Looking into the text on Kant, I posit that a correlation can be made between a priori and thing; a posteriori and object. I support this suggestion by use of an example: a flower. In this case I will use a dandelion. A dandelion, upon first sight, can be broken down into its parts: petals, leaves, stem, etc. Or it can be broken down by its color and shapes: white, yellow, ovals, spheres. At this point, the dandelion is a thing. When we use the dandelion (as a gift, or in an arrangement, or for cooking) its value increases by perception. For example, when a child blows a dandelion’s seeds from its pistil and watches them carried away by the wind (causal). The dandelion becomes more than the sum of its parts, it becomes a moment and the object now carries more intrinsic value, making Kant’s theory apply …show more content…
I found the sections on Laozi to be the most illuminating on the subject of “thing” perhaps because his writings seem to make connections not only between object and viewer, but also to all things around the object. Laozi wrote about a balance between light and dark; yin and yang; being and not being. These ideas, which clearly connect to Heideggar’s “thing” and “no-thing”, represent the concrete and abstract aspects of life and our interactions with objects and concepts. Hegel’s absolute idealism ties in with Heidegger and Laozi theories. From the Alexander text, it states that in the ultimate reality, the absolute, is the only thing that is completely self-contained. Hegel, like Kant, had a system of categorization for his idea. Hegel balanced logic with illogic; the subjective with the objective. In particular, Hegel’s idea that there is a thesis and antithesis to objects that helps define one another, confirms what Laozi wrote: yin and yang. What stood out, even more so, was the implication that nothingness, or darkness, or the absence of some “thing” could be the origin or basis of