The Epistemological Two-Object View of Kant’s Distinction between Appearances and Things in Themselves

Abstract:
Kant’s distinction between appearances and things in themselves is the most important innovation and controversial part of his first Critique. The most common criticism is that the position of the things in themselves contradicts Kant’s principle of our ignorance of non-sensible objects. The views of contemporary Kant scholars who defend him can be roughly divided into three categories to interpret this distinction: the epistemological one-object (two aspects) view, the metaphysical one-object (two kinds of property) view, and the metaphysical two-object view. In this paper, I point out that none of these interpretations successfully resolves the interpretive dilemma: the epistemological one-object view as much as cancels the things in themselves and does not correspond to the text, while the metaphysical one- and two-object views cannot save the principle of ignorance. Therefore, I propose an epistemological two-object view that has not been seriously considered before. This view takes things in themselves to be putative objects that are distinct from appearances, but only for epistemological purposes. It corresponds to the text in that the concept of things in themselves is only a problematic and limiting concept and does not exceed the boundary of cognition for Kant.