-conception is ideal, yet space is not ideal but real; it is an
objective quality of the world.
Kant’s view is dualistic, or at least necessarily leads to dualism, and
it appears to rest on an unpronounced dualistic assumption. Kant treats
“the subject” as something quite distinct and separate from “the object.”
If he had borne in mind that the subject is always at the same time an
object, he would have treated both subject as well as object as mere
abstractions of one and the same reality. Resting upon this erroneous
presupposition, Kant’s most consequential mistake, in our opinion, was
his conception of what he called “the ideality of time and space.” If
time and space were purely ideal, purely mental, purely subjective, then
indeed, the things as they are would forever remain unknown to us, then
indeed the thinking mind would be as if shut up within a hollow globe out
of which it could never escape, then indeed the world would be divided
into two parts, the objective world, and the subjective world; and the
gap between both could never be bridged over. The thinking mind would
have within itself a noumenal world built upon the subjective elements
of sense-impressions. This subjective world would possess no objective
value, it would not describe realities, and the objective world would
thus be unknowable, inscrutable, and mystical.
The idea of a thing in itself found another support in a mistaken
conception of the unity of certain things, especially of organisms. The
unity of a combination of parts is not merely the sum of the parts,
it consists in their peculiar combination which makes an harmonious
co-operation possible. This unity is an additional element; it is an
entirely new creation which exhibits features not contained in any
of its parts. There is no latent watch contained in a heap of little
wheels and cogs, the watch is created through the combination of these
wheels and cogs. The unity of a thing is its form, consisting in a
special arrangement of its parts; and this form although not material is
nevertheless real.
The materialistic conception overlooks the importance of form; but the
spiritualist and also the transcendentalist materialise it as some
spiritual substance, as entities or independent existences. They are in
this way as much materialistic as the materialist.
The question has seriously been asked, What is a melody in itself. The
question has sense when we understand by it, What are those new qualities
which appear through a certain combination of sounds? Those qualities
are not nothing, they are something quite peculiar. We call one of them
rhythm, another one is the fixed succession of notes of a different
pitch. The qualities of a melody as a whole are not qualities of its
separate parts; yet therefore the melody is not a thing in itself. We
might just as well speak of a watch in itself, meaning thereby that
peculiar unity of the combination of its parts which makes of them a
watch. But if we thus speak of “the watch in itself,” we must be aware
that this idea has not somewhere in a transcendental fairy-land an
independent existence above space and time, and outside of its parts.
The unity of a certain interacting group of parts is, on the one hand,
no mere addition of the thinking subject, it is not purely noumenal, it
is real and objective; on the other hand it is not a thing in itself,
independent of its parts, it is the product of the relations in which its
parts affect one another.
Is not perhaps the basis of these vagaries a mistaken conception of
language? We call a certain sensory picture a tree and we say, the tree
has roots, a stem, branches, leaves, and fruits. Autumn sets in and the
wind shakes the leaves off the branches. Now we speak of a leafless
tree. We cut the tree down and we speak of a rootless tree. We burn the
trunk and the branches, and the tree as a phenomenon is gone, all its
properties are taken away. What remains? The tree in itself is left, but
the tree in itself does not exist. If all the property of a person is
taken from him, the person himself is still left. The properties of a
tree, however, are not properties in the same sense; they are qualities.
If all the qualities and parts of a tree are gone, if only the tree in
itself is left—then there is left nothing but the empty word tree, the
idea of a tree.