Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

[ mundus intelligibilis ] see also appearance , kingdom of ends , noumenon , sensibility , transcendent , transcendental , transcendental object , world In CPR Kant criticizes the use by ‘modern philosophers’ of the ‘expressions mundus sensibilis and intelligibilis ’ for leading to an ‘empty play on words’ (A 257/B 312). The usage he criticizes regards the ‘sensible world’ as the ‘sum of appearances, in so far as they are intuited’ and the ‘intelligible world’ as the relations between appearances as they are ‘thought in conformity with the laws of understanding’. As an example of this misplaced distinction he cites the ‘sensible world’ of observational astronomy and the intelligible world of theoretical astronomy according to Copernicus and Newton. He notes that this distinction illegitimately moves from sensible and intellectual ways of knowing to sensible and intellectual objects. Kant's own distinction, first developed in ID ( On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World ), is stated in terms of the subjective form and principles of the sensible world, or the ‘universal connection of all things, in so far as they are phenomena’ and the objective principle or cause of the intelligible world ‘in virtue of which there is a combining together of the things which exist in themselves’ (ID §13). He does not regard the latter in terms of invisible forces ... log in or subscribe to read full text