/lit/ - Literature

>>21970788
>If there is an essential nature of a thing, such as a whole which persists through its parts, then that means there is an essence of the whole - a thing.
I can agree with that
>The thing in itself was Kant's posit of a noumenal, unknowable world outside of perception, which we know for Kant through the categories. This thing in itself was unknowable for Kant, but for Hegel, he gets rid of the thing in itself. If we can't know anything about it, why posit it? A fundamental question of epistemology I think direct realism about objects overlooks. You can, of course, get around this question if you are Hegel, and posit essences in thought, but Hegel's project is based on the notion of a self creating social construct which underlies all shapes of the idealist consciousness which he is proposing. I accept Hegel's notion of the rejection of the thing in itself, because it follows from the concept of the emptiness of things that there would be no thing in itself, but I do not fall back into his ontologizing of subject through shared, social identity.
Can't we just define the relation between thing and thing in itself through shared origin or form when it comes to the things natural and through shared intent when it comes to things human. I still don't get the purpose of epistemology in the first place, it seems to be endlessly self-referencing navel gazing to me. Anyway, more on that concept of emptiness of things? That >>21970580
book explains Buddhist rejection of essentialism? My problem with the whole thing is that even if our categories are completely arbitrary, assigning them seems to be product of our biology and language, something that's completely necessary to gain even most basic understanding of the universe. What if we were to define the thing in itself as material form of the universe and all things as references to it based on either shared origin, commonality or contradiction? I am not hard determinist but doesn't rejection of free will solve this problem all together? Many thoughts. Loving Sophie hard. Head empty.