Das Bedenklichste in unserer bedenklichen Zeit ist, dass wir noch nicht denken. - Martin Heidegger

Kant speaks of the "thing-in-itself" (Ding an sich) in order to distinguish it from the "thing-for-us" (Ding fur uns), that is, as a "phenomenon." A thing-in-itself is that which is not approachable through experience as are the rocks, plants, and animals. Every thing-for-us is as a thing and also a thing-in-itself, which means that it is recognized absolutely withing the absolute knowledge of God. But not every thing-in-itself is also a thing-for-us: God, for instance, is a thing-in-itself, as Kant uses the word, according to the meaning of Christian theology. p. 5

Today we decide about metaphysics and about even more elevated things at philosophy conferences. For everything that is to be done these days we must first have a meeting, and here is how it works: people come together, constantly come together, and they all wait for one another to turn up so that the others will tell them how it is, and if it doesn’t get said, never mind, everyone has had their say. It may very well be that all the talkers who are having their say have understood little of the matter in question, but still we believe that if we accumulate all that misunderstanding something like understanding will leap forth at the end of the day. Thus there are people today who travel from one meeting to the next and who are sustained by the confidence that something is really happening, that they’ve actually done something; whereas, at bottom, they’ve merely ducked out of work, seeking in chatter a place to build a nest for their helplessness—a helplessness, it is true, that they will never understand.

Kant stands in the tradition of the Leibniz-Woffian school. He made the thinking through of English philosophy, especially Hume, fruitful for the formation of his own questioning. On the whole, however, the school-philosophy of Leibniz-Wolffian stamp remained predominant in Kant. He used Metaphysica 1739, by Alexander Baumgarten (1714-1762) in his lectures in metaphysics and appreciated this textbook "especially for the richness and precision of its teaching method." p. 114