990117 1731 -Things as they appear and as they are in themselves

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Von: Michael Scarpitti <MScarpit@asnt.org>
An: Multiple recipients of list <kant-l@bucknell.edu>
Betreff: RE: Things: as they appear and as they are in themselves
Datum: Sonntag, 17. Januar 1999 17:39

Some clarification is in order:

Kant used "niemals bekannt" (never to be known) to describe the
"Beschaffenheit" (nature) of "Gegenstände an sich selbst".

Wenn wir diese unsere Anschauung auch zum höchsten Grade der
Deutlichkeit bringen könnten, so würden wir dadurch der Beschaffenheit
der Gegenstände an sich selbst nicht näher kommen. Denn wir würden auf
allen Fall doch nur unsere Art der Anschauung, d. i. unsere Sinnlichkeit
vollständig erkennen, und diese immer nur unter den, dem Subjekt
ursprünglich anhängenden Bedingungen, von Raum und Zeit; was die
Gegenstände an sich selbst sein mögen, würde uns durch die
aufgeklärteste Erkenntniss der Erscheinung derselben, die uns allein
gegeben ist, doch niemals bekannt werden.

Michael A Scarpitti
e-mail mscarpit@asnt.org

> ----------
> From:     Evan Wm. Cameron
> Reply To:     kant-l@bucknell.edu
> Sent:     Sunday, January 17, 1999 04:23 PM
> To:     Multiple recipients of list
> Subject:     RE: Things: as they appear and as they are in themselves
>
> A reminder:
>
> Kant did NOT say that we could never 'know' things as they are in
> themselves; the verb he used was 'erkennen' which, then and now, is
> the
> German verb for 'to recognise - and, given Kant's concern with
> judgment
> (REfining the identity of something through predication already
> identified
> in a preliminary way by the subject), the verb is more exactly apropos
> than even Kant may have gathered.
>
> Careful translators have tried to avoid the confusion by using the
> verb
> 'to cognize' rather than 'to know', but 'to cognize' is hardly a verb
> commonly used in English, whereas 'erkennen' was and is commonly used
> in
> German to precisely Kant's point - as is the verb 'to recognise' in
> English.
>
> Kant's never suggested that we were prohibited from thinking of things
> as
> they are in themselves (and indeed think testably, though he would
> have
> been as surprised as anyone at the extent to which we have been able
> to do
> it; see Godel's work on Einstein for a good and attributed example),
> nor
> indeed that we could know nothing about things as they are in
> themselves.
> Kant's work, after all, is replete with judgments about things as they
> are
> in themselves (the goodness of God, etc.) that we are supposed to take
> as
> true of them. Rather, he held (to use an example close to his heart)
> that
> although both we and God encounter the SAME THINGS, we must encounter
> them
> AS THEY APPEAR whereas God encounters them AS THEY ARE IN THEMSELVES -
> and
> we need only think of how we are constrained when thinking of the
> former to
> think of how a being unlike us might be unconstrained when
> encountering
> and recognising them otherwise.
>
> As serious Kant scholars have insisted for years, the phrases
> capitalized
> above were ADVERBIAL; Kant used no hyphens (for there were for him no
> things-as-they-appear to be distinguished substantively from
> things-as-they-are-in-themselves). He held rather that whereas we
> must
> encounter things spatially and temporally, and hence recognise them as
> being causally related, etc., we could THINK of other modes of
> encounter
> and recognition, God, in particular, being under no such constraints.
> (God's encounters, for Kant, were somehow creative and intellectual,
> unlike our own - which, incidentally, short-circuits any attempt to
> render
> his sense of encounter, much less recognition, in contemporary
> psychological terms. Using Kant to readjust contemporary
> psychological
> discussions may be as useful as using him for any other purpose; to
> reverse the procedure, however, claiming to understand Kant better
> through
> the common understandings of contemporary psychological research is
> puzzling - to put it kindly.)
>
>
> Dr. Evan Wm. Cameron Telephone: (416) 736-5149
> CFT 216 (Film): York University Fax: (416) 736-5149
> 4700 Keele Street E-mail: ewc@yorku.ca
> Toronto, Ontario
> Canada M3J 1P3
>