Is it just me?

So, let's take this whole idea of the "thing-in-itself." I guess you could say this little concept basically represents our inherent tendency to stay stuck within our own perceived reality—you know, without needing any red pills or anything like that. Everything being offered just seems tailored specifically for us, centered right on our own ego.
What I’m trying to get at is how this "in-itself" thing has somehow morphed into just being "according to me." It’s funny... like, if you look at Schopenhauer, he saw the "in-itself" as the *Weltgrund*—the absolute bottom of the barrel, the core axis of everything, just this blind primal will. But then Hegel looks at it and thinks it’s always accessible, just some trivial, everyday reality. The Romantics? They thought it was this mysterious, longing "beyond," something hidden behind the illusion of the world. Then you've got Marx and Engels seeing it as something reachable through commodity production, while Adorno thought it was something else entirely (I can't quite remember what, honestly). For most other philosophers, they argue it's the essence behind the appearance, which, I don't know, feels like another misunderstanding.
Everyone just kind of wanders off doing their own thing, I suppose. Nobody really wants to sit down and truly squeeze all the juice out of these ideas. Is life just too short for that?
Is there anyone actually out there reading or listening patiently?

Great topic! 👍

That’s where the real core of the issue lies—right in that gap between the phenomenon and the noumenon.
Kant put it so beautifully and clearly when he framed it as a question:

Does our perception align itself with the objects, or does our understanding shape how those objects appear to us??!

Is this a gap we can actually bridge, or do we need to accept that there's a hard limit to what we can know? Hmm...
I'll share my two cents on this a bit later...

Penis said:Let’s take the cafeteria as a "thing-in-itself." This construct represents our fundamental entrapment within the phenomenal matrix—no red pill required. Everything offered is curated for us, centered strictly on the ego.
What I’m getting at is that "in-itself" has devolved into a mere "for-me." To Schopenhauer, the "in-itself" was the *Weltgrund*—the absolute bottom, the axis of existence, a blind primal will. For Hegel, it was the opposite: something perpetually accessible, a mundane, trivial givenness. The Romantics saw it as a longing, a mysterious "beyond" lurking behind an illusory world. Marx and Engels argued it’s accessible through commodity reproduction, while Adorno thought it was something else entirely (I can't recall what). For most other philosophers, the "in-itself" is just the essence behind appearance—yet another misunderstanding.
Everyone wanders aimlessly. No one wants to actually live through it or squeeze the juices out until they're dry. Is life really that short?
Is anyone actually listening patiently?

🤔 I knew he had a head... but a brain? I wasn't expecting that...😉 Well... life is truly magical... always full of pleasant surprises. 🙂

Fine then... let's attempt to practice patient listening...
...and... what exactly is "in-itself" according to Penis?
🙂

.. maybe we could try practicing some patient listening...

I think I just need a little patience exercise. So, yeah, I guess I'll just keep bumping this thread until my original point somehow melts into view 😉

The real question I’m wrestling with here is whether this whole concept of a "thing-in-itself" is actually as deep as these philosophy professors try to make it sound. I mean, think about it... if we can use our own brains to decode everything around us—basically grasping the underlying essence or the "noumenal" side of things through pure reason—then what's actually left? Is there even anything remotely interesting hiding behind that curtain once we've mentally unpacked it?

I mean, if big names like Hegel and Fichte are allowed to get the whole 'thing-in-itself' concept a little sideways, then I guess I can take a little risk and try to explain my own take on it too:
So, like, I mentioned earlier that most philosophers seem to trip up by treating the 'thing-in-itself' like some kind of Platonic 'essence'—which is actually kind of the opposite of how it works. My feeling is that Kant was saying essence is also just 'for us.' You can't ever really turn a 'thing-in-itself' into something 'for us,' mostly because once you do, it isn't 'in-itself' anymore. It’s just... well, it's gone. I guess what I'm trying to say is that nothing—not an essence and not a phenomenon—can ever be more than just a phenomenon, since everything pretty much relies on having a subject to perceive it in the first place.

If we go with that Kantian definition—you know, not the Platonic kind where things just "exist" in their pure state—then it feels like any positive claim we make about the "thing-in-itself" is basically doomed to fail. We’re stuck with that old Neti Neti vibe, just saying "not this, not that." Don't you think?
But does that actually drag us straight into phenomenalism? Like, if we can't even say anything coherent about the "thing-in-itself," do we even need to assume it exists at all?
I don't think so, personally. I feel like you have to assume there's some source for our knowledge, otherwise you end up in that weird solipsistic rabbit hole where you're just telling yourself "the world is an illusion I created." That's a dark place to go.
So, if I were brave enough to take a shot at defining the "thing-in-itself" here, I'd say it's that part of reality that stays unconscious to us—the actual engine behind consciousness, the objects we perceive, and the whole way everything clicks together in our minds.

A thing is just a thing, right? That’s how I see it.
But if you want to look at it your way, then fine—it’s your call, your rules, whatever works for you.

I mean, I guess it looks like they aren't really leading... maybe?

I haven't quite formed a solid opinion yet, honestly. I probably need to get a closer look at things first.

A thing in itself and a thing as I see it—they both depend on having an observer to exist.
Isn't the whole idea of a "thing in itself" just a bit too anthropocentric anyway?
Since we can’t actually observe a "thing in itself" through introspection, isn't the concept just a useful fiction? We gave it a name, but the actual substance feels pretty hollow...

👋

It’s not really an issue on its own, I guess... it doesn't have much of a connection to anything else, which is just how X always seems to be.

Honestly, there’s just nothing left to say about it! It’s a total dead end

I guess it seems that way.
Maybe I'll change my mind once I finally get around to reading 'Critique of Pure Reason.' 😉

That book really had me feeling high... 😁

hotnix said:Does our perception adjust itself to fit the objects we see, or is it more like the objects themselves align with our understanding? I guess it's one of those things.

What?

Empiricism (everything comes from experience) vs. Rationalism (everything comes from thought)

E—knowledge (ideas, concepts) and perception are built through our experiences of the world
R—our experience of the world is measured against innate knowledge (concepts, ideas)

Which principle would you lean toward first?

Everything we can actually know or experience is just a phenomenon. Like, "being" really just boils down to "being perceived"—showing up in someone's perception or consciousness.

That’s basically phenomenalism (think George Berkeley style), and while Immanuel Kant gets pretty close to that, he just can't settle for it. Even though he admits we can't know anything beyond appearances, Kant insists that these "appearances" have to be understood as "appearances *of* something." He uses this boundary concept called the "thing-in-itself." It’s this idea of an unknown "something" (X) that you can't disprove, but you also can't define through thought alone.

So why even bother with this "thing-in-itself"? Why not just stick with phenomenalism and call it a day?

It feels like Kant realizes that if you go full phenomenalism, you totally wreck the possibility of ethics.

Let me try to explain how I see it using a super simple—maybe even cheesy—example. Say someone says something to me, like someone on a forum gives my writing a compliment or some criticism. I perceive it, process it, interpret it... whatever. From that standpoint, it's strictly just a phenomenon to me (or to my "consciousness").

If I believe there’s an actual person behind those words, then asking "did I perceive this correctly?" actually makes sense. And—assuming we have free will—it might lead me to try harder to understand or perceive that person better (someone who truly exists and has their own life, even when I'm not looking at them).

But if I reject the idea that this person exists independently of my own observation, then asking "did I get this right?" becomes totally pointless. There’s nothing else besides that perception (the appearance in my consciousness). At that point, you just toss all skeptical doubts out the window because they're irrelevant. If everything is just the Matrix, then questioning the Matrix vs. reality is a moot point—the Matrix *is* the only reality. There's no "Truth" hiding behind the code.
It gives me this weird sense of certainty—it's impossible for me to have misunderstood what that other person meant, because that other person doesn't even exist outside of my own understanding of them! It's just me and the things appearing to me. There's no other being out there whose existence is anything like mine.

From that second perspective, you can't build an ethical system. At least, you definitely can't build a Kantian ethics based on showing equal respect to other beings who are free and conscious just like me.

Smartly 👍

So, because he split the world into noumenon and phenomenon, Nietzsche basically thinks Immanuel Kant is just a Christian in disguise. Nietzsche said:
'We have rejected the real world. What’s left? An illusion, maybe? No, even the illusion has been cast aside!'

I guess you could say Kant’s 'Critique of Pure Reason' is mostly just setting the stage for his moral philosophy. People seem to think he was primarily a moralist anyway.

If that's the case, why bother accepting this whole 'thing-in-itself' idea at all? Why not just go with phenomenalism?

Am I totally off base here, or is that kind of where phenomenology and Husserl eventually kicked off?