Kant in a nutshell...

If you can see a thing, it is seeable.

If you can measure a thing is measurable.

If you can imagine a thing, it is imaginable.

So I can imagine "racism" exists and measure it.

I can also measure the number of unicorns in my front yard which is zero. Ergo, unicorns are real in the ideal sense.

Martin Heidegger who was a party member followed this tradition in his phenomenology.

It's powerful, because you can measure what can be imagined. It's an engine for scientific exploration.

But it also means that science can fall off a cliff in a way by just making shit up like in the soft sciences. "Transexual" or "gay" can now be a thing and at can measure the effects "policy and law" has on it.