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Object [Ding, Objekt, Gegenstand]

Kant's concept of an object is extremely subtle, although its nuances are often lost in the indiscriminate and unsystematic translation of his terms Ding, Gegenstand, and Objekt. At the most general level in his practical philosophy, Kant follows the distinction in Roman law between persons and things (see Justinian's Institutes, books 1 and 2). A person 'is a subject whose actions can be imputed to him' while a thing is that 'to which nothing can be imputed'; the former is specified as a subject in possession of freedom and spontaneity, able to act according to principles, while the latter is without freedom and spontaneity. A human being acting in response to inclinations is a thing, as is one used simply as a means to another's ends.

The thing is distinguished from the person in terms of its passivity and lack of autonomous, free agency, and these are features which broadly determine the character of the thing or object in theoretical philosophy. Yet while the thing is largely passive in Kant's account of experience, he is careful to distinguish between various ways in which things and objects stand against the spontaneous syntheses of the human understanding. These different modes of thinghood may be identified by the different German words Kant uses for them - Ding, Gegenstand, Objekt - and the contexts in which
they appear.

Ding is the term Kant uses least frequently in the critical philosophy, a fact which may be explained by his attempt to distinguish the critical philosophy from the dogmatic metaphysics of the Wolffian school. The term Ding was used by Wolff and his school to determine metaphysical thinghood; it designates everything which is possible, even if it is not actual. The Wolffians rarely if ever used the terms Objekt and Gegenstand which Kant preferred. In CPR accordingly, Ding appears in contexts concerned with metaphysical thinghood, as in the discussion of transcendental affirmation and negation (A 574/B 603). Here Kant argues first that transcendental affirmation establishes reality, and that only through it can objects be considered to possess thinghood, or that 'Gegenstände etwas (Dinge) sind'. Transcendental affirmation also establishes the possibility of negation, since 'All concepts of negations are derivative' (A 575/B 603), and, what is more, the possibility of all limitation, since Kant regards limitation as a form of negation. Thus he argues that we require a general sense or 'ideal' of thinghood in general, or omnitudo realitas, in order to perceive determinate, limited objects. He gives the concept of this undetermined thinghood the name 'thing-in-itself', using the term Ding an sich, as opposed to Gegenstand or Objekt an sich.

Kant underlines the distinction between Ding and Gegenstand in the postulates of empirical thought. There he distinguishes between the knowledge of a determined existence (Dasein) which can only be known as an appearance or 'the existence of effects from given causes in accordance with laws of causality' (CPR A 227/B 279), from the undetermined 'existence of things (substances) [Dasein der Dinge (Substanzen)]' (A 227/ B 279) which cannot be known. Once again, Ding is synonymous with metaphysical substance, and is distinguished from the 'condition [of things] . . . which we can only know from other conditions given in perception, in accordance with empirical laws of causality' (A 227/B 280). With the latter Kant's focus on the concept of the thing or object shifts from Ding to Gegenstand and Objekt.

Kant's distinction between Gegenstand and Objekt is crucial to his transcendental philosophy, although never explicitly thematized and wholly obliterated in Kemp Smith's translation of CPR. It involves the axiomatic claim that 'the conditions for the possibility of experience in general are likewise conditions of the possibility of objects [Gegenstände] of experience' (CPR A 158/B 197), and the complex relationship which this entails between concept and intuition. Gegenstände are objects of experience or appearances which conform to the limits of the understanding and intuition; they may be appearances in intuition without 'being related to the functions of the understanding' (A 89/B 122), or
'objects of consciousness' which 'are not in any way distinct from their apprehension' (A 190/B 235). When objects [Gegenstände] of experience are made into objects for knowledge, they become Objekte. The knowledge of the understanding 'consists in the determinate relation of given representations to an object [Objekt]' with Objekt described
as 'that in the concept of which the manifold of a given intuition is united' (B 137). The 'given intuition' or Gegenstand is thus made into an Objekt under the condition of the unity of apperception.

Kant's various accounts of the object may, at risk of underestimating their internal differences, be organized in terms of a consistent account of the object. A specific Objekt of knowledge knowable through the concepts of the understanding requires an object of experience or Gegenstand.

For there to be such objects requires that there be something rather than nothing; this latter something or thinghood - Ding - is unknowable, but discussed in terms of the metaphysical Ding an sich or substance. This reading of the Kantian object stresses the affinity of CPR with the ontological tradition which Kant hinted at in CPR A 247/B 303. As Kant noted in MM, 'teachers of ontology' begin with concepts of 'something and nothing' but forget that this distinction is already a division of the concept of 'object in general' (p. 218, p. 46). He thus begins with object in general or Ding which is divided into something and nothing by transcendental affirmation and negation. The Ding is then further specified as an object of experience - Gegenstand - and then finally as an object for knowledge - Objekt - thus producing a critically revised version of traditional ontology.

See also: Appearance, Being, Existence, Nothing, Thing-in-Itself, Transcendental Object



重点：“Kant's various accounts of the object may, at risk of underestimating their internal differences, be organized in terms of a consistent account of the object. A specific Objekt of knowledge knowable through the concepts of the understanding requires an object of experience or Gegenstand.”