Why Kant Thinks We Cannot Know Things in Themselves

Kant’s account of experience is incredibly famous and influential in philosophy. Central to his account is his claim that we cannot know things as they are in themselves, but only as they are represented to us. In the first of his Prolegomena, Kant explains his position.


Kant begins with the question: “How Is Pure Mathematics Possible?” (PTAFM, Page 23). He goes on to say that mathematics is a kind of “synthetic … a priori” knowledge. With this, he ask the question: “How is it possible to intuit anything a priori?” (PTAFM, Page 24). Kant then makes an important point: “If our intuition had to be of such a nature as to represent things as they are in themselves, there would not be any intuition a priori, but intuition would be always empirical. For I can only know what is contained in the object in itself if it is present and given to me” (PTAFM, Page 24). Given this, it is clear why Kant does not think that a priori knowledge gives us access to things in themselves as a priori things, by definition, cannot refer to things external to the mind. As Kant says “ it is indeed even then inconceivable how the intuition of a present thing should make me know this thing as it is in itself, as its properties cannot migrate into my faculty of representation” as only things which are known a posteriori enter into the “faculty of representation” (PTAFM, Page 24). 


Kant goes even further and denies that we can know things in themselves when our knowledge of them is received a posteriori. For Kant, we know things in the world through “sensibility” (PTAFM, Page 25). Going further, Kant believes that it is only through a “form of sensibility I can know a priori” that things in the world can be understood (PTAFM, Page 24). With this in mind, it is clear why Kant thinks we only know things in the external world through the senses, we only know things as we perceive them, not as “they are in themselves” (PTAFM, Page 25). For Kant, we only understand things in the external world through the “form of sensibility” which is known “a priori” (PTAFM, Page 24). Kant also thinks that a priori intuitions cannot represent things in themselves, otherwise these would be “empirical” rather than a priori (PTAFM, Page 24). So since a priori intuitions cannot represent things in themselves, and the “form of sensibility” by which we know things in the world is known a priori, it is impossible that we can understand things as “they are in themselves” (PTAFM, Page 25).


Kant’s account of cognition has a lot of appeal and it seems very hard to avoid given the nature of a priori knowledge. Despite this, I have my reservations about Kant’s view since it seems to have consequences which could undermine a lot of what we take to be a posteriori knowledge. I think the weak point in Kant’s view is his distinction between the passive and active faculties in the intellect. In the first Critique, Kant makes a distinction between the receptivity and the understanding and this duality is the starting point for the rest of the Critique and leads him to the conclusion that we cannot know things as “they are in themselves” (PTAFM, Page 25). If one collapses this distinction, then both the passive and active faculties work in tandem and they may even be the same thing. John McDowell collapses this distinction in “Mind & World” and he uses this to ground a kind of direct realism, which easily gives us access to things in themselves. I am sympathetic to McDowell’s view because it provides us with a stable ground for a posteriori knowledge and so find myself leaning away from Kant’s view that we cannot know things as “they are in themselves” (PTAFM, Page 25).


Works Cited


https://faculty.washington.edu/conormw/Teaching/Files/PhilMath/Winter_2017/Readings/Kant-Prolegomena.pdf

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