CRITICAL DECISION OF THE COSMOLOGICAL CONFLICT OF REASON WITH
ITSELF[1555]
Kant’s argument is as follows. The antinomies rest upon the principle
that if the conditioned be given, the entire series of all its
conditions is likewise given. If the objects of the senses were
independently real, there would be no escape from this assumption, and
the dialectical conflict would consequently be irresolvable.
Transcendental idealism, as above stated, reveals a way out of the
dilemma. As appearances are merely representations, their antecedent
conditions do not exist _as appearances_, save in the degree in which
they are mentally constructed. Though the appearances are given, their
_empirical_ conditions are not thereby given. The most that we can say
is that a regress to the conditions, _i.e._ a continued empirical
synthesis in that direction, is _commanded_ or _required_. The
cosmological argument can thus be shown to be logically invalid. The
syllogism, which it involves, is as follows:
If the conditioned be given, the entire series of all its conditions is
likewise given.
The objects of the senses are given.
Therefore the entire series of all their conditions is likewise given.
In the major premiss the concept of the conditioned is employed
transcendently (Kant says transcendentally), in the minor empirically.
But though the inference thus commits the logical fallacy of _sophisma
figurae dictionis_, the ground of its occurrence, and the reason why it
is not at once detected, lie in a natural and inevitable illusion which
leads us to accept the sensible world in space as being independently
real. Only through Critical investigation can the deceptive power of
this illusion be overcome. Owing to its influence, the above fallacy has
been committed by dogmatists and empiricists alike. It can be shown that
in refuting each other
... “they are really quarrelling about nothing, and that a certain
transcendental illusion has caused them to see a reality where none
is to be found.”[1556]
The existence of antinomy, Kant further argues, presupposes that theses
and antitheses are contradictory opposites, _i.e._ that no third
alternative is possible. When opposed assertions are not contradictories
but contraries, the opposition, to use Kant’s terms, is not analytical
but dialectical. Both may be false; for the one does not merely
contradict the other, but makes, in addition, a further statement on its
own account. Now examination of the illusion above described enables us
to perceive that the opposites, in reference to which antinomy occurs,
are of this dialectical character. _Theses and antitheses are alike
false._ Since the world does not exist as a thing in itself, it exists
neither as an infinite whole nor as a finite whole, but only in the
degree in which it is constructed in an empirical regress. We must not
apply “_the Idea of absolute totality, which is valid only as a
condition of things in themselves_,”[1557] to appearances. (The words
which I have italicised mark the emergence of Kant’s non-sceptical,
non-empirical view of the nature and function of the Ideas of Reason.)
Thus antinomy, rightly understood, does not favour scepticism, but only
the “sceptical method,” and indeed yields an indirect proof of the
correctness of Critical teaching. This proof may be presented in the
form of a dilemma. If the world is a whole existing in itself, it is
either finite or infinite. But the former alternative is refuted by the
proofs given of the antitheses, and the latter alternative by the proofs
of the theses. Therefore the world cannot be a whole existing in itself.
From this it follows that appearances are nothing outside our
representations; and that is what is asserted in the doctrine of
transcendental idealism.
In A 499 = B 527 Kant uses ambiguous language,[1558] which can be
interpreted as asserting that in the regress there can be no lack of
given conditions. Such a statement would presuppose positive knowledge
regarding the unknown transcendental object.[1559] The opposite, more
correct, view is given in A 514-15 = B 542-3 and A 517 ff. = B 545 ff.,
though in the latter passage with a reversion to the above
position.[1560]
The earlier manuscripts, which Kant has so far been employing, probably
terminate either, as Adickes suggests,[1561] at the end of this section,
or at the close of Section VIII., which is of doubtful date. Section IX.
is certainly from a later period; it represents a more complex
standpoint, in which Reason is no longer viewed as possessing a merely
empirical function, and in which consequently the theses and antitheses
are no longer indiscriminately denounced as being alike false. Under the
influence of his later, more Idealistic preoccupations, Kant so far
modifies the above solution as to assert _that in the ease of the last
two antinomies both theses and antitheses are true, when properly
interpreted_.