Kantian Humility ' Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves '

Erscheinungsjahr 2001
ISBN: 978-0-19-924317-4
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 246 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 383 g

Rae Langton offers a new interpretation and defence of Kant's doctrine of things in themselves. Kant distinguishes things in themselves from phenomena, and in so doing he makes a metaphysical distinction between intrinsic and relational properties of substances. Kant says that phenomena--things as we know them--consist 'entirely of relations'. His claim that we have no knowledge of things in themselves is not idealism, but epistemic humility: we have no knowledge of the intrinsic properties of substances. This humility has its roots in some plausible philosophical beliefs: an empiricist belief in the receptivity of human knowledge and a metaphysical belief in the irreducibility of relational properties. Langton's interpretation vindicates Kant's scientific realism, and shows his primary/secondary quality distinction to be superior even to modern-day competitors. And it answers the famous charge that Kant's tale of things in themselves is one that makes itself untellable.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Langton, Rae

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Erkenntnistheorie

Über Autor(innen)

Rae Langton is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh.