Nothing is in Itself Without the Other

Hegel’s account of something and other shows that what something is in itself is inextricably bound with its relation to others, such that there is no thing that purely is related to itself without also being related to others and, likewise, no thing is merely related to others without having some intrinsic relation unto its own being apart from others. This seems to be in stark contrast to Kant, who famously distinguishes things in themselves from the way the appear (or are experienced by human beings, i.e. from the way things in themselves are for us).

From Hegel’s point of view, Kant’s idea of a thing in itself that is entirely distinct from how it appears for us—its “being-for-us”—is an abstraction that, when examined carefully, proves to be logically incoherent.

However, Stephen Houlgate claims that Hegel subtly misunderstands Kant’s concept of the thing in itself, “Hegel takes Kant’s concept of the ‘thing-in-itself’ to refer, not only to what is objective rather than subjective, but to what things are objectively, to what they really are in themselves; that is, he conflates Kant’s thing in itself with being” (Houlgate 2022, 31). If Hegel’s critique is to have real merit, the misunderstanding needs to be clarified.

Kant’s Thing in Itself

Kant’s transcendental philosophy aims to ascertain the limits of human experience, and therefore, of knowledge. Truthful experience (or knowledge), Kant claims, is minimally the synthesis of two heterogenous sources: intuitions and concepts. The truthful conception of reality—as far as human beings are ever able to experience it—entails a mediation of human mental faculties (particularly the faculty of the understanding) with sensuous intuitions. Effectively then, this counts as objectivity for Kant since it is what makes possible any kind of determined object at all.

…we have no concepts of the understanding and hence no elements for the cognition of things except insofar as an intuition can be given corresponding to these concepts, consequently that we can have cognition of no object as a thing in itself, but only insofar as it is an object of sensible intuition, i.e. as an appearance; from which follows the limitation of all even possible speculative cognition of reason to mere objects of experience (Kant 1998, 115/B XXVI).

Despite this criterion of experience and knowledge, reason—because it is not limited by sensibility—is able to entertain thoughts about objects that have an entirely different set of intuitions and categories, which would be wholly inaccessible (and incomprehensible) to us. Kant calls this the noumenon:

Thinking in itself, to be sure, is not a product of the senses, and to this extent is also not limited by them, but it is not on that account immediately of any independent and pure use, without assistance from sensibility, for it is in that case without an object. And one cannot call the noumenon such an object for this signifies precisely the problematic concept of an object for an entirely different intuition and an entirely different understanding than our own, which is thus a problem itself. The concept of the noumenon is therefore not the concept of an object, but rather the problem, unavoidably connected with the limitation of our sensibility, of whether there may not be objects entirely exempt from the intuition of our sensibility, a question that … in the absence of a determinate concept (for which no category is serviceable) they also cannot be asserted as objects for our understanding (Kant 1998, 379-380/B344).

Now, Kant develops the idea of the thing in itself as an erroneous conception of reality where, following the freedom of reason (noumenon), categories are misapplied to intuitions or are thought to apply to things which really have no sensuous intuitions. The thing in itself is an undetermined “object” that pretends to be a real object of experience. Where actual experience is concerned, by contrast, it is never looked after (see Kant 1998, 162/B45).

Kant thus traces the thing in itself as both a bug and a feature, as it were, of reason’s freedom from sensibility. If Kant is right, the thing in itself only ever comes up indirectly in experience (via reason), not directly in experience (via the understanding); that is, putting it figuratively, the thing in itself is an afterthought that looks beyond the light of reality to unveil curtains the mind itself had put there.

Revision I of Hegel’s Critique of Kant’s Thing in Itself

What Hegel Gets Wrong

Following Stephen Houlgate’s reading, there are two claims in Hegel’s critique of Kant:

1. Kant, as Hegel understood him, reduces the realm of experience to appearance because Kant thinks that the categories, along with the forms of intuition, are subjective. Our access to reality is not direct but mediated. According to Kant, then, the categories do not allow one to experience what things are in themselves (see Houlgate 2022, 31); that is, the categories do not bring to mind what in Hegel’s eyes would be genuinely objective.
   1. Hegel criticizes this approach because the categories in Kant depend on the idea that what is subjective cannot at the same time be objective. Kant’s whole position here, therefore, rests on “an uncritical presupposition of the understanding” (Houlgate 2022, 31).
   2. What Hegel considers objective differs from Kant’s conception. The former considers objectivity to be what things really are in themselves, whereas the latter considers it to be what is truthfully mediated through the human cognition. Each of these could be distinguished as “Hegelian objectivity” and “Kantian objectivity”.
2. Kant’s thing in itself, in Hegel’s view, is a real thing but “something alien and external to thinking” (Hegel 2010, 41/21.47). In Hegel’s Kant, thought posits an unreachable object—a thing in itself—and thus remains enclosed within itself.
   1. But Hegel thinks that this object (thing in itself) is in fact not unreachable at all; not something that is beyond cognition. As Houlgate puts it, “Kant’s unreachable ‘thing’ is not beyond thought at all, because it is conceived by by means of the concepts and categories of thought. It is conceived as the ‘negative’ of determinate thought through the category negation, and as empty and featureless through the abstract concept of ‘identity’” (Houlgate 2022, 31). Consequently, Kant’s thing in itself is an abstraction produced by thought itself.

Hegel’s second claim is the intended to be the actual criticism of Kant. However, to return the criticism, Kant is well aware that the idea of a thing in itself is an abstraction produced by thought; he does not posit that there actually is such a being that is merely in itself, but precisely aims to diagnose it as a case where thought, or reason, errs.

Moreover, as Houlgate points out, “Kant does not start from the idea that there is something out there we can’t reach; he starts from the objects of experience and examines what Allison calls their ‘epistemic conditions’, the conditions under which alone they can be objects of experience” (Houlgate 2022, 32). The objects of experience presuppose these conditions, the forms of intuition and concepts, and all objects for us can only ever be objects as seen from the human finite points of view. Thus, Kant starts from within experience, not by transcending it.

Despite what Hegel maintains, Houlgate continues, “Kant’s thing in itself is thus not some indisputable being just out of reach, but what is thought to be distinct from thought” (Houlgate 2022, 33). In this respect, Hegel’s criticism falls short since Kant is perfectly aware that the thing in itself does not refer to a being in reality but is a thought about a being in reality, specifically, deprived of the sensuous intuitions, the conditions necessary to form experience of actual being in reality.

What Hegel Gets Right

Despite the misunderstanding by Hegel on Kant’s thing in itself, Houlgate still thinks that Hegel’s critique of Kant on the distinction between appearances and things in themselves is not entirely undermined.

Kant, in Hegel’s view, distinguished between a sphere of empirical objectivity whose epistemic conditions are subjective—which formed the realm of appearances—and the objective character that things are thought to have in their own right apart from those conditions. “Kant himself might describe the distinction in quite this way; but his explicit insistence that the forms of intuition are subjective, and so do not belong to things themselves, makes it inevitable that we equate the latter with things as they are thought to be objectively on their own” (Houlgate 2022, 33).

The main issue is that Kant separates thought and being, such that concepts, by themselves, do not contain or relate to being. Only through sensuous intuitions can concepts contain being. “Thought is essentially limited,” for Kant, writes Houlgate (quoting Hegel), “since, whatever concept we may consider ‘existence remains for him something utterly other than the concept” (Houlgate 2022, 34). This is in contrast to Hegel, along with other philosophers such as Anselm, Descartes and Spinoza, which all accept a unity of being and thought; “thought by itself can think – that is, bring to mind – being itself, be it the being of divine substance, or of objects, or of the I. Kant, by contrast, insists that thought and being are radically and definitively distinct” (Houlgate 2022, 34-5).

The chief implication of Kant’s thing in itself, as Hegel views it, is that it reinforces the radical distinction between thought and being, which in turn would solidify an ontological difference between being-in-itself and being-for-other, that is, something that only relates to others (thought, following Kant’s account) and something that relates only to itself (what the thing in itself implies). Hegel does not think that being and thought are entirely separated, but that there exists a unity, and that his account of the categories being-in-itself and being-for-other prove that there is nothing, much less thought and being, that exists only in relating to itself without an relation to the other.

Possible Problems: Not All Supersensible Referents are Alike

Supersensible referents is a class of Kantian terms that denote or gesture toward what cannot appear in sensibility—such as the thing in itself, the noumenon, the transcendental object, intelligible objects, object in itself and other concepts that mark the limits of possible experience.

An important caveat is that Houlgate’s reading relies on the fact that Kant’s thing in itself, transcendental object, object in itself, intelligible objects and noumena all collapse into the same.¹ This may not be case as there are subtle differences between all these terms.

For example, here Kant distinguishes thing in itself from object in itself qua transcendental object, the latter which acts effectively as cause whereas the former does not have any relation to causality whatsoever:

The understanding accordingly bounds sensibility without thereby expanding its own field, and in warning sensibility not to presume to reach for things in themselves but solely for appearances it thinks of an object in itself, but only as a transcendental object, which is the cause of appearance (thus not itself appearance) (Kant 1998, 381/B344).

Furthermore, here Kant distinguishes noumenon from intelligible objects, and then adds that the idea of noumenon is meant to cancel out the understanding’s erroneous determining of things in themselves through the determination of noumena.

the concept of a noumenon … as a concept setting limits to sensibility. But in that case it is not a special intelligible object for our understanding; rather an understanding to which it would belong is itself a problem, namely, that of cognizing its object not discursively through categories but intuitively in a non-sensible intuition, the possibility of which we cannot in the least represent. Now in this way our understanding acquires a negative expansion, i.e., it is not limited by sensibility, but rather limits it by calling things in themselves (not considered as appearances) noumena (Kant 1998, 351/B312).

The thing in itself is therefore meant to be avoided since it is an error. Noumenon, on the other hand, is unavoidable since it serves to set limits to reason, as the latter is not bound by sensibility.

Consequently, it is inaccurate to ascribe any objective character to things in themselves in Kant. Any notion of reality that is formed without sensuous intuitions (including pure intuitions) cannot be classed as objective or pertaining to objects; such a notion is precisely the overreach of reason which it, through philosophy, must correct itself upon self-critical reflection.

Revision II of Hegel’s Critique of Kant’s Thing in Itself

The Thing in Itself Strikes Back

During the development of being-in-itself and being-for-other, Hegel makes these remarks about the idea of the thing in itself:

The thing-in-itself is the same as that absolute of which nothing is known except that in it all is one. What there is in these things-in-themselves is therefore very well known; they are as such nothing but empty abstractions void of truth (Hegel 2010, 94/21.109).

That the thing in itself is an abstraction void of truth aligns well with Kant’s conception. However, Hegel continues:

But in this Logic something better is understood by the in-itself than an abstraction, namely, what something is in its concept; but this concept is in itself concrete: as concept, in principle conceptually graspable; and, as determined and as the connected whole of its determinations, inherently cognizable (Hegel 2010, 94/21.109).

Contra Kant, then, Hegel claims that the thing in itself qua being-in-itself is cognizable. But it is cognizable because it is part of the conception of something, which is necessarily connected to being-for-other. It is this element of being-for-other that is the reason why being-in-itself is accessible to thought in the first place.

This weakens Hegel’s earlier assertion that Kant’s thing in itself as “something alien and external to thinking” (Hegel 2010, 41/21.47). While being-in-itself proves to be a moment of something, it does subsist momentarily in the logical sequence as a distinction in its own right, and in that respect, it seems indistinguishable from the thing in itself in its determination of something that relates merely to itself (the thing in itself, obviously, carries also with it further epistemic connotations that are hereby omitted).

The issue is further complicated by the fact that Hegel later in the Science of Logic develops a category called the thing in itself: “The thing in itself is the concrete existent as the essential immediate that has resulted from the sublated mediation” (Hegel 2010, 423/11.327). Here the thing in itself turns out to be important in the logical development in determining the property of a thing.

Hegel remarks that the real issue with Kant’s thing in itself is that it is supposed to be the abstraction of all determination. “Once the thing-in-itself has been presupposed in this way, all determination falls outside it into an alien reflection to which it is indifferent” (Hegel 2010, 428/11.331). Kant’s shortcoming, in Hegel’s eyes, is that he held “on to the abstract thing-in-itself as to an ultimate determination” (Hegel 2010, 428/11.332). From this a series of wrongful conclusions about the I, consciousness and reality, which, Hegel argues, demotes Kant’s transcendental idealism to a crude subjective idealism.

In sum, the thing in itself has a place in the logical development such that is is not an entirely abstract category. In this respect Hegel does not take issue with Kant that there is a thing in itself. However, what Hegel now goes on to criticize is the fixation of the thing in itself as purely existing independently or “in opposing the determinateness and manifoldness of the properties to the thing-in-itself” (Hegel 2010, 428/11.332). This weakens, if not invalidates, Hegel’s earlier critique of Kant of the thing in itself as merely abstract or external to thought. His critique now targets its usage as abstract or external, not only to thought, but to things in reality as well.

What reasons Hegel has for naming what amounts to the thing in itself in the development of concrete existence is beyond the scope of this article, but it does exacerbate navigating the already thorny terrain of his initial misreading.

Yes We Kant

Hegel’s Logic shows that there must be being-for-other connected to being-in-itself, such that there is no being that is merely related to itself and therefore in principle entirely inaccessible. The implication of Kant’s philosophy, may be closer to this result than what Hegel claims.

In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant is not, like Hegel, primarily interested in the development of metaphysical categories but with the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience. His project, then, is epistemic in nature, rather than ontological. Nevertheless, Kant argues that any determined object for us in experience must in principle have an outward being that is adaptable to the human cognition through immediate, sensuous intuitions. If an object is brought to mind bereft of these immediate givens, it is no real object at all but a cognitive error.

Does Kant’s system not show that there must, using Hegel’s terms, be a being-for-other in determining an actual something? The object of experience is manifest objectively—what the thing is in itself; its being-in-itself—insofar as it appears, viz. there is a being-for-other. Does this not validate Hegel’s argument, but from an epistemological standpoint? While Kant may fail to exhaust the determinations of reason or insufficiently deduce the categories, as far as his project is concerned, he does appear to show successfully that, practically, thought is in error if it only considers things in themselves apart from how they may possibly appear.

Hegel’s metaphysics extends this epistemological tenet to be valid not only for human cognition but for thought as such. Whether Hegel in his own project succeeds or not is not the issue here, but the remarkable compatibility between his and Kant’s philosophies—despite their different methodologies— on the incredible insight that nothing is in itself without the other.

Bibliography

Authors
Filip Niklas (2025)

Notes