thing-in-itself

And it's worth it, when you're at the cash register, to throw a thing-in-itself down on the conveyor belt behind a bleached blonde with a cartful of “natural” foods.

What Do You Mean, You Don't Sell Pigs Feet? Con Chapman 2011

I got the feeling it was one of those This Is A Metaphor books, when I really wanted sort of less metaphor and more thing-in-itself -- I thought that idea was really well-done in the Secret Country books, where you got flashes of the original game obliquely and at the same time that kind of terrifying exhilarating game-as-reality feeling.

mrissa: Books read, late December mrissa 2010

McConkey, likewise, believes it "impossible to interpret any text as a thing-in-itself, a work separate from the knowledge we bring to it through previous readings or anything else we carry in memory."

Principles of Literary Criticism 2010

Now what in the world could it possibly mean to say that it is "impossible" to interpret a literary work as autonomous, a "thing-in-itself"?

Principles of Literary Criticism 2010

Maybe you are making some metaphysical distinction between the thing-in-itself and how we perceive it?

Bunny and a Book 2008

Anyway, I just couldn't resist going from the thing in the famous philosophical problem about the "thing-in-itself" vs. the "thing-for-us" to the phrase "Miss Thing," slamming those two contexts together to see what sparks fly.

Pulitzer Prize Winner Rae Armantrout, 2010's Miss Thing-In-Itself, Answers the Big Questions 2010

Anyway, I just couldn't resist going from the thing in the famous philosophical problem about the "thing-in-itself" vs. the "thing-for-us" to the phrase "Miss Thing," slamming those two contexts together to see what sparks fly.

Travis Nichols: Pulitzer Prize Winner Rae Armantrout, 2010's Miss Thing-In-Itself, Answers the Big Questions 2010

The latter makes much sense as the wholly predicateless “thing-in-itself.”

Bush Slanders Freedom « Antiwar.com Blog 2008

And education is in deep trouble, not just as a thing-in-itself, but as an indicator of our racial future.

Farai Chideya: Educational Opportunity in the Age of Obama 2009

The multifarious varieties of anti-realism are just as rationally potent — – arguably more potent — - when it comes to the mysterious thing-in-itself known as matter than it is when it comes to moral value, which we actually know more intimately than we know matter.

Carry-Over Thread 2007