On Thing in Itself as a Boundary Concept--From Henry E. Allison''s Perspective

• Main Authors: Xu-Jie Ding, 丁緒劼
• Other Authors: Ming-Huei Lee
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/2c83a4

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 國家發展研究所 === 106 === The concept of thing in itself in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is mysterious. According to Henry E. Allison, appearances and things in themselves must be understood as two ways of considering things (as they appear and as they are in themselves) rather than as two ontologically distinct sets of entities (appearances and things in themselves). However, in my view, Allison established a one-to-one correspondence between an appearance and its thing in itself so that the concept of thing in itself is not suitable for a boundary concept which is Kant’s main intention. Actually, thing in itself refers to two different concepts—transcendental object and noumenon. Kant makes two reflections and two presuppositions where these three concepts have their own roles. In his first reflection, Kant finds that understanding and sensibility have their own origin; we need their cooperation in theoretical reason. In his second reflection, Kant discusses whether there is a mere use of understanding which does not belong to theoretical reason anymore. Thus the boundary is not determined directly by thing in itself; instead, we firstly establish the legality of different ways to use these faculties and then determine different kinds of objects according to these different ways. I interpret Kant’s theory in this way: an object can be divided into two dimensions—form and material. The material is outside us whereas the form is not abstracted from the material. If it was the case, we would regard material as thing in itself, since a form is so and so because the corresponding material is so and so. Instead, the form is constructed a priori by us. We firstly construct the form and then order material in the same way. Therefore it is unnecessary to presuppose the concept of thing in itself in the theoretical use of reason while necessary to presuppose the concept of it for the practical use of reason.