Rodrigo Zanette de Araujo

It is relatively uncontroversial among scholars that, according to Kant, we cannot have determinate theoretical cognition of noumena. In this paper I shall argue that Kant’s account of the limits of human understanding allows us to draw a more radical conclusion: the very notion of an individual ‘intelligible being’ lies beyond human comprehension. I further suggest that this claim best conveys Kant’s ban of a positive use of the notion of noumenon. My investigation is guided by a question: Is it possible for concepts to successfully refer to an individual object in absence of sensible intuition? Or, to put it differently, is it possible to single out one or multiple individual noumena (and not mere concepts thereof) falling under a certain concept? I shall argue that, while we cannot exclude this possibility, we cannot comprehend (and thus admit) it either. My hope in this paper is thus to shed further light on Kant’s stance towards noumena.

In various passages, Kant makes some version of the claim that it would be absurd for there to be appearances without something that appears (Absurdity Claim). This may be read — and indeed Kant would seem at times to present it as — an argument for the existence of non-sensible reality. I assess the relevant passages and argue that the Absurdity Claim is per se metaphysically sterile. While some passages where it appears are indicative of some commitment on Kant’s part to the existence of non-sensible reality, this commitment is not argued for through the Absurdity Claim. It is rather already entailed in Kant’s choice of the word ‘appearance’ to refer to empirical objects. I thus attempt to bring to light the reasons that lead Kant to this choice, reasons which involve Kant’s views on affection and the origin of experience.

Langton’s (1998) and Allais’ (2015) metaphysical interpretations of Kant’s idealism have given special relevance to Kant’s analysis of the inner/outer dichotomy in the Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection, for they agree that this dichotomy is key to correctly grasping Kant’s distinction between appearances and things in themselves. In this article I argue that Langton’s and Allais’ accounts of Kant’s analysis of the inner/outer dichotomy have major limitations, and therefore that the text should not be read in the way they propose. In order to show these limitations, I examine the overall structure of Kant’s argument in the Amphiboly. Furthermore, I aim to establish the contribution brought by the Amphiboly to the issue of noumenal knowledge and the nature of things in themselves. Langton’s and Allais’ accounts of the relation between appearances and things in themselves as the inner nature of things not only prove to be unwarranted, but indeed to some extent opposite to what I claim to be Kant’s actual stance on things in themselves in the Amphiboly.