the.com/noumenon
the thing as it truly is, forever hidden behind the showroom glass of perception.
means In Kantian philosophy, a thing as it exists in itself, independent of how our senses or minds perceive it — knowable only as a concept, never directly experienced.
from From Greek 'nooumenon,' the passive participle of 'noein,' meaning 'to think' or 'to perceive with the mind' (itself from 'nous,' mind or intellect). So at root it means 'that which is thought' — fittingly, a thing graspable only by thinking, never by looking. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant gave it its famous philosophical career, pairing it against the 'phenomenon,' the thing as it appears.
- kant's coinage
- named by Kant to mark reality's no-trespassing zone
- unknowable
- defined precisely by being impossible to ever know
- versus phenomenon
- its rival is everything you can actually experience
- greek root
- from noein, meaning to think or perceive
- plural twist
- the proper plural is noumena, like sneaky cousins