Thing in itself

chose en soi

Worked through in 2 videos · 4 passages.

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani presents the thing-in-itself as the object as it is when I do not perceive it, and which no one will ever know1. He links it to Kant, for whom the noumenon cannot be known but must be thought: the result is a merely negative knowledge2. It can only be spoken of negatively: it is neither in space nor in time, and this is what makes freedom possible3. He takes up Hegel's objection: by declaring it unknowable, Kant knows both too little and too much about it, since he presupposes a reality in itself separate from knowledge4. In a session devoted to music, he takes the image of the echo that repeats a sound no one has heard as a metaphor for the thing-in-itself. He recalls that Schopenhauer identifies this thing-in-itself with music5.

Summary produced automatically from 5 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Series · 15 Jan 2021Musicosophy 9. Romantic irony and the Vinteuil sonata

28:39The echo whose sound no one has heard is a metaphor for the thing in itself, which here, as in Schopenhauer, takes the form of music.
44:19The thing in itself cannot be known without dying, like the two sounds of the dream.

Series · 2 Feb 2016Hegel on the Beach 3/5

56:33Unknowable in Kant; one can at least know negatively that it is not yellow.
1:00:36Kant knows both too little and too much: he presupposes a reality in itself separate from knowledge.