Kantian Humility Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves [Paperback]

In this refreshing and exceptional work, Rae Langton offers a new interpretation and defense of Kant's doctrine of things in themselves. Kant distinguishes things in themselves from phenomena, thus making a metaphysical distinction between intrinsic and relational properties of substances. Langton argues that his claim that we have no knowledge of things in themselves is not idealism, but epistemic humility; we have no knowledge of the intrinsic properties of substances. This interpretation vindicates Kant's scientific realism and shows his primary/secondary quality distinction to be superior even to modern day competitors. And it answers the famous charge that Kant's tale of things in themselves is one that makes itself untellable.

Introduction
1. An Old Problem
2. Three Kantian Theses
3. Substance and Phenomenal Substance
4. Leibniz and Kant
5. Kant's Rejection of Reducibility
6. Fitting the Pieces Together
7. A Comparison with Locke
8. Kant's `Primary Qualities'
9. The Unobservable and the Supersensible
10. Realism or Idealism?
Bibliography
Index

Langton's book is a significant contribution to the recent literature on Kant's idealism, and will be widely discussed. --Times Literary Supplement

A novel attempt to elucidate and defend a central Kantian thesis....A most interesting, impressive, and scholarly exercise in Kantian interpretation --P. F. Strawson

This is one of the most original and thought-provoking books books on Kant to have appeared for quite some time. Its scholarship and its philosophical insight are equally impressive, and it raises philosophical questions of considerable interest for the present day. . .. . There is much to be learnt from it, and it gives us all much to think about. --Ralph C. S. Walker,Mind

admirably clear, tightly argued... an extremely engaging and thought-provoking book. --A.W. Moore,Philosophical Review

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