Wednesday, June 17, 2009

What is a 'thing'?

Only Heidegger can make me think about what a 'thing' is. All information that we get about things is from our senses, so we only have our perceptions. However, I do not want to say that essence is perception. I have typically gone with a Kantian view that all we have is our perceptions; however, there is a 'thing' there that is causing those perceptions. Heidegger points out, however, that what we first see (or hear/feel/etc) is the 'thing-in-itself' and not our perceptions.

The real question seems to be is why (how) we group these perceptions or does the 'thing' come before our perceptions?

No comments:

Post a Comment