Kantian humility - Rae Langton

Rae Langton offers a new interpretation and defence of Kant's doctrine of things in themselves.
Kant distinguishes things in themselves from phenomena, and in so doing he makes a metaphysical distinction between intrinsic and relational properties of substances.
Kant says that phenomena-things as we know them-consist 'entirely of relations', by which he means forces.
His claim that we have no knowledge of things in themselves is not idealism, but epistemichumility: we have no knowledge of the intrinsic properties of substances.
This humility has its roots in some plausible philosophical beliefs: an empiricist belief in the receptivity of human knowledge and a metaphysical belief in the irreducibility of relational properties.
Langton's interpretationvindicates Kant's scientific realism, and shows his primary/secondary quality distinction to be superior even to modern-day competitors. And it answers the famous charge that Kant's tale of things in themselves is one that makes itself untellable.