The thing itself: a new defence of Kantianism

Abstract

In his book After Finitude, Quentin Meillassoux presents some objections against Kant’s transcendental idealism that have been especially developed in the field of so-called “speculative realism”. This article examines one of these objections. It is the objection according to which an access to things themselves is possible. For Meillassoux, the case of the “arche-fossils” is the proof that some sciences produce knowledge about things. The aim of this paper is to show that what the arche-fossil refers to corresponds, strictly speaking, to the realm of the objects of experience possible for us. In this way, according to our interpretation, the objection does not succeed in attacking the difference between the objects of knowledge and things themselves, which is the core of Kant’s transcendental idealism.