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

Schelling writes that “the question whether the self is a thing-in-itself or an appearance is itself
intrinsically absurd. It is not a thing at all, neither thing-in-itself nor appearance…–Seen in its
true light, the dilemma thus amounts to this: everything is either a thing or nothing; which can
straightaway be seen to be false, since there is assuredly a higher concept than that of a thing,
namely the concept of doing, or activity” (Schelling 375-76). Mandt also recognizes this point:
“there is in Kant no thing-in-itself that, from time to time, acts. There is only the activity itself in
its various modalities. Kant’s transcendental subject is therefore identical with transcendental
activity—it exists precisely insofar as, and in the manner that, it acts” (Mandt 26). In what
follows I explain what may be the best example of knowledge as actualization. This example is
freedom.
83