stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

Chapter 2: The thing in itself as the transcendental subject
What is the thing in itself?
I have just defined the difference between knowledge and illusion in terms of the presence of der
Gegenstand. How does the thing in itself arise in this context? In what follows I look closer into
Kant’s account of knowledge. Here I call such knowledge theoretical knowledge or knowledge
as representation. I argue that there is something inherently problematic in Kant’s account of
knowledge as representation. My argument is this. Representational knowledge depends on the
presence of der Gegenstand in the sense that it is der Gegenstand that actualizes it. However, I
argue, it is precisely this Gegenstand that representational knowledge cannot know. But what is
that Gegenstand? Der Gegenstand is not something that really exists, where the word really is
taken in its non-technical, straightforward sense. Instead, der Gegenstand is what
representational knowledge itself projects insofar as it is representational. In this sense, it is
nothing about der Gegenstand itself that makes it unknowable to representational knowledge.
Instead, representational knowledge projects der Gegenstand but precisely as unknowable to
itself. This is the paradox of representational knowledge. In other words, der Gegenstand is
nothing that representational knowledge decides to project but could also, as it were, decide not
to project. Der Gegenstand is something that representational knowledge absolutely must project
in order to be the kind of knowledge that it is. I have just argued that representational knowledge
can only be knowledge to the extent that there really exists in the non-technical, straightforward
sense der Gegenstand. Now I argue that this same Gegenstand is actually what representational
knowledge, and this is putting it strongly, must pretend really exists in order to get off the ground
at all, in other words, in order to count as the kind of knowledge that it is. I am aware that this
point opens up all kinds of problems for Kant’s account of knowledge. For one, it makes this
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