thing-in-itself love

thing-in-itself

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun philosophy In the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and those whom he influenced, a thing as it is independent of any conceptualization or perception by the human mind, postulated by practical reason but existing in a condition which is in principle unknowable and unexperienceable.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the intellectual conception of a thing as it is in itself, not as it is known through perception

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Translation of German Ding an sich.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Literal translation of the German term Ding an sich.

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Examples

  • 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

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