On the Antithesis.
The difficulties which meet us, in our attempt to rise through the
series of phenomena to the existence of an absolutely necessary
supreme cause, must not originate from our inability to establish
the truth of our mere conceptions of the necessary existence of a
thing. That is to say, our objections not be ontological, but must
be directed against the causal connection with a series of phenomena
of a condition which is itself unconditioned. In one word, they must
be cosmological and relate to empirical laws. We must show that the
regress in the series of causes (in the world of sense) cannot
conclude with an empirically unconditioned condition, and that the
cosmological argument from the contingency of the cosmical state— a
contingency alleged to arise from change— does not justify us in
accepting a first cause, that is, a prime originator of the cosmical
series.
The reader will observe in this antinomy a very remarkable contrast.
The very same grounds of proof which established in the thesis the
existence of a supreme
being, demonstrated in the antithesis— and with
equal strictness— the non—existence of such a being. We found,
first, that
a necessary being exists, because the whole time past
contains the series of all conditions, and with it, therefore, the
unconditioned (the necessary); secondly, that
there does not exist any
necessary being, for the same reason, that the whole time past
contains the series of all conditions— which are themselves,
therefore, in the aggregate, conditioned. The cause of this seeming
incongruity is as follows. We attend, in the first argument, solely to
the
absolute totality of the series of conditions, the one of which
determines the other in time, and thus arrive at a necessary
unconditioned. In the second, we consider, on the contrary, the
contingency of everything that is determined in the
series of time —
for every event is preceded by a time, in which the condition itself
must be determined as conditioned— and thus everything that is
unconditioned or absolutely necessary disappears. In both, the mode of
proof is quite in accordance with the common procedure of human
reason, which often falls into discord with itself, from considering
an object from two different points of view. Herr von Mairan
regarded the controversy between two celebrated astronomers, which
arose from a similar difficulty as to the choice of a proper
standpoint, as a phenomenon of sufficient importance to warrant a
separate treatise on the subject. The one concluded:
the moon revolves
on its own axis, because it constantly presents the same side to the
earth; the other declared that the moon does not revolve on its own
axis, for the same reason. Both conclusions were perfectly correct,
according to the point of view from which the motions of the moon were
considered.
