Kantian Humility
Author | : Rae Langton |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | : 247 |
Release | : 1998 |
ISBN-10 | : 9780198236535 |
ISBN-13 | : 0198236530 |
Rating | : 4/5 (35 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: 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 thatphenomena--things as we know them--consist 'entirely of relations', by which he means forces. 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 someplausible 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 superioreven to modern-day competitors. And it answers the famous charge that Kant's tale of things in themselves is one that makes itself untellable.