The Epistemological Function of the "Thing in Itself" in Kant's Philosophy

From the Introduction. To Kant's mind, the failure of all previous philosophy to construct a permanent system, and the frequent return of scepticism as the prevailing attitude of investigators in that field, was due to what he conceived to be a vain attempt to establish knowledge on the assumption that our ideas of the object should conform to the nature of the object itself. He will proceed, accordingly, on the opposite assumption, viz., that the subject determines the object, that instead...