CHAP. II. — The Antinomy of Pure Reason. Critique of Pure Reason | ||
FOURTH CONFLICT OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS.
Thesis.
There exists either in, or in connection with the world— either as a part of it, or as the cause of it—an absolutely necessary being.
PROOF.
The world of sense, as the sum total of all phenomena, contains a series of changes. For, without such a series, the mental representation of the series of time itself, as the condition of the possibility of the sensuous world, could not be presented to us.* But every change stands under its condition, which precedes it in time and renders it necessary. Now the existence of a given condition presupposes a complete series of conditions up to the absolutely unconditioned, which alone is absolutely necessary. It follows that something that is absolutely necessary must exist, if change exists as its consequence. But this necessary
Objectively, time, as the formal condition of the possibility of change, precedes all changes; but subjectively, and in consciousness, the representation of time, like every other, is given solely by occasion of perception.
Antithesis.
An absolutely necessary being does not exist, either in the world, or out of it— as its cause.
PROOF.
Grant that either the world itself is necessary, or that there is contained in it a necessary existence. Two cases are possible. First, there must either be in the series of cosmical changes a beginning, which is unconditionally necessary, and therefore uncaused— which is at variance with the dynamical law of the determination of all phenomena in time; or, secondly, the series itself is without beginning, and, although contingent and conditioned in all its parts, is nevertheless absolutely necessary and unconditioned as a whole— which is self—contradictory. For the existence of an aggregate cannot be necessary, if no single part of it possesses necessary existence.
Grant, on the other band, that an absolutely necessary cause exists out of and apart from the world. This cause, as the highest member in the series of the causes of cosmical changes, must originate or begin*
The word begin is taken in two senses. The first is active— the cause being regarded as beginning a series of conditions as its effect (infit).* The second is passive— the causality in the cause itself beginning to operate (fit). I reason here from the first to the second.
CHAP. II. — The Antinomy of Pure Reason. Critique of Pure Reason | ||