thing-in-itself

American  

[thing-in-it-self] / ˌθɪŋ ɪn ɪtˈsɛlf /

noun

Kantianism.

• things-in-themselves
  plural

1. reality as it is apart from experience; what remains to be postulated after space, time, and all the categories of the understanding are assigned to consciousness.

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thing-in-itself British  

noun

1. (in the philosophy of Kant) an element of the noumenal rather than the phenomenal world, of which the senses give no knowledge but whose bare existence can be inferred from the nature of experience

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thing-in-itself Cultural  

1. A notion in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. A thing-in-itself is an object as it would appear to us if we did not have to approach it under the conditions of space and time.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• things-in-themselves
  plural

Etymology

Origin of thing-in-itself

1650–60; translation of German Ding an sich

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

thing-in-itself things-in-themselves

Most often we end up smothering the plain eloquence of the thing-in-itself under a pile of metaphors.

From Scientific American ● Oct. 9, 2015

He sees his farm simply as an ideal place to watch life in its essentials and to try a thing-in-itself way of conveying this — which he considers a new kind of realism.

From New York Times ● Jul. 3, 2011

In order to disown these forms Kant has directly expressed them even in abstract terms, and distinctly refused time, space, and causality as mere forms of the phenomenon to the thing-in-itself.

From The World As Will And Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer

While each of its phenomena is subject to the law of sufficient reason, which is the law of appearance in these forms, there is for the Will as thing-in-itself no rational ground: it is 'grundlos.'

From Schopenhauer by Thomas Whittaker

Fichte kept to the same point of view: his non-ego is only something set over against the ego, only defined as in consciousness: it is made no more than an infinite “shock,” i.e. a thing-in-itself.

From Hegel's Philosophy of Mind by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Kant is not so much concerned to prove the nonexistence of noumena, things-in-themselves, as he is to prove that the very conception is an empty one.

From An Introduction to Philosophy by George Stuart Fullerton

The nature of things-in-themselves would remain an eternal secret to us, were it not that we are able to approach it, not by knowledge of external phenomena, but by inner experience.

From Nature Mysticism by John Edward Mercer

But the things-in-themselves which the sense-impressions symbolize, the 'reality,' as the metaphysicians wish to call it, at the other end of the nerve, remains unknown and is unknowable.

From An Introduction to Philosophy by George Stuart Fullerton

They are turned from their historical meaning and presented as unalterable and sacred things-in-themselves.

From Dictatorship vs. Democracy (Terrorism and Communism) by Leon Davidovich Trotzky

It has become a matter of226 serious consideration for a philosophy which is interested in a world of things-in-themselves, and the epistemological problem.

From Creative Intelligence Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude by Boyd H. Bode