The Enigma Of The Universe : 4. Kant & Jainism

As we have already seen, in Kant’s idealism, it was pointed out that the real things did exist, but whatever we perceived by our senses was a mere appearance. He called the reality as a thing-in-itself. Thus, according to Kant, the object as it appears to us is a phenomenon, an appearance, perhaps very different from the external objects which we can never know. The “thinking-itself” may be an object of thought or inference (a “noumenon”), but it cannot be experienced, for in being experienced it would be changed by its passage through sense and thought. In other words, things-in-themselves, which are the cause of our sensations, are unknowable.^[1]