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Articles

Kant and the Thing in Itself

Ralph Blumenau on why things may not be what they seem to be.

Before Kant, philosophers had divided propositions into two kinds, under the technical names of ‘analytic’ and ‘synthetic’. Propositions must be either the one or the other. Analytic propositions follow up the implications of definitions. If we designate the number of asterisks in *** as ‘3’, the number in ** as ‘2’, the number in ***** as ‘5’, and the symbol for addition as ‘+’, then it must be true that 3 + 2 = 5. If we use the word ‘man’ for the male of the human species and the word ‘father’ for the male progenitor of a child, then it must be true that ‘fathers are men’.

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