Editing Noumenon (section)

== Criticisms of Kant's noumenon ==
=== Pre-Kantian critique ===
Though the term ''noumenon'' did not come into common usage until Kant, the idea that undergirds it, that matter has an absolute existence which causes it to emanate certain phenomena, had historically been subjected to criticism. [[George Berkeley]], who pre-dated Kant, asserted that matter, independent of an observant mind, is metaphysically impossible.  Qualities associated with matter, such as shape, color, smell, texture, weight, temperature, and sound are all dependent on minds, which allow only for relative perception, not absolute perception.  The complete absence of such minds (and more importantly an [[Omnipotence|omnipotent mind]]) would render those same qualities unobservable and even unimaginable. Berkeley called this philosophy [[immaterialism]]. Essentially there could be no such thing as matter without a mind.<ref>Anon., "Caird's Philosophy of Kant", [[Saturday Review (London newspaper)|''Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art'']], vol 44, Nov 3, 1877, [https://books.google.com/books?id=t_-zm4WJVCQC&pg=PA559&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false pp. 559–560].</ref>{{rp|559–560}}

=== Schopenhauer's critique ===
[[Schopenhauer]] claimed that [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]] used the word ''noumenon'' incorrectly. He explained in his "[[Critique of the Kantian philosophy]]", which first appeared as an appendix to ''[[The World as Will and Representation]]'':
<blockquote>
The difference between abstract and intuitive cognition, which Kant entirely overlooks, was the very one that ancient philosophers indicated as φαινόμενα [''phainomena''] and νοούμενα [''nooumena'']; the opposition and incommensurability between these terms proved very productive in the philosophemes of the [[Eleatics]], in [[Plato]]'s doctrine of [[Theory of forms|Ideas]], in the dialectic of the [[Megarics]], and later in the [[scholastics]], in the conflict between [[nominalism]] and [[Philosophical realism|realism]]. This latter conflict was the late development of a seed already present in the opposed tendencies of Plato and [[Aristotle]]. But Kant, who completely and irresponsibly neglected the issue for which the terms φαινομένα and νοούμενα were already in use, then took possession of the terms as if they were stray and ownerless, and used them as designations of [[Thing-in-itself|things in themselves]] and their appearances.<ref>{{cite book |last=Schopenhauer |first=Arthur |translator-last1=Norman |translator-first1=Judith |translator-last2=Welchman |translator-first2=Alistair |translator-last3=Janaway |translator-first3=Christopher |title=The World as Will and Representation, Volume 1 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2014 |location=Cambridge |page=506 |isbn= 9780521871846}}</ref>
</blockquote>

The noumenon's original meaning of "that which is thought" is not compatible with the "[[thing-in-itself]]," the latter being Kant's term for things as they exist apart from their existence as images in the mind of an observer.{{Citation needed|date=September 2015}} In a footnote to this passage, Schopenhauer provides the following passage from the ''Outlines of Pyrrhonism'' (Bk. I, ch. 13) of [[Sextus Empiricus]] to demonstrate the original distinction between phenomenon and noumenon according to ancient philosophers: νοούμενα φαινομένοις ἀντετίθη Ἀναξαγόρας ('Anaxagoras opposed what is thought to what appears.')