International Journal of Business and Social Science Vol. 3 No. 15; August 2012 282 The Distinction of Appearances and Things in Themselves: How Crucial Is It for Kant’s Critical Philosophy? Ufuk Özen Lecturer Uludağ University Faculty of Education English Language Teaching Department Bursa, Turkey. & Phd. Student, Uludağ University, Philosophy Department, Bursa, Turkey. Abstract Kant’s distinction between appearances and things in themselves has been a debate of discussion in philosophy studies. The present study explores Kant’s key philosophical discussions as reflected in his major work The Critique of Pure Reason. The main aim of the paper is to discuss the cruciality of the distinction of appearances and things in themselves in Kant’s critical philosophy. What led Kant to the claim of a distinction between appearances and things in themselves, how the objects of knowledge are distinguished and the results that would come out without this distinction are taken into consideration. Keywords: Kant’s critical philosophy, things in themselves. Introduction The immense interest in the concept of a thing in itself cannot be ignored in Kantian philosophy. The notion has been considered by many philosophers and interpreters in different ways and was a main topic of debate. Shaw claims that the concept of a thing in itself distinguishes Kantians, non-Kantians and different views among neo- Kantians. Reinhold and post-Kantian German idealism rejected the thing in itself because something that is foreign to the nature of thought is not cognizable in knowledge. The neo-Kantian schools adopted the views of Hegel and Schelling and rejected the thing in itself in ontological level. Jacobi remarked that without the thing in itself, one can not become a Kantian. However, with the thing in itself, it’s not possible to stay Kantian. (Hoaglund, 1973) In the Preface to B Edition of The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant approaches the problem of reason from a perspective through which he questions whether metaphysics can be led to the “secure path of science”. The model Kant uses for comparison is logic, namely Aristotelian syllogism, which owes its completeness and certainty to the abstraction of thought from the content. The hope for the possibility of metaphysics’ having such certainty arises from the example of natural sciences, the methodologies of which have been changed by “one sudden revolution.” For the realization of metaphysical knowledge, it has to share some characteristics with logic. All scientific knowledge must be based on a unified system of formal rules of thought. However, it is clear that metaphysics is different from logic in that it has content and is the science of reality. Kant makes a distinction between theoretical and practical reason which asserts that we may know objects in two ways. Theoretical reason is used when claims are made about the properties of things that exist independently of us. By theoretical reason we determine the object and its concept. The examples Kant uses for this are Mathematics and Physics which determine their objects a priori. Contrarily, practical reason is involved in such a process in which objective states of affairs are brought into existence. Practical reason makes value judgments and accepts imperatives and applies all these to concrete situations. Thus, the object of the judgment does not exist prior to the judgment. The Critique of Pure Reason can be approached as Kant’s account of metaphysical foundations of theoretical reasoning.