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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Etymology

Origin of thing-in-itself

1650–60; translation of German Ding an sich

Example Sentences

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

The principle of sufficient reason possessed as before an unconditioned validity, and the only difference was that the thing-in-itself was now placed in the subject instead of, as formerly, in the object.

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

That the will as such is free, follows from the fact that, according to our view, it is the thing-in-itself, the content of all phenomena.

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

The thing-in-itself, on the contrary, is present entire and undivided in every object of nature and in every living being.

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