Abstract

Langton’s study is a powerful new interpretation of Kant’s doctrine of the thing in itself. It offers an illuminating and thoughtful resolution of Kant’s allegedly inconsistent theses that things in themselves exist, they are the causes of appearances, and we cannot know them. The interpretation draws on central pre-Critical doctrines regarding the nature of substance and world, and finds in them the metaphysical grounds of the Critique of Pure Reason’s “humility” with regard to our knowledge of things in themselves.