R kant does consistently say, as onil has been suggesting, that that this a phrase refers to freedom, to god, also to the immortality of the soul. A and er, that is one way in which the thing in itself has has a certain role within kant's philosophy. But as john was also mentioning earlier, it's also possible to see things in themselves as being the ultimate reality, the ultimate, but unknowable reality against which we have to understand appearances. And this is where kant introduces the idea that they, he calls them limit concepts. They operate huristically in order to make us aware of what it is that we we cannot know. So they they set
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the insight into our relationship with the world that Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) shared in his book The Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. It was as revolutionary, in his view, as when the Polish astronomer Copernicus realised that Earth revolves around the Sun rather than the Sun around Earth. Kant's was an insight into how we understand the world around us, arguing that we can never know the world as it is, but only through the structures of our minds which shape that understanding. This idea, that the world depends on us even though we do not create it, has been one of Kant’s greatest contributions to philosophy and influences debates to this day.
The image above is a portrait of Immanuel Kant by Friedrich Wilhelm Springer
With
Fiona Hughes
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Essex
Anil Gomes
Associate Professor and Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Trinity College, Oxford
And
John Callanan
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at King’s College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson