Phenomenon / Noumenon — A central distinction in Kant’s philosophy. Phenomenon is the object as it appears to the subject, structured by the forms of intuition (space and time) and the categories of the understanding. Noumenon (or “thing-in-itself”) is the object as it is in itself, independently of how it appears — something we cannot know but can only think as a limit. Kant uses this distinction to save freedom: in the noumenal realm, natural determinism does not reign.
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