Anschauungen

Anschauungen is a German noun meaning perceptions, intuitions, or views. The plural Anschauungen is used across philosophy and everyday language to refer to ways of seeing or apprehending reality, as well as to the immediate content of perception. Etymology points to anschauen, to look at or behold.

In philosophy, Anschauung denotes intuition or immediate perceptual content. In Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy, the term is central: he distinguishes Anschauung (intuition) from Begriff (concept). Kant argues that all sensory data are received through the pure, a priori forms of sensibility—space and time—which structure experience. These pure Anschauungen are not derived from experience but make it possible, providing the framework within which objects are given to thought. An object given in Anschauung can subsequently be analyzed with concepts.

Historically, the term was important to German Idealists and phenomenologists, who used it to discuss modes of perception and interpretation. More broadly, Anschauung can denote a worldview or stance—an individual’s or tradition’s characteristic way of looking at the world. In this sense, it encompasses both perceptual givenness and interpretive outlooks.

In contemporary usage, Anschauungen often appears in discussions of perception, epistemology, and aesthetics to refer to immediate, non-discursive givenness, habitual beliefs about how things appear, or the experiential content underlying knowledge claims.