Noumenon

A mere object of thought: the concept of an object that would be not sensed but only thought — in Kant a boundary concept of cognition.

Noumenon (Greek for “that which is thought”) is the counterpart to phenomenon, the appearance: an object thought merely through the understanding. In the “Critique of Pure Reason” Kant admits the concept only in its negative sense — a thing “insofar as it is not an object of our sensible intuition”. In the positive sense it would be the object of an intellectual intuition, which we lack; we cannot know noumena. Kant does not sharply separate the concept from the thing in itself — that which appears, considered independently of our intuition: he often uses the two almost interchangeably, and their exact relation is disputed among scholars.

Precisely so the concept does real work: as a boundary concept it curbs the presumption of sensibility that everything real is exhausted by what can be experienced. It returns in the practical philosophy — the human being as “homo noumenon”, a free rational being that is more than its empirical nature.

Try it yourself

Flashcards

Review the concept with the Leitner flashcards — what you know comes back less often.

Try it →

Where it appears

Knowledge — Appearance, thing in itself — the limits of metaphysics

Source: Wikipedia: Noumenon