(Antinomies)
P 384 THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC BOOK II CHAPTER II THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON WE have shown in the introduction to this part of our work that all transcendental illusion of pure reason rests on dia- lectical inferences whose schema is supplied by logic in the three formal species of syllogisms -- just as the categories find their logical schema in the four functions of all judgments. The first type of these pseudo-rational inferences deals with the unconditioned unity of the subjective conditions of all repre- sentations in general (of the subject or soul), in correspondence with the categorical syllogisms, the major premiss of which is a principle asserting the relation of a predicate to a subject. The second type of dialectical argument follows the analogy of the hypothetical syllogisms. It has as its content the un- conditioned unity of the objective conditions in the [field of] appearance. In similar fashion, the third type, which will be dealt with in the next chapter, has as its theme the un- conditioned unity of the objective conditions of the possibility of objects in general. But there is one point that calls for special notice. Transcendental paralogism produced a purely one-sided illusion in regard to the idea of the subject of our thought. No illusion which will even in the slightest degree support the opposing assertion is caused by the concepts of reason. Con- sequently, although transcendental paralogism, in spite of a favouring illusion, cannot disclaim the radical defect through which in the fiery ordeal of critical investigation it dwindles P 385 into mere semblance, such advantage as it offers is altogether on the side of pneumatism. A completely different situation arises when reason is ap- plied to the objective synthesis of appearances. For in this domain, however it may endeavour to establish its principle of unconditioned unity, and though it indeed does so with great though illusory appearance of success, it soon falls into such contradictions that it is constrained, in this cosmological field, to desist from any such pretensions. We have here presented to us a new phenomenon of human reason -- an entirely natural antithetic, in which there is no need of making subtle enquiries or of laying snares for the unwary, but into which reason of itself quite unavoidably falls. It certainly guards reason from the slumber of fictitious con- viction such as is generated by a purely one-sided illusion, but at the same time subjects it to the temptation either of aban- doning itself to a sceptical despair, or of assuming an ob- stinate attitude, dogmatically committing itself to certain assertions, and refusing to grant a fair hearing to the argu- ments for the counter-position. Either attitude is the death of sound philosophy, although the former might perhaps be entitled the euthanasia of pure reason. Before considering the various forms of opposition and dissension to which this conflict or antinomy of the laws of pure reason gives rise, we may offer a few remarks in explana- tion and justification of the method which we propose to employ in the treatment of this subject. I entitle all tran- scendental ideas, in so far as they refer to absolute totality in the synthesis of appearances, cosmical concepts, partly be- cause this unconditioned totality also underlies the concept -- itself only an idea -- of the world-whole; partly because they concern only the synthesis of appearances, therefore only empirical synthesis When, on the contrary, the abso- lute totality is that of the synthesis of the conditions of all possible things in general, it gives rise to an ideal of pure reason which, though it may indeed stand in a certain relation to the cosmical concept, is quite distinct from it. Accordingly, just as the paralogisms of pure reason formed the basis of a dialectical psychology, so the antinomy of pure reason will exhibit to us the transcendental principles P 386 of a pretended pure rational cosmology. But it will not do so in order to show this science to be valid and to adopt it. As the title, conflict of reason, suffices to show, this pretended science can be exhibited only in its bedazzling but false illusoriness, as an idea which can never be reconciled with appearances. THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON Section I SYSTEM OF COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS In proceeding to enumerate these ideas with systematic precision according to a principle, we must bear in mind two points. In the first place we must recognise that pure and transcendental concepts can issue only from the understand- ing. Reason does not really generate any concept. The most it can do is to free a concept of understanding from the unavoidable limitations of possible experience, and so to en- deavour to extend it beyond the limits of the empirical, though still, indeed, in terms of its relation to the empirical. This is achieved in the following manner. For a given conditioned, reason demands on the side of the conditions -- to which as the conditions of synthetic unity the understanding subjects all appearances -- absolute totality, and in so doing converts the category into a transcendental idea. For only by carrying the empirical synthesis as far as the unconditioned is it en- abled to render it absolutely complete; and the unconditioned is never to be met with in experience, but only in the idea. Reason makes this demand in accordance with the principle that if the conditioned is given, the entire sum of conditions, and consequently the absolutely unconditioned (through which alone the conditioned has been possible) is also given. The transcendental ideas are thus, in the first place, simply cate- gories extended to the unconditioned, and can be reduced to a table arranged according to the [fourfold] headings of the latter. In the second place, not all categories are fitted for such employment, but only those in which the synthesis constitutes a series of conditions subordinated to, not co-ordinated with, P 387 one another, and generative of a [given] conditioned. Ab- solute totality is demanded by reason only in so far as the ascending series of conditions relates to a given conditioned. It is not demanded in regard to the descending line of con- sequences, nor in reference to the aggregate of co-ordinated conditions of these consequences. For in the case of the given conditioned, conditions are presupposed, and are considered as given together with it. On the other hand, since conse- quences do not make their conditions possible, but rather presuppose them, we are not called upon, when we advance to consequences or descend from a given condition to the con- ditioned, to consider whether the series does or does not cease; the question as to the totality of the series is not in any way a presupposition of reason. Thus we necessarily think time as having completely elapsed up to the given moment, and as being itself given in this completed form. This holds true, even though such com- pletely elapsed time is not determinable by us. But since the future is not the condition of our attaining to the present, it is a matter of entire indifference, in our comprehension of the latter, how we may think of future time, whether as coming to an end or as flowing on to infinity. We have, as it were, the series m, n, o, in which n is given as conditioned by m, and at the same time as being the condition of o. The series ascends from the conditioned n to m (l, k, i, etc. ), and also descends from the condition n to the conditioned o (p, q, r, etc. ). Now I must presuppose the first series in order to be able to view n as given. According to reason, with its demand for totality of conditions, n is possible only by means of that series. Its possibility does not, however, rest upon the subsequent series, o, p, q, r. This latter series may not therefore be regarded as given, but only as allowing of being given (dabilis). I propose to name the synthesis of a series which begins, on the side of the conditions, from the condition which stands near- est to the given appearance and so passes to the more remote conditions, the regressive synthesis; and that which advances, on the side of the conditioned, from the first consequence to the more distant, the progressive. The first proceeds in ante- cedentia, the second in consequentia. The cosmological ideas deal, therefore, with the totality of the regressive synthesis P 388 proceeding in antecedentia, not in consequentia. The problem of pure reason suggested by the progressive form of totality is gratuitous and unnecessary, since the raising of it is not required for the complete comprehension of what is given in appearance. For that we require to consider only the grounds, not the consequences. In arranging the table of ideas in accordance with the table of categories, we first take the two original quanta of all our intuition, time and space. Time is in itself a series, and indeed the formal condition of all series. In it, in regard to a given present, the antecedents can be a priori distinguished as conditions (the past) from the consequents (the future). The transcendental idea of the absolute totality of the series of con- ditions of any given conditioned therefore refers only to all past time; and in conformity with the idea of reason past time, as condition of the given moment, is necessarily thought as being given in its entirety. Now in space, taken in and by itself, there is no distinction between progress and regress. For as its parts are co-existent, it is an aggregate, not a series. The present moment can be regarded only as conditioned by past time, never as conditioning it, because this moment comes into exist- ence only through past time, or rather through the passing of the preceding time. But as the parts of space are co-ordinated with, not subordinated to, one another, one part is not the con- dition of the possibility of another; and unlike time, space does not in itself constitute a series. Nevertheless the synthesis of the manifold parts of space, by means of which we apprehend space, is successive, taking place in time and containing a series. And since in this series of the aggregated spaces (as for instance of the feet in a rood) of the given space, those which are thought in extension of the given space are always the con- dition of the limits of the given space, the measuring of a space is also to be regarded as a synthesis of a series of the conditions of a given conditioned, only with this difference that the side of the conditions is not in itself distinct from that of the condi- tioned, and that in space regressus and progressus would there- fore seem to be one and the same. Inasmuch as one part of space is not given through the others but only limited by them, we must consider each space, in so far as it is limited, as being also conditioned, in that it presupposes another space as the P 389 condition of its limits, and so on. In respect of limitation the advance in space is thus also a regress, and the transcendental idea of the absolute totality of the synthesis in the series of con- ditions likewise applies to space. I can as legitimately enquire regarding the absolute totality of appearance in space as of that in past time. Whether an answer to this question is ever possible, is a point which will be decided later. Secondly, reality in space, i.e. matter, is a conditioned. Its internal conditions are its parts, and the parts of these parts its remote conditions. There thus occurs a regressive synthesis, the absolute totality of which is demanded by reason. This can be obtained only by a completed division in virtue of which the reality of matter vanishes either into nothing or into what is no longer matter -- namely, the simple. Here also, then, we have a series of conditions, and an advance to the unconditioned. Thirdly, as regards the categories of real relation between appearances, that of substance with its accidents is not adapted to being a transcendental idea. That is to say, in it reason finds no ground for proceeding regressively to conditions. Acci- dents, in so far as they inhere in one and the same substance, are co-ordinated with each other, and do not constitute a series. Even in their relation to substance they are not really subordi- nated to it, but are the mode of existence of the substance itself. What in this category may still, however, seem to be an idea of transcendental reason, is the concept of the substantial. But since this means no more than the concept of object in general, which subsists in so far as we think in it merely the transcendental subject apart from all predicates, whereas we are here dealing with the unconditioned only as it may exist in the series of appearances, it is evident that the sub- stantial cannot be a member of that series. This is also true of substances in community. They are mere aggregates, and contain nothing on which to base a series. For we cannot say of them, as we can of spaces, whose limits are never deter- mined in and by themselves but only through some other space, that they are subordinated to each other as conditions of the possibility of one another. There thus remains only the cate- gory of causality. It presents a series of causes of a given P 390 effect such that we can proceed to ascend from the latter as the conditioned to the former as conditions, and so to answer the question of reason. Fourthly, the concepts of the possible, the actual, and the necessary do not lead to any series, save in so far as the acci- dental in existence must always be regarded as conditioned, and as pointing in conformity with the rule of the understand- ing to a condition under which it is necessary, and this latter in turn to a higher condition, until reason finally attains uncondi- tioned necessity in the totality of the series. When we thus select out those categories which necessarily lead to a series in the synthesis of the manifold, we find that there are but four cosmological ideas, corresponding to the four titles of the categories: 1. Absolute completeness of the Composition of the given whole of all appearances. 2. Absolute completeness in the Division of a given whole in the [field of] appearance. 3. Absolute completeness in the Origination of an appearance. 4. Absolute completeness as regards Dependence of Existence of the changeable in the [field of] appearance. There are several points which here call for notice. In the first place, the idea of absolute totality concerns only the ex- position of appearances, and does not therefore refer to the pure concept, such as the understanding may form, of a total- ity of things in general. Appearances are here regarded as given; what reason demands is the absolute completeness of the conditions of their possibility, in so far as these conditions con- stitute a series. What reason prescribes is therefore an abso- lutely (that is to say, in every respect) complete synthesis, whereby the appearance may be exhibited in accordance with the laws of understanding. P 391 Secondly, what reason is really seeking in this serial, re- gressively continued, synthesis of conditions, is solely the un- conditioned. What it aims at is, as it were, such a completeness in the series of premisses as will dispense with the need of pre- supposing other premisses. This unconditioned is always con- tained in the absolute totality of the series as represented in imagination. But this absolutely complete synthesis is again only an idea; for we cannot know, at least at the start of this enquiry, whether such a synthesis is possible in the case of ap- pearance. If we represent everything exclusively through pure concepts of understanding, and apart from conditions of sen- sible intuition, we can indeed at once assert that for a given con- ditioned, the whole series of conditions subordinated to each other is likewise given. The former is given only through the latter. When, however, it is with appearances that we are deal- ing, we find a special limitation due to the manner in which conditions are given, namely, through the successive synthesis of the manifold of intuition -- a synthesis which has to be made complete through the regress. Whether this complete- ness is sensibly possible is a further problem; the idea of it lies in reason, independently alike of the possibility or of the impossibility of our connecting with it any adequate empirical concepts. Since, then, the unconditioned is necessarily con- tained in the absolute totality of the regressive synthesis of the manifold in the [field of] appearance -- the synthesis being executed in accordance with those categories which represent appearance as a series of conditions to a given conditioned -- reason here adopts the method of starting from the idea of totality, though what it really has in view is the unconditioned, whether of the entire series or of a part of it. Meantime, also, it leaves undecided whether and how this totality is attain- able. This unconditioned may be conceived in either of two ways. It may be viewed as consisting of the entire series in which all the members without exception are conditioned and only the totality of them is absolutely unconditioned. This regress is to be entitled infinite. Or alternatively, the absolutely unconditioned is only a part of the series -- a part to which the other members are subordinated, and which does not itself stand P 392 under any other condition. On the first view, the series a parte - priori is without limits or beginning, i.e. is infinite, and at the same time is given in its entirety. But the regress in it is never completed, and can only be called potentially infinite. On the second view, there is a first member of the series which in respect of past time is entitled, the beginning of the world, in respect of space, the limit of the world, in respect of the parts of a given limited whole, the simple, in respect of causes, absolute self-activity (freedom), in respect of the existence of alterable things, absolute natural necessity. We have two expressions, world and nature, which some- times coincide. The former signifies the mathematical sum- total of all appearances and the totality of their synthesis, alike in the great and in the small, that is, in the advance alike through composition and through division. This same world is entitled nature when it is viewed as a dynamical whole. We are not then concerned with the aggregation in space and time, with a view to determining it as a magnitude, but with the unity in the existence of appearances. In this case the condition of that which happens is entitled the cause. Its unconditioned caus- ality in the [field of] appearance is called freedom, and its conditioned causality is called natural cause in the narrower [adjectival] sense. The conditioned in existence in general is termed contingent and the unconditioned necessary. ++ The absolute totality of the series of conditions to a given con- ditioned is always unconditioned, since outside it there are no further conditions in respect of which it could be conditioned. But this absolute totality of such a series is only an idea, or rather a problem- atic concept, the possibility of which has to be investigated, especi- ally in regard to the manner in which the unconditioned (the tran- scendental idea really at issue) is involved therein. ++ Nature, taken adjectivally (formaliter), signifies the connec- tion of the determinations of a thing according to an inner principle of causality. By nature, on the other hand, taken substantivally (materialiter), is meant the sum of appearances in so far as they stand, in virtue of an inner principle of causality, in thorough- going interconnection. In the first sense we speak of the nature of fluid matter, of fire, etc. The word is then employed in an adjectival manner. When, on the other hand, we speak of the things of nature, we have in mind a self-subsisting whole. P 393 The unconditioned necessity of appearances may be entitled natural necessity. The ideas with which we are now dealing I have above entitled cosmological ideas, partly because by the term 'world' we mean the sum of all appearances, and it is exclusively to the unconditioned in the appearances that our ideas are directed, partly also because the term 'world', in the tran- scendental sense, signifies the absolute totality of all existing things, and we direct our attention solely to the completeness of the synthesis, even though that is only attainable in the regress to its conditions. Thus despite the objection that these ideas are one and all transcendent, and that although they do not in kind surpass the object, namely, appearances, but are concerned exclusively with the world of sense, not with nou- mena, they yet carry the synthesis to a degree which tran- scends all possible experience, I none the less still hold that they may quite appropriately be entitled cosmical concepts. In respect of the distinction between the mathematically and the dynamically unconditioned at which the regress aims, I might, however, call the first two concepts cosmical in the narrower sense, as referring to the world of the great and the small, and the other two transcendent concepts of nature. This distinction has no special immediate value; its significance will appear later. THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON Section 2 ANTITHETIC OF PURE REASON If thetic be the name for any body of dogmatic doctrines, antithetic may be taken as meaning, not dogmatic assertions of the opposite, but the conflict of the doctrines of seemingly dog- matic knowledge (thesis cum antithesi) in which no one asser- tion can establish superiority over another. The antithetic does not, therefore, deal with one-sided assertions. It treats only the conflict of the doctrines of reason with one another and the causes of this conflict. The transcendental antithetic is an en- quiry into the antinomy of pure reason, its causes and out- P 394 come. If in employing the principles of understanding we do not merely apply our reason to objects of experience, but venture to extend these principles beyond the limits of experi- ence, there arise pseudo-rational doctrines which can neither hope for confirmation in experience nor fear refutation by it. Each of them is not only in itself free from contradiction, but finds conditions of its necessity in the very nature of reason -- only that, unfortunately, the assertion of the opposite has, on its side, grounds that are just as valid and necessary. The questions which naturally arise in connection with such a dialectic of pure reason are the following: (1) In what propositions is pure reason unavoidably subject to an anti- nomy? (2) On what causes does this antinomy depend? (3) Whether and in what way, despite this contradiction, does there still remain open to reason a path to certainty? A dialectical doctrine of pure reason must therefore be distinguished from all sophistical propositions in two respects. It must not refer to an arbitrary question such as may be raised for some special purpose, but to one which human reason must necessarily encounter in its progress. And secondly, both it and its opposite must involve no mere artificial illusion such as at once vanishes upon detection, but a natural and un- avoidable illusion, which even after it has ceased to beguile still continues to delude though not to deceive us, and which though thus capable of being rendered harmless can never be eradicated. Such dialectical doctrine relates not to the unity of under- standing in empirical concepts, but to the unity of reason in mere ideas. Since this unity of reason involves a synthesis ac- cording to rules, it must conform to the understanding; and yet as demanding absolute unity of synthesis it must at the same time harmonise with reason. But the conditions of this unity are such that when it is adequate to reason it is too great for the understanding; and when suited to the understanding, too small for reason. There thus arises a conflict which cannot be avoided, do what we will. These pseudo-rational assertions thus disclose a dialectical battlefield in which the side permitted to open the attack is invariably victorious, and the side constrained to act on the defensive is always defeated. Accordingly, vigorous fighters, no P 395 matter whether they support a good or a bad cause, if only they contrive to secure the right to make the last attack, and are not required to withstand a new onslaught from their oppo- nents, may always count upon carrying off the laurels. We can easily understand that while this arena should time and again be contested, and that numerous triumphs should be gained by both sides, the last decisive victory always leaves the champion of the good cause master of the field, simply be- cause his rival is forbidden to resume the combat. As im- partial umpires, we must leave aside the question whether it is for the good or the bad cause that the contestants are fighting. They must be left to decide the issue for themselves. After they have rather exhausted than injured one another, they will perhaps themselves perceive the futility of their quarrel, and part good friends. This method of watching, or rather provoking, a conflict of assertions, not for the purpose of deciding in favour of one or other side, but of investigating whether the object of con- troversy is not perhaps a deceptive appearance which each vainly strives to grasp, and in regard to which, even if there were no opposition to be overcome, neither can arrive at any result, -- this procedure, I say, may be entitled the sceptical method. It is altogether different from scepticism -- a principle of technical and scientific ignorance, which undermines the foundations of all knowledge, and strives in all possible ways to destroy its reliability and steadfastness. For the sceptical method aims at certainty. It seeks to discover the point of misunderstanding in the case of disputes which are sincerely and competently conducted by both sides, just as from the embarrassment of judges in cases of litigation wise legislators contrive to obtain instruction regarding the defects and am- biguities of their laws. The antinomy which discloses itself in the application of laws is for our limited wisdom the best criterion of the legislation that has given rise to them. Reason, which does not in abstract speculation easily become aware of its errors, is hereby awakened to consciousness of the factors [that have to be reckoned with] in the determination of its principles P 396 But it is only for transcendental philosophy that this scep- tical method is essential. Though in all other fields of enquiry it can, perhaps, be dispensed with, it is not so in this field. In mathematics its employment would, indeed, be absurd; for in mathematics no false assertions can be concealed and ren- dered invisible, inasmuch as the proofs must always proceed under the guidance of pure intuition and by means of a syn- thesis that is always evident. In experimental philosophy the delay caused by doubt may indeed be useful; no misunder- standing is, however, possible which cannot easily be re- moved; and the final means of deciding the dispute, whether found early or late, must in the end be supplied by experience. Moral philosophy can also present its principles, together with their practical consequences, one and all in concreto, in what are at least possible experiences; and the misunder- standing due to abstraction is thereby avoided. But it is quite otherwise with transcendental assertions which lay claim to insight into what is beyond the field of all possible experiences. Their abstract synthesis can never be given in any a priori intuition, and they are so constituted that what is erroneous in them can never be detected by means of any experience. Transcendental reason consequently admits of no other test than the endeavour to harmonise its various assertions. But for the successful application of this test the conflict into which they fall with one another must first be left to develop free and untrammelled. This we shall now set about arranging. THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON FIRST CONFLICT OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS Thesis The world has a beginning in time, and is also limited as regards space. ++ The antinomies follow one another in the order of the tran- scendental ideas above enumerated. P 396a Antithesis The world has no begin- ning, and no limits in space; it is infinite as regards both time and space. P 397 Proof If we assume that the world has no beginning in time, then up to every given mo- ment an eternity has elapsed, and there has passed away in the world an infinite series of successive states of things. Now the infinity of a series consists in the fact that it can never be completed through successive synthesis. It thus follows that it is impossible for an infinite world-series to have passed away, and that a be- ginning of the world is there- fore a necessary condition of the world's existence. This was the first point that called for proof. As regards the second point, let us again assume the oppo- site, namely, that the world is an infinite given whole of co- existing things. Now the mag- nitude of a quantum which is not given in intuition as within certain limits, can be thought only through the synthesis of its parts, and the totality of such a quantum only through a synthesis that is brought to completion through repeated addition of unit to unit. ++ An indeterminate quantum can be intuited as a whole when it is such that though enclosed within limits we do not require to con- struct its totality through measurement, that is, through the success- ive synthesis of its parts. For the limits, in cutting off anything further, themselves determine its completeness. P 397a Proof For let us assume that it has a beginning. Since the beginning is an existence which is preceded by a time in which the thing is not, there must have been a preceding time in which the world was not, i.e. an empty time. Now no coming to be of a thing is possible in an empty time, because no part of such a time possesses, as compared with any other, a distinguishing condition of existence rather than of non- existence; and this applies whether the thing is sup- posed to arise of itself or through some other cause. In the world many series of things can, indeed, begin; but the world itself cannot have a beginning, and is therefore infinite in respect of past time. As regards the second point, let us start by assum- ing the opposite, namely, that the world in space is finite and limited, and consequently exists in an empty space which is unlimited. P 398 In order, there- fore, to think, as a whole, the world which fills all spaces, the successive synthesis of the parts of an infinite world must be viewed as completed, that is, an infinite time must be viewed as having elapsed in the enumeration of all co- existing things. This, how- ever, is impossible. An in- finite aggregate of actual things cannot therefore be viewed as a given whole, nor consequently as simultane- ously given. The world is, therefore, as regards exten- sion in space, not infinite, but is enclosed within limits. This was the second point in dispute. ++ The concept of totality is in this case simply the representa- tion of the completed synthesis of its parts; for, since we cannot obtain the concept from the intuition of the whole -- that being in this case impossible -- we can apprehend it only through the syn- thesis of the parts viewed as carried, at least in idea, to the comple- tion of the infinite. P 397a Things will therefore not only be P 398a related in space but also related to space. Now since the world is an absolute whole beyond which there is no object of intuition, and there- fore no correlate with which the world stands in relation, the relation of the world to empty space would be a relation of it to no object. But such a relation, and con- sequently the limitation of the world by empty space, is nothing. The world cannot, therefore, be limited in space; that is, it is infinite in respect of extension. ++ Space is merely the form of outer intuition (formal intuition). It is not a real object which can be outwardly intuited. Space, as prior to all things which determine (occupy or limit) it, or rather which give an empirical intuition in accordance with its form, is, under the name of absolute space, nothing but the mere possibility of outer appearances in so far as they either exist in themselves or can be added to given appearances. Empirical intuition is not, there- fore, a composite of appearances and space (of perception and empty intuition). The one is not the correlate of the other in a synthesis; they are connected in one and the same empirical intuition as matter and form of the intuition. If we attempt to set one of these two factors outside the other, space outside all appearances, there arise all sorts of empty determinations of outer intuition, which yet are not possible perceptions. For example, a determination of the relation of the motion (or rest) of the world to infinite empty space P 398n is a determination which can never be perceived, and is therefore the predicate of a mere thought-entity. P 399 OBSERVATION ON THE FIRST ANTINOMY I. On the Thesis In stating these conflicting arguments I have not sought to elaborate sophisms. That is to say, I have not resorted to the method of the special pleader who attempts to take advantage of an opponent's carelessness -- freely allowing the appeal to a misunderstood law, in order that he may be in a position to establish his own unrighteous claims by the refutation of that law. Each of the above proofs arises naturally out of the matter in dispute, and no ad- vantage has been taken of the openings afforded by er- roneous conclusions arrived at by dogmatists in either party. I might have made a pretence of establishing the thesis in the usual manner of the dogmatists, by starting from a defective concept of the infinitude of a given mag- nitude. I might have argued that a magnitude is infinite if a greater than itself, as determined by the multipli- city of given units which it contains, is not possible. P 399a II. On the Antithesis The proof of the infinitude of the given world-series and of the world-whole, rests upon the fact that, on the contrary assumption, an empty time and an empty space, must constitute the limit of the world. I am aware that attempts have been made to evade this conclusion by argu- ing that a limit of the world in time and space is quite possible without our having to make the impossible as- sumption of an absolute time prior to the beginning of the world, or of an absolute space extending beyond the real world. With the latter part of this doctrine, as held by the philosophers of the Leibnizian school, I am en- tirely satisfied. Space is merely the form of outer intuition; it is not a real object which can be outwardly intuited; it is not a correlate of the ap- pearances, but the form of the appearances themselves. And since space is thus no object but only the form of possible objects, it cannot be P 400a regarded as something abso- lute in itself that determines the existence of things. P 400 Now no multiplicity is the great- est, since one or more units can always be added to it. Consequently an infinite given magnitude, and therefore an infinite world (infinite as re- gards the elapsed series or as regards extension) is impos- sible; it must be limited in both respects. Such is the line that my proof might have followed. But the above con- cept is not adequate to what we mean by an infinite whole. It does not represent how great it is, and consequently is not the concept of a maxi- mum. Through it we think only its relation to any assign- able unit in respect to which it is greater than all num- ber. According as the unit chosen is greater or smaller, the infinite would be greater or smaller. Infinitude, how- ever, as it consists solely in the relation to the given unit, would always remain the same. The absolute mag- nitude of the whole would not, therefore, be known in this way; P 400a Things, as appearances, determine space, that is, of all its pos- sible predicates of magnitude and relation they determine this or that particular one to belong to the real. Space, on the other hand, viewed as a self-subsistent something, is nothing real in itself; and can- not, therefore, determine the magnitude or shape of real things. Space, it further fol- lows, whether full or empty, may be limited by appear- ances, but appearances can- not be limited by an empty space outside them. This is likewise true of time. But while all this may be granted, it yet cannot be denied that these two non-entities, empty space outside the world and empty time prior to it, have to be assumed if we are to assume a limit to the world in space and in time. ++ It will be evident that what we here desire to say is that empty space, so far as it is limited by appearances, that is, empty space within the world, is at least not contradictory of transcendental principles and may therefore, so far as they are concerned, be admitted. This does not, however, amount to an assertion of its possibility. P 401 indeed, the above concept does not really deal with it. The true transcendental concept of infinitude is this, that the successive synthesis of units required for the enu- meration of a quantum can never be completed. Hence it follows with complete cer- tainty that an eternity of actual successive states lead- ing up to a given (the pre- sent) moment cannot have elapsed, and that the world must therefore have a begin- ning. In the second part of the thesis the difficulty involved in a series that is infinite and yet has elapsed does not arise, since the manifold of a world which is infinite in respect of extension is given as co-exist- ing. But if we are to think the totality of such a multiplicity, and yet cannot appeal to limits that of themselves con- stitute it a totality in intuition, we have to account for a con- cept which in this case cannot proceed from the whole to the determinate multiplicity of the parts, but which must demonstrate the possibility of a whole by means of the successive synthesis of the parts. ++ This quantum therefore contains a quantity (of given units) which is greater than any number -- which is the mathematical con- cept of the infinite. P 400a The method of argument which professes to enable us to avoid the above conse- quence (that of having to P 401a assume that if the world has limits in time and space, the infinite void must determine the magnitude in which actual things are to exist) consists in surreptitiously substituting for the sensible world some intelligible world of which we know nothing; for the first beginning (an exist- ence preceded by a time of non-existence) an existence in general which presupposes no other condition whatso- ever; and for the limits of extension boundaries of the world-whole -- thus getting rid of time and space. But we are here treating only of the mudus phaenomenon and its magnitude, and cannot therefore abstract from the aforesaid conditions of sensi- bility without destroying the very being of that world. If the sensible world is limited, it must necessarily lie in the infinite void. If that void, and consequently space in general as a priori condition of the possibility of appearances, be set aside, the entire sensible world vanishes. This world is all that is given us in our problem. P 402 Now since this synthesis must constitute a never to be completed series, I can- not think a totality either prior to the synthesis or by means of the synthesis. For the concept of totality is in this case itself the representa- tion of a completed synthesis of the parts. And since this completion is impossible, so likewise is the concept of it. THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON SECOND CONFLICT OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS Thesis Every composite substance in the world is made up of simple parts, and nothing any- where exists save the simple or what is composed of the simple. Proof Let us assume that com- posite substances are not made up of simple parts. If all composition be then re- moved in thought, no com- posite part, and (since we admit no simple parts) also no simple part, that is to say, nothing at all, will remain, and accordingly no substance will be given. Either, there- fore, it is impossible to remove in thought all composition, or after its removal there must remain something which P 403 exists without composition, that is, the simple. P 401a The mundus intelligibilis is nothing but the general concept of a P 402a world in general, in which abstraction is made from all conditions of its intuition, and in reference to which, therefore, no synthetic pro- position, either affirmative or negative, can possibly be asserted. Antithesis No composite thing in the world is made up of simple parts, and there nowhere exists in the world anything simple. Proof Assume that a composite thing (as substance) is made up of simple parts. Since all external relation, and there- fore all composition of sub- stances, is possible only in space, a space must be made up of as many parts as are contained in the composite which occupies it. Space, however, is not made up of simple parts, but of spaces. Every part of the composite must therefore occupy a space. But the absolutely first parts P 403a of every composite are simple. P 403 In the for- mer case the composite would not be made up of substances; composition, as applied to substances, is only an acci- dental relation in independ- ence of which they must still persist as self-subsistent beings. Since this contradicts our supposition, there remains only the original supposition, that a composite of sub- stances in the world is made up of simple parts. If follows, as an immediate consequence, that the things in the world are all, without exception, simple beings; that composition is merely an external state of these beings; and that although we can never so isolate these ele- mentary substances as to take them out of this state of composition, reason must think them as the primary subjects of all composition, and therefore, as simple be- ings, prior to all composition. P 403a The simple therefore occupies a space. Now since every- thing real, which occupies a space, contains in itself a manifold of constituents ex- ternal to one another, and is therefore composite; and since a real composite is not made up of accidents (for accidents could not exist outside one another, in the absence of substance) but of substances, it follows that the simple would be a composite of substances -- which is self- contradictory. The second proposition of the antithesis, that nowhere in the world does there exist anything simple, is intended to mean only this, that the existence of the absolutely simple cannot be established by any experience or percep- tion, either outer or inner; and that the absolutely simple is therefore a mere idea, the objective reality of which can never be shown in any pos- sible experience, and which, as being without an object, has no application in the explanation of the appear- ances. For if we assumed that in experience an object might be found for this tran- scendental idea, the empiri- cal intuition of such an object P 404a would have to be known as one that contains no manifold [factors] external to one an- other and combined into unity. But since from the non-consciousness of such a manifold we cannot conclude to its complete impossibility in every kind of intuition of an object; and since without such proof absolute simplicity can never be established, it follows that such simplicity cannot be inferred from any perception whatsoever. An absolutely simple object can never be given in any pos- sible experience. And since by the world of sense we must mean the sum of all possible experiences, it follows that nothing simple is to be found anywhere in it. This second proposition of the antithesis has a much wider application than the first. Whereas the first pro- position banishes the simple only from the intuition of the composite, the second ex- cludes it from the whole of nature. Accordingly it has not been possible to prove this second proposition by reference to the concept of a given object of outer in- tuition (of the composite), but only by reference to its rela- tion to a possible experience in general. P 405 OBSERVATION ON THE SECOND ANALOGY I. On the Thesis When I speak of a whole as necessarily made up of simple parts I am referring only to a substantial whole that is composite in the strict sense of the term 'composite', that is, to that accidental unity of the manifold which, given as separate (at least in thought), is brought into a mutual connection, and there- by constitutes a unity. Space should properly be called not compositum but totum, since its parts are possible only in the whole, not the whole through the parts. It might, indeed, be called a composi- tum ideale, but not reale. This, however, is a mere subtlety. Since space is not a composite made up of substances (nor even of real accidents), if I remove all compositeness from it, nothing remains, not even the point. For a point is possible only as the limit of a space, and so of a composite. Space and time do not, therefore, consist of simple parts. What belongs only to the state of a substance, even though it has a magnitude, e.g. alteration, does not consist of the simple; P 405a II. On the Antithesis Against the doctrine of the infinite divisibility of matter, the proof of which is purely mathematical, objections have been raised by the monadists. These objections, however, at once lay the monadists open to suspicion. For however evi- dent mathematical proofs may be, they decline to recog- nise that the proofs are based upon insight into the constitu- tion of space, in so far as space is in actual fact the formal condition of the possibility of all matter. They regard them merely as inferences from ab- stract but arbitrary concepts, and so as not being applicable to real things. How can it be possible to invent a different kind of intuition from that given in the original intuition of space, and how can the a - priori determinations of space fail to be directly applicable to what is only possible in so far as it fills this space! Were we to give heed to them, then beside the mathematical point, which, while simple, is not a part but only the limit of a space, we should have to conceive physical points as being likewise P 406a simple, P 406 that is to say, a certain degree of alteration does not come about through the accretion of many simple alterations. Our inference from the com- posite to the simple applies only to self-subsisting things. Accidents of the state [of a thing] are not self-subsisting. Thus the proof of the neces- sity of the simple, as the con- stitutive parts of the sub- stantially composite, can easily be upset (and therewith the thesis as a whole), if it be extended too far and in the absence of a limiting qualifi- cation be made to apply to everything composite -- as has frequently happened. Moreover I am here speak- ing only of the simple in so far as it is necessarily given in the composite -- the latter being resolvable into the simple, as its constituent parts. The word monas, in the strict sense in which it is em- ployed by Leibniz, should refer only to the simple which is immediately given as simple substance e.g. in self-con- sciousness), and not to an element of the composite. This latter is better entitled atomus. As I am seeking to prove the [existence of] simple substances only as elements in the composite, I P 407 might entitle the thesis of the second antinomy, tran- scendental atomistic. P 406a and yet as having the distinguishing characteristic of being able, as parts of space, to fill space through their mere aggregation. With- out repeating the many fa- miliar and conclusive refuta- tions of this absurdity -- it being quite futile to attempt to reason away by sophistical manipulation of purely dis- cursive concepts the evident demonstrated truth of mathe- matics -- I make only one ob- servation, that when philo- sophy here plays tricks with mathematics, it does so be- cause it forgets that in this discussion we are concerned only with appearances and their condition. Here it is not sufficient to find for the pure concept of the com- posite formed by the under- standing the concept of the simple; what has to be found is an intuition of the simple for the intuition of the com- posite (matter). But by the laws of sensibility, and there- fore in objects of the senses, this is quite impossible. Though it may be true that when a whole, made up of substances, is thought by the pure understanding alone, we must, prior to all composi- tion of it, have the simple, P 407 But as this word has long been ap- propriated to signify a parti- cular mode of explaining bodily appearances (mole- culae), and therefore pre- supposes empirical concepts, the thesis may more suitably be entitled the dialectical principle of monadology. P 406a this does not hold of the P 407a totum substantiale phaeno- menon which, as empirical intuition in space, carries with it the necessary char- acteristic that no part of it is simple, because no part of space is simple. The monad- ists have, indeed, been suffi- ciently acute to seek escape from this difficulty by refusing to treat space as a condition of the possibility of the objects of outer intuition (bodies), and by taking instead these and the dynamical relation of substances as the condition of the possibility of space. But we have a concept of bodies only as appearances; and as such they necessarily pre- suppose space as the condi- tion of the possibility of all outer appearance. This eva- sion of the issue is therefore futile, and has already been sufficiently disposed of in the Transcendental Aesthetic. The argument of the monad- ists would indeed be valid if bodies were things in them- selves. The second dialectical as- sertion has this peculiarity, that over against it stands a dogmatic assertion which is the only one of all the pseudo-rational assertions that undertakes to afford mani- fest evidence, in an empirical P 408a object, of the reality of that which we have been ascrib- ing only to transcendental ideas, namely, the absolute simplicity of substance -- I refer to the assertion that the object of inner sense, the 'I' which there thinks, is an absolutely simple sub- stance. Without entering upon this question (it has been fully considered above), I need only remark, that if (as happens in the quite bare representation, 'I') anything is thought as object only, without the addition of any synthetic determination of its intuition, nothing manifold and no compositeness can be perceived in such a representa- tion. Besides, since the predi- cates through which I think this object are merely intui- tions of inner sense, nothing can there be found which shows a manifold [of ele- ments] external to one an- other, and therefore real com- positeness. Self-consciousness is of such a nature that since the subject which thinks is at the same time its own object, it cannot divide itself, though it can divide the de- terminations which inhere in it; for in regard to itself every object is absolute unity. Nevertheless, when this sub- ject is viewed outwardly, as P 409a an object of intuition, it must exhibit [some sort of] com- positeness in its appearance; P 409 THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON THIRD CONFLICT OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS Thesis Causality in accordance with laws of nature is not the only causality from which the appearances of the world can one and all be derived. To explain these appearances it is necessary to assume that there is also another causality, that of freedom. Proof Let us assume that there is no other causality than that in accordance with laws of nature. This being so, every- thing which takes place pre- supposes a preceding state upon which it inevitably fol- lows according to a rule. But the preceding state must it- self be something which has taken place (having come to be in a time in which it previously was not); P 409a and it must always be viewed in this way if we wish to know whether or not there be in it a manifold [of ele- ments] external to one an- other. Antithesis There is no freedom; every- thing in the world takes place solely in accordance with laws of nature. Proof Assume that there is free- dom in the transcendental sense, as a special kind of causality in accordance with which the events in the world can have come about, namely, a power of absolutely beginning a state, and there- fore also of absolutely begin- ning a series of consequences of that state; P 410 for if it had always existed, its con- sequence also would have always existed, and would not have only just arisen. The causality of the cause through which something takes place is itself, therefore, something that has taken place, which again presup- poses, in accordance with the law of nature, a pre- ceding state and its causality, and this in similar manner a still earlier state, and so on. If, therefore, everything takes place solely in accordance with laws of nature, there will always be only a relative and never a first beginning, and consequently no com- pleteness of the series on the side of the causes that arise the one from the other. But the law of nature is just this, that nothing takes place with- out a cause sufficiently deter- mined a priori. The proposi- tion that no causality is pos- sible save in accordance with laws of nature, when taken in unlimited universality, is therefore self-contradictory; and this cannot, therefore, be regarded as the sole kind of causality. P 409a it then follows that not only will a series have its absolute beginning P 410a in this spontaneity, but that the very determination of this spontaneity to originate the series, that is to say, the causality itself, will have an absolute beginning; there will be no antecedent through which this act, in taking place, is determined in ac- cordance with fixed laws. But every beginning of action presupposes a state of the not yet acting cause; and a dynamical beginning of the action, if it is also a first be- ginning, presupposes a state which has no causal con- nection with the preceding state of the cause, that is to say, in nowise follows from it. Transcendental freedom thus stands opposed to the law of causality; and the kind of connection which it as- sumes as holding between the successive states of the active causes renders all unity of experience impossible. It is not to be met with in any experience, and is therefore an empty thought-entity. In nature alone, therefore, [not in freedom], must we seek for the connection and order of cosmical events. Freedom (independence) from the laws of nature is no doubt a liberation from compulsion, but also from the guidance P 411a of all rules. P 410 We must, then, assume a causality through which some- thing takes place, the cause of which is not itself P 411 determined, in accordance with necessary laws, by another cause antecedent to it, that is to say, an absolute spontaneity of the cause, whereby a series of appearances, which pro- ceeds in accordance with laws of nature, begins of itself. This is transcendental free- dom, without which, even in the [ordinary] course of na- ture, the series of appearances on the side of the causes can never be complete. P 411a For it is not permissible to say that the laws of freedom enter into the causality exhibited in the course of nature, and so take the place of natural laws. If freedom were determined in accordance with laws, it would not be freedom; it would simply be nature under another name. Nature and transcendental freedom differ as do conformity to law and lawlessness. Nature does indeed impose upon the understanding the exacting task of always seeking the origin of events ever higher in the series of causes, their causality being always condi- tioned. But in compensation it holds out the promise of thoroughgoing unity of ex- perience in accordance with laws. The illusion of freedom, on the other hand, offers a point of rest to the enquiring understanding in the chain of causes, conducting it to an unconditioned causality which begins to act of itself. This causality is, however, blind, and abrogates those rules through which alone a completely coherent ex- perience is possible. P 412 OBSERVATION ON THE THIRD ANTINOMY I. On the Thesis The transcendental idea of freedom does not by any means constitute the whole content of the psychological concept of that name, which is mainly empirical. The tran- scendental idea stands only for the absolute spontaneity of an action, as the proper ground of its imputability. This, however, is, for philo- sophy, the real stumbling- block; for there are insur- mountable difficulties in the way of admitting any such type of unconditioned caus- ality. What has always so greatly embarrassed specula- tive reason in dealing with the question of the freedom of the will, is its strictly transcendental aspect. The problem, properly viewed, is solely this: whether we must admit a power of spontane- ously beginning a series of successive things or states. How such a power is possible is not a question which re- quires to be answered in this case, any more than in regard to causality in accordance with the laws of nature. For, [as we have found], we have to remain satisfied with the P 413 a priori knowledge that this latter type of causality must be presupposed; P 412a II. On the Antithesis The defender of an om- nipotent nature (transcend- ental physiocracy), in main- taining his position against the pseudo-rational argu- ments offered in support of the counter-doctrine of freedom, would argue as follows. If you do not, as regards time, admit anything as being mathematically first in the world, there is no necessity, as regards causality, for seek- ing something that is dynamic- ally first. What authority have you for inventing an absolutely first state of the world, and therefore an abso- lute beginning of the ever- flowing series of appearances, and so of procuring a resting- place for your imagination by setting bounds to limitless nature? Since the substances in the world have always existed -- at least the unity of experience renders necessary such a supposition -- there is no difficulty in assuming that change of their states, that is, a series of their alterations, has likewise always existed, and therefore that a first begin- ning, whether mathematical or dynamical, is not to be looked for. P 413 we are not in the least able to comprehend how it can be possible that through one existence the existence of another is determined, and for this reason must be guided by experience alone. The necessity of a first beginning, due to freedom, of a series of appearances we have demon- strated only in so far as it is required to make an origin of the world conceivable; for all the later following states can be taken as resulting ac- cording to purely natural laws. But since the power of spontaneously beginning a series in time is thereby proved (though not under- stood), it is now also per- missible for us to admit within the course of the world different series as cap- able in their causality of beginning of themselves, and so to attribute to their sub- stances a power of acting from freedom. And we must not allow ourselves to be prevented from drawing this conclusion by a misapprehen- sion, namely that, as a series occurring in the world can have only a relatively first beginning, being always pre- ceded in the world by some other state of things, no P 414 absolute first beginning of a series is possible during the course of the world. P 413a The possibility of such an infinite derivation, without a first member to which all the rest is merely a sequel, cannot indeed, in re- spect of its possibility, be ren- dered comprehensible. But if for this reason you refuse to recognise this enigma in nature, you will find yourself compelled to reject many fundamental synthetic pro- perties and forces, which as little admit of comprehension. The possibility even of altera- tion itself would have to be denied. For were you not assured by experience that alteration actually occurs, you would never be able to excogitate a priori the pos- sibility of such a ceaseless sequence of being and not- being. Even if a transcendental power of freedom be allowed, as supplying a beginning of happenings in the world, this power would in any case have to be outside the world (though any such assump- tion that over and above the sum of all possible intuitions there exists an object which cannot be given in any pos- sible perception, is still a very bold one). But to ascribe to substances in the world itself such a power, can never be permissible; P 414 For the absolutely first beginning of which we are here speaking is not a beginning in time, but in causality. If, for in- stance, I at this moment arise from my chair, in com- plete freedom, without being necessarily determined thereto by the influence of natural causes, a new series, with all its natural consequences in infinitum, has its absolute beginning in this event, al- though as regards time this event is only the continuation of a preceding series. For this resolution and act of mine do not form part of the succession of purely natural effects, and are not a mere continuation of them. In respect of its happening, natural causes exercise over it no determin- ing influence whatsoever. It does indeed follow upon them, but without arising out of them; and accordingly, in respect of causality though not of time, must be entitled an absolutely first beginning of a series of appearances. P 414a for, should this be done, that connection of appearances determining one another with necessity ac- cording to universal laws, which we entitle nature, and with it the criterion of em- pirical truth, whereby experi- ence is distinguished from dreaming, would almost en- tirely disappear. Side by side with such a lawless faculty of freedom, nature [as an ordered system] is hardly thinkable; the influences of the former would so un- ceasingly alter the laws of the latter that the appear- ances which in their natural course are regular and uni- form would be reduced to disorder and incoherence. P 414 This requirement of reason, that we appeal in the series of natural causes to a first beginning, due to freedom, is amply confirmed when we observe that all the P 415 philosophers of antiquity, with the sole exception of the Epi- curean School, felt them- selves obliged, when explain- ing cosmical movements, to assume a prime mover, that is, a freely acting cause, which first and of itself began this series of states. They made no attempt to render a first be- ginning conceivable through nature's own resources. THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON FOURTH CONFLICT OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS Thesis There belongs to the world, either as its part or as its cause, a being that is abso- lutely necessary. Proof The sensible world, as the sum-total of all appearances, contains a series of alterations. For without such a series even the representation of serial time, as a condition of the possibility of the sensible world, would not be given us. ++ Time, as the formal condition of the possibility of changes, is indeed objectively prior to them; subjectively, however, in actual consciousness, the representation of time, like every other, is given only in connection with perceptions. P 415a Antithesis An absolutely necessary being nowhere exists in the world, nor does it exist out- side the world as its cause. Proof If we assume that the world itself is necessary, or that a necessary being exists in it, there are then two alter- natives. Either there is a be- ginning in the series of alter- ations which is absolutely necessary, and therefore with- out a cause, or the series it- self is without any beginning, and although contingent and P 416a conditioned in all its parts, none the less, as a whole, is absolutely necessary and un- conditioned. P 415 But every alteration stands under its condition, which pre- cedes it in time and renders P 416 it necessary. Now every con- ditioned that is given pre- supposes, in respect of its existence, a complete series of conditions up to the uncon- ditioned, which alone is abso- lutely necessary. Alteration thus existing as a consequence of the absolutely necessary, the existence of something absolutely necessary must be granted. But this neces- sary existence itself belongs to the sensible world. For if it existed outside that world, the series of alterations in the world would derive its begin- ning from a necessary cause which would not itself belong to the sensible world. This, however, is impossible. For since the beginning of a series in time can be determined only by that which precedes it in time, the highest condi- tion of the beginning of a series of changes must exist in the time when the series as yet was not (for a begin- ning is an existence preceded by a time in which the thing that begins did not yet exist). P 416a The former alternative, however, conflicts with the dynamical law of the determination of all appear- ances in time; and the latter alternative contradicts itself, since the existence of a series cannot be necessary if no single member of it is neces- sary. If, on the other hand, we assume that an absolutely necessary cause of the world exists outside the world, then this cause, as the highest member in the series of the causes of changes in the world, must begin the exist- ence of the latter and their series. Now this cause must itself begin to act, and its causality would therefore be in time, and so would be- long to the sum of appear- ances, that is, to the world. It follows that it itself, the cause, would not be outside the world -- which contradicts our hypothesis. ++ The word 'begin' is taken in two senses; first as active, signify- ing that as cause it begins (infit) a series of states which is its effect; secondly as passive, signifying the causality which begins to operate (fit) in the cause itself. I reason here from the former to the latter meaning. P 416 Accordingly the causality of the necessary cause of P 417 alterations, and therefore the cause itself, must belong to time and so to appearance -- time being possible only as the form of appearance. Such causality cannot, therefore, be thought apart from that sum of all appearances which constitutes the world of sense. Something absolutely neces- sary is therefore contained in the world itself, whether this something be the whole series of alterations in the world or a part of the series. OBSERVATION ON THE FOURTH ANTINOMY I. On the Thesis In proving the existence of a necessary being I ought not, in this connection, to employ any but the cosmo- logical argument, that, namely, which ascends from the conditioned in the [field of] appearance to the un- conditioned in concept, this latter being regarded as the necessary condition of the absolute totality of the series. To seek proof of this from the mere idea of a supreme being belongs to another principle of reason, and will have to be treated separately. The pure cosmological proof, in demonstrating the existence of a necessary being, P 418 has to leave unsettled whether this being is the world itself or a thing distinct from it. P 416a Therefore neither in the world, nor outside the world (though in causal P 417a connection with it), does there exist any absolutely necessary being. II. On the Antithesis The difficulties in the way of asserting the existence of an absolutely necessary high- est cause, which we suppose ourselves to meet as we ascend in the series of appear- ances, cannot be such as arise in connection with mere concepts of the necessary existence of a thing in general. The difficulties are not, there- fore, ontological, but must concern the causal connection of a series of appearances for which a condition has to be assumed that is itself un- conditioned, and so must be cosmological, and relate to empirical laws. P 418 To establish the latter view, we should require principles which are no longer cosmo- logical and do not continue in the series of appearances. For we should have to employ concepts of contingent beings in general (viewed as objects of the understanding alone) and a principle which will enable us to connect these, by means of mere concepts, with a necessary being. But all this belongs to a tran- scendent philosophy; and that we are not yet in a position to discuss. If we begin our proof cosmologically, resting it upon the series of appearances and the regress therein according to empirical laws of causality, we must not afterwards sud- denly deviate from this mode of argument, passing over to something that is not a mem- ber of the series. Anything taken as condition must be viewed precisely in the same manner in which we viewed the relation of the condi- tioned to its condition in the series which is supposed to carry us by continuous ad- vance to the supreme condi- tion. P 417 It must be shown that regress in the P 418a series of causes (in the sensible world) can never terminate in an empirically unconditioned condition, and that the cosmological argu- ment from the contingency of states of the world, as evidenced by their alterations, does not support the assump- tion of a first and absolutely originative cause of the series. A strange situation is dis- closed in this antinomy. From the same ground on which, in the thesis, the ex- istence of an original being was inferred, its non-exist- ence is inferred in the anti- thesis, and this with equal stringency. We were first assured that a necessary being exists because the whole of past time comprehends the series of all conditions and therefore also the uncondi- tioned (that is, the necessary); we are now assured that there is no necessary being, and precisely for the reason that the whole of past time com- prehends the series of all conditions (which therefore are one and all themselves conditioned). The explana- tion is this. The former argu- ment takes account only of the absolute totality of the series of conditions deter- mining each other in time, P 419a and so reaches what is un- conditioned and necessary. P 419 If, then, this relation is sensible and falls within the province of the possible em- pirical employment of under- standing, the highest condi- tion or cause can bring the regress to a close only in accordance with the laws of sensibility, and therefore only in so far as it itself belongs to the temporal series. The necessary being must there- fore be regarded as the highest member of the cosmical series. Nevertheless certain think- ers have allowed themselves the liberty of making such a saltus (metabasis eis allo genos. From the alterations in the world they have in- ferred their empirical con- tingency, that is, their de- pendence on empirically de- termining causes, and so have obtained an ascending series of empirical conditions. And so far they were entirely in the right. But since they could not find in such a series any first beginning, or any highest member, they passed suddenly from the empirical concept of con- tingency, and laid hold upon the pure category, which then gave rise to a strictly intelli- gible series the completeness of which rested on the exist- ence of an absolutely neces- sary cause. P 419a The latter argument, on the other hand, takes into con- sideration the contingency of everything which is deter- mined in the temporal series (everything being preceded by a time in which the condi- tion must itself again be determined as conditioned), and from this point of view everything unconditioned and all absolute necessity com- pletely vanish. Nevertheless, the method of argument in both cases is entirely in con- formity even with ordinary human reason, which fre- quently falls into conflict with itself through considering its object from two different points of view. M. de Mairan regarded the controversy be- tween two famous astrono- mers, which arose from a similar difficulty in regard to choice of standpoint, as a sufficiently remarkable phe- nomenon to justify his writing a special treatise upon it. The one had argued that the moon revolves on its own axis, because it always turns the same side towards the earth. The other drew the opposite conclusion that the moon does not revolve on its own axis, because it always P 420a turns the same side towards the earth. P 420 Since this cause was not bound down to any sensible conditions, it was freed from the temporal con- dition which would require that its causality should itself have a beginning. But such procedure is entirely illegiti- mate, as may be gathered from what follows. In the strict meaning of the category, the contingent is so named because its contra- dictory opposite is possible. Now we cannot argue from empirical contingency to in- telligible contingency. When anything is altered, the op- posite of its state is actual at another time, and is there- fore possible. This present state is not, however, the contradictory opposite of the preceding state. To obtain such a contradictory opposite we require to conceive, that in the same time in which the preceding state was, its op- posite could have existed in its place, and this can never be inferred from [the fact of] the alteration. A body which was in motion (= A) comes to rest (= non-A). Now from the fact that a state opposite to the state A follows upon the state A, we cannot argue that the contradictory op- posite of A is possible, and that A is therefore con- tingent. P 420a Both inferences were correct, according to the point of view which each chose in observing the moon's motion. P 421 To prove such a conclusion, it would have to be shown that in place of the motion, and at the time at which it occurred, there could have been rest. All that we know is that rest was real in the time that followed upon the motion, and was therefore likewise possible. Motion at one time and rest at another time are not related as contra- dictory opposites. Accord- ingly the succession of op- posite determinations, that is, alteration, in no way estab- lishes contingency of the type represented in the concepts of pure understanding; and can- not therefore carry us to the existence of a necessary being, similarly conceived in purely intelligible terms. Alteration proves only empirical con- tingency; that is, that the new state, in the absence of a cause which belongs to the preceding time, could never of itself have taken place. Such is the condition pre- scribed by the law of causal- ity. This cause, even if it be viewed as absolutely neces- sary, must be such as can be thus met with in time, and must belong to the series of appearances. P 422 THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON Section 3 THE INTEREST OF REASON IN THESE CONFLICTS We have now completely before us the dialectic play of cosmological ideas. The ideas are such that an object congruent with them can never be given in any possible experience, and that even in thought reason is unable to bring them into har- mony with the universal laws of nature. Yet they are not arbitrarily conceived. Reason, in the continuous advance of empirical synthesis, is necessarily led up to them whenever it endeavours to free from all conditions and apprehend in its unconditioned totality that which according to the rules of experience can never be determined save as conditioned. These pseudo-rational assertions are so many attempts to solve four natural and unavoidable problems of reason. There are just so many, neither more nor fewer, owing to the fact that there are just four series of synthetic presuppositions which impose a priori limitations on the empirical synthesis. The proud pretensions of reason, when it strives to extend its domain beyond all limits of experience, we have represented only in dry formulas that contain merely the ground of their legal claims. As befits a transcendental philosophy, they have been divested of all empirical features, although only in con- nection therewith can their full splendour be displayed. But in this empirical application, and in the progressive extension of the employment of reason, philosophy, beginning with the field of our experiences and steadily soaring to these lofty ideas, displays a dignity and worth such that, could it but make good its pretensions, it would leave all other human science far behind. For it promises a secure foundation for our high- est expectations in respect of those ultimate ends towards which all the endeavours of reason must ultimately converge. Whether the world has a beginning [in time] and any limit to its extension in space; whether there is anywhere, and perhaps in my thinking self, an indivisible and indestructible unity, or nothing but what is divisible and transitory; whether I am free in my actions or, like other beings, am led by the hand of P 423 nature and of fate; whether finally there is a supreme cause of the world, or whether the things of nature and their order must as the ultimate object terminate thought -- an object that even in our speculations can never be transcended: these are questions for the solution of which the mathematician would gladly exchange the whole of his science. For mathematics can yield no satisfaction in regard to those highest ends that most closely concern humanity. And yet the very dignity of mathematics (that pride of human reason) rests upon this, that it guides reason to knowledge of nature in its order and regularity -- alike in what is great in it and in what is small -- and in the extraordinary unity of its moving forces, thus rising to a degree of insight far beyond what any philosophy based on ordinary experience would lead us to expect; and so gives occasion and encouragement to an employment of reason that is extended beyond all experience, and at the same time supplies it with the most excellent materials for support- ing its investigations -- so far as the character of these permits -- by appropriate intuitions. Unfortunately for speculation, though fortunately perhaps for the practical interests of humanity, reason, in the midst of its highest expectations, finds itself so compromised by the conflict of opposing arguments, that neither its honour nor its security allows it to withdraw and treat the quarrel with indifference as a mere mock fight; and still less is it in a posi- tion to command peace, being itself directly interested in the matters in dispute. Accordingly, nothing remains for reason save to consider whether the origin of this conflict, whereby it is divided against itself, may not have arisen from a mere misunderstanding. In such an enquiry both parties, per chance, may have to sacrifice proud claims; but a lasting and peaceful reign of reason over understanding and the senses would thereby be inaugurated. For the present we shall defer this thorough enquiry, in order first of all to consider upon which side we should prefer to fight, should we be compelled to make choice between the opposing parties. The raising of this question, how we should proceed if we consulted only our interest and not the logical criterion of truth, will decide nothing in regard to P 424 the contested rights of the two parties, but has this advantage, that it enables us to comprehend why the participants in this quarrel, though not influenced by any superior insight into the matter under dispute, have preferred to fight on one side rather than on the other. It will also cast light on a number of incidental points, for instance, the passionate zeal of the one party and the calm assurance of the other; and will explain why the world hails the one with eager approval, and is im- placably prejudiced against the other. Comparison of the principles which form the starting- points of the two parties is what enables us, as we shall find, to determine the standpoint from which alone this preliminary enquiry can be carried out with the required thoroughness. In the assertions of the antithesis we observe a perfect uniformity in manner of thinking and complete unity of maxims, namely a principle of pure empiricism, applied not only in explana- tion of the appearances within the world, but also in the solution of the transcendental ideas of the world itself, in its totality. The assertions of the thesis, on the other hand, pre- suppose, in addition to the empirical mode of explanation employed within the series of appearances, intelligible begin- nings; and to this extent its maxim is complex. But as its essential and distinguishing characteristic is the presupposi- tion of intelligible beginnings, I shall entitle it the dogmatism of pure reason. In the determination of the cosmological ideas, we find on the side of dogmatism, that is, of the thesis: First, a certain practical interest in which every right- thinking man, if he has understanding of what truly concerns him, heartily shares. That the world has a beginning, that my thinking self is of simple and therefore indestructible nature, that it is free in its voluntary actions and raised above the compulsion of nature, and finally that all order in the things constituting the world is due to a primordial being, from which everything derives its unity and purposive connection -- these are so many foundation stones of morals and religion. The antithesis robs us of all these supports, or at least appears to do so. Secondly, reason has a speculative interest on the side of P 425 the thesis. When the transcendental ideas are postulated and employed in the manner prescribed by the thesis, the entire chain of conditions and the derivation of the conditioned can be grasped completely a priori. For we then start from the unconditioned. This is not done by the antithesis, which for this reason is at a very serious disadvantage. To the question as to the conditions of its synthesis it can give no answer which does not lead to the endless renewal of the same enquiry. According to the antithesis, every given beginning compels us to advance to one still higher; every part leads to a still smaller part; every event is preceded by another event as its cause; and the conditions of existence in general rest always again upon other conditions, without ever obtaining unconditioned foot- ing and support in any self-subsistent thing, viewed as prim- ordial being. Thirdly, the thesis has also the advantage of popularity; and this certainly forms no small part of its claim to favour. The common understanding finds not the least difficulty in the idea of the unconditioned beginning of all synthesis. Being more accustomed to descend to consequences than to ascend to grounds, it does not puzzle over the possibility of the abso- lutely first; on the contrary, it finds comfort in such concepts, and at the same time a fixed point to which the thread by which it guides its movements can be attached. In the restless ascent from the conditioned to the condition, always with one foot in the air, there can be no satisfaction. In the determination of the cosmological ideas we find on the side of empiricism, that is, of the antithesis: first, no such practical interest (due to pure principles of reason) as is pro- vided for the thesis by morals and religion. On the contrary, pure empiricism appears to deprive them of all power and in- fluence. If there is no primordial being distinct from the world, if the world is without beginning and therefore without an Author, if our will is not free, and the soul is divisible and perishable like matter, moral ideas and principles lose all validity, and share in the fate of the transcendental ideas which served as their theoretical support. But secondly, in compensation, empiricism yields advan- tages to the speculative interest of reason, which are very P 426 attractive and far surpass those which dogmatic teaching bearing on the ideas of reason can offer. According to the principle of empiricism the understanding is always on its own proper ground, namely, the field of genuinely possible experi- ences, investigating their laws, and by means of these laws affording indefinite extension to the sure and comprehensible knowledge which it supplies. Here every object, both in itself and in its relations, can and ought to be represented in in- tuition, or at least in concepts for which the corresponding images can be clearly and distinctly provided in given similar intuitions. There is no necessity to leave the chain of the natural order and to resort to ideas, the objects of which are not known, because, as mere thought-entities, they can never be given. Indeed, the understanding is not permitted to leave its proper business, and under the pretence of having brought it to completion to pass over into the sphere of idealising reason and of transcendent concepts -- a sphere in which it is no longer necessary for it to observe and investigate in accordance with the laws of nature, but only to think and to invent in the assurance that it cannot be refuted by the facts of nature, not being bound by the evidence which they yield, but presuming to pass them by or even to subordinate them to a higher authority, namely, that of pure reason. The empiricist will never allow, therefore, that any epoch of nature is to be taken as the absolutely first, or that any limit of his insight into the extent of nature is to be regarded as the widest possible. Nor does he permit any transition from the objects of nature -- which he can analyse through observa- tion and mathematics, and synthetically determine in intuition (the extended) -- to those which neither sense nor imagination can ever represent in concreto (the simple). Nor will he admit the legitimacy of assuming in nature itself any power that operates independently of the laws of nature (freedom), and so of encroaching upon the business of the understanding, which is that of investigating, according to necessary rules, the origin of appearances. And, lastly, he will not grant that a cause ought ever to be sought outside nature, in an original being. We know nothing but nature, since it alone can present objects to us and instruct us in regard to their laws. P 427 If the empirical philosopher had no other purpose in pro- pounding his antithesis than to subdue the rashness and pre- sumption of those who so far misconstrue the true vocation of reason as to boast of insight and knowledge just where true in- sight and knowledge cease, and to represent as furthering spec- ulative interests that which is valid only in relation to practical interests (in order, as may suit their convenience, to break the thread of physical enquiries, and then under the pretence of ex- tending knowledge to fasten it to transcendental ideas, through which we really know only that we know nothing); if, I say, the empiricist were satisfied with this, his principle would be a maxim urging moderation in our pretensions, modesty in our assertions, and yet at the same time the greatest possible extension of our understanding, through the teacher fittingly assigned to us, namely, through experience. If such were our procedure, we should not be cut off from employing intel- lectual presuppositions and faith on behalf of our practical interest; only they could never be permitted to assume the title and dignity of science and rational insight. Knowledge, which as such is speculative, can have no other object than that supplied by experience; if we transcend the limits thus imposed, the synthesis which seeks, independently of experi- ence, new species of knowledge, lacks that substratum of intuition upon which alone it can be exercised. But when empiricism itself, as frequently happens, be- comes dogmatic in its attitude towards ideas, and confidently denies whatever lies beyond the sphere of its intuitive know- ledge, it betrays the same lack of modesty; and this is all the more reprehensible owing to the irreparable injury which is thereby caused to the practical interests of reason. The contrast between the teaching of Epicurus and that of Plato is of this nature. ++ It is, however, open to question whether Epicurus ever pro- pounded these principles as objective assertions. If perhaps they were for him nothing more than maxims for the speculative employ- ment of reason, then he showed in this regard a more genuine philo- sophical spirit than any other of the philosophers of antiquity. That, in explaining the appearances, we must proceed as if the field of our enquiry were not circumscribed by any limit or beginning of the world; that we must assume the material composing the world to be such as it must be if we are to learn about it from experience; P 428 Each of the two types of philosophy says more than it knows. The former encourages and furthers knowledge, though to the prejudice of the practical; the latter supplies excellent practical principles, but it permits reason to indulge in ideal explanations of natural appearances, in regard to which a speculative knowledge is alone possible to us -- to the neglect of physical investigation. Finally, as regards the third factor which has to be con- sidered in a preliminary choice between the two conflicting parties, it is extremely surprising that empiricism should be so universally unpopular. The common understanding, it might be supposed, would eagerly adopt a programme which pro- mises to satisfy it through exclusively empirical knowledge and the rational connections there revealed -- in preference to the transcendental dogmatism which compels it to rise to concepts far outstripping the insight and rational faculties of the most practised thinkers. But this is precisely what com- mends such dogmatism to the common understanding. For it then finds itself in a position in which the most learned can claim no advantage over it. If it understands little or nothing about these matters, no one can boast of understanding much more; and though in regard to them it cannot express itself in so scholastically correct a manner as those with special train- ing, nevertheless there is no end to the plausible arguments which it can propound, wandering as it does amidst mere ideas, about which no one knows anything, and in regard to which it is therefore free to be as eloquent as it pleases; ++ that we must postulate no other mode of the production of events than one which will enable them to be [regarded as] determined through unalterable laws of nature; and finally that no use must be made of any cause distinct from the world -- all these principles still [retain their value]. They are very sound principles (though seldom observed) for extending the scope of speculative philosophy, while at the same time [enabling us] to discover the principles of morality without depending for this discovery upon alien [i.e. non-moral, theoretical] sources; and it does not follow in the least that those who require us, so long as we are occupied with mere speculation, to ignore these dogmatic propositions [that there is a limit and beginning to the world, a Divine Cause, etc. ], can justly be accused of wishing to deny them. P 429 whereas when matters that involve the investigation of nature are in question, it has to stand silent and to admit its ignorance. Thus indolence and vanity combine in sturdy support of these prin- ciples. Besides, although the philosopher finds it extremely hard to accept a principle for which he can give no justifica- tion, still more to employ concepts the objective reality of which he is unable to establish, nothing is more usual in the case of the common understanding. It insists upon having something from which it can make a confident start. The difficulty of even conceiving this presupposed starting-point does not disquiet it. Since it is unaware what conceiving really means, it never occurs to it to reflect upon the assumption; it accepts as known whatever is familiar to it through frequent use. For the common understanding, indeed, all speculative interests pale before the practical; and it imagines that it comprehends and knows what its fears or hopes incite it to assume or to believe. Thus empiricism is entirely devoid of the popularity of tran- scendentally idealising reason; and however prejudicial such empiricism may be to the highest practical principles, there is no need to fear that it will ever pass the limits of the Schools, and acquire any considerable influence in the general life or any real favour among the multitude. Human reason is by nature architectonic. That is to say, it regards all our knowledge as belonging to a possible system, and therefore allows only such principles as do not at any rate make it impossible for any knowledge that we may attain to combine into a system with other knowledge. But the proposi- tions of the antithesis are of such a kind that they render the completion of the edifice of knowledge quite impossible. They maintain that there is always to be found beyond every state of the world a more ancient state, in every part yet other parts similarly divisible, prior to every event still another event which itself again is likewise generated, and that in existence in general everything is conditioned, an unconditioned and first existence being nowhere discernible. Since, therefore, the antithesis thus refuses to admit as first or as a beginning anything that could serve as a foundation for building, a P 430 complete edifice of knowledge is, on such assumptions, alto- gether impossible. Thus the architectonic interest of reason -- the demand not for empirical but for pure a priori unity of reason -- forms a natural recommendation for the assertions of the thesis. If men could free themselves from all such interests, and consider the assertions of reason irrespective of their conse- quences, solely in view of the intrinsic force of their grounds, and were the only way of escape from their perplexities to give adhesion to one or other of the opposing parties, their state would be one of continuous vacillation. To-day it would be their conviction that the human will is free; to-morrow, dwelling in reflection upon the indissoluble chain of nature, they would hold that freedom is nothing but self-deception, that everything is simply nature. If, however, they were summoned to action, this play of the merely speculative reason would, like a dream, at once cease, and they would choose their principles exclusively in accordance with practi- cal interests. Since, however, it is fitting that a reflective and enquiring being should devote a certain amount of time to the examination of his own reason, entirely divesting himself of all partiality and openly submitting his observations to the judgment of others, no one can be blamed for, much less pro- hibited from, presenting for trial the two opposing parties, leaving them, terrorised by no threats, to defend themselves as best they can, before a jury of like standing with themselves, that is, before a jury of fallible men. THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON Section 4 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITY OF A SOLUTION OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL PROBLEMS OF PURE REASON To profess to solve all problems and to answer all questions would be impudent boasting, and would argue such extrava- gant self-conceit as at once to forfeit all confidence. Neverthe- less there are sciences the very nature of which requires that every question arising within their domain should be com- P 431 pletely answerable in terms of what is known, inasmuch as the answer must issue from the same sources from which the question proceeds. In these sciences it is not permissible to plead unavoidable ignorance; the solution can be demanded. We must be able, in every possible case, in accordance with a rule, to know what is right and what is wrong, since this con- cerns our obligation, and we have no obligation to that which we cannot know. In the explanation of natural appearances, on the other hand, much must remain uncertain and many questions insoluble, because what we know of nature is by no means sufficient, in all cases, to account for what has to be ex- plained. The question, therefore, is whether in transcendental philosophy there is any question relating to an object pre- sented to pure reason which is unanswerable by this reason, and whether we may rightly excuse ourselves from giving a decisive answer. In thus excusing ourselves, we should have to show that any knowledge which we can acquire still leaves us in complete uncertainty as to what should be ascribed to the object, and that while we do indeed have a concept suffi- cient to raise a question, we are entirely lacking in materials or power to answer the same. Now I maintain that transcendental philosophy is unique in the whole field of speculative knowledge, in that no ques- tion which concerns an object given to pure reason can be insoluble for this same human reason, and that no excuse of an unavoidable ignorance, or of the problem's unfathomable depth, can release us from the obligation to answer it thor- oughly and completely. That very concept which puts us in a position to ask the question must also qualify us to answer it, since, as in the case of right and wrong, the object is not to be met with outside the concept. In transcendental philosophy, however, the only questions to which we have the right to demand a sufficient answer bearing on the constitution of the object, and from answering which the philosopher is not permitted to excuse himself on the plea of their impenetrable obscurity, are the cosmological. These questions [bearing on the constitution of the object] must refer exclusively to cosmological ideas. For the object must be given empirically, the question being only as to its conformity to an idea. If, on the other hand, the object is P 432 transcendental, and therefore itself unknown; if, for instance, the question be whether that something, the appearance of which (in ourselves) is thought (soul), is in itself a simple being, whether there is an absolutely necessary cause of all things, and so forth, what we have then to do is in each case to seek an object for our idea; and we may well confess that this object is unknown to us, though not therefore impossible. The cos- mological ideas alone have the peculiarity that they can pre- suppose their object, and the empirical synthesis required for its concept, as being given. The question which arises out of these ideas refers only to the advance in this synthesis, that is, whether it should be carried so far as to contain absolute totality -- such totality, since it cannot be given in any experi- ence, being no longer empirical. Since we are here dealing solely with a thing as object of a possible experience, not as a thing in itself, the answer to the transcendent cosmological question cannot lie anywhere save in the idea. We are not asking what is the constitution of any object in itself, nor as regards possible experience are we enquiring what can be given in concreto in any experience. Our sole question is as to what lies in the idea, to which the empirical synthesis can do no more than merely approximate; the question must therefore be capable of being solved entirely from the idea. Since the idea is a mere creature of reason, reason cannot disclaim its responsibility and saddle it upon the unknown object. ++ Although to the question, what is the constitution of a tran- scendental object, no answer can be given stating what it is, we can yet reply that the question itself is nothing, because there is no given object [corresponding] to it. Accordingly all questions dealt with in the transcendental doctrine of the soul are answerable in this latter manner, and have indeed been so answered; its questions refer to the transcendental subject of all inner appear- ances, which is not itself appearance and consequently not given as object, and in which none of the categories (and it is to them that the question is really directed) meet with the conditions re- quired for their application. We have here a case where the com- mon saying holds, that no answer is itself an answer. A question as to the constitution of that something which cannot be thought through any determinate predicate -- inasmuch as it is completely outside the sphere of those objects which can be given to us -- is entirely null and void. P 433 It is not so extraordinary as at first seems the case, that a science should be in a position to demand and expect none but assured answers to all the questions within its domain (quae- stiones domesticae), although up to the present they have per- haps not been found. In addition to transcendental philosophy, there are two pure rational sciences, one purely speculative, the other with a practical content, namely, pure mathematics and pure ethics. Has it ever been suggested that, because of our necessary ignorance of the conditions, it must remain un- certain what exact relation, in rational or irrational numbers, a diameter bears to a circle? Since no adequate solution in terms of rational numbers is possible, and no solution in terms of irrational numbers has yet been discovered, it was con- cluded that at least the impossibility of a solution can be known with certainty, and of this impossibility Lambert has given the required proof. In the universal principles of morals nothing can be uncertain, because the principles are either altogether void and meaningless, or must be derived from the concepts of our reason. In natural science, on the other hand, there is endless conjecture, and certainty is not to be counted upon. For the natural appearances are objects which are given to us independently of our concepts, and the key to them lies not in us and our pure thinking, but outside us; and therefore in many cases, since the key is not to be found, an assured solution is not to be expected. I am not, of course, here referring to those questions of the Transcendental Analytic which concern the deduction of our pure knowledge; we are at present treating only of the certainty of judgments with respect to their objects and not with respect to the source of our concepts themselves. The obligation of an at least critical solution of the ques- tions which reason thus propounds to itself, we cannot, there- fore, escape by complaints of the narrow limits of our reason, and by confessing, under the pretext of a humility based on self- knowledge, that it is beyond the power of our reason to deter- mine whether the world exists from eternity or has a begin- ning; whether cosmical space is filled with beings to infinitude, P 434 or is enclosed within certain limits; whether anything in the world is simple, or everything such as to be infinitely divisible; whether there is generation and production through freedom, or whether everything depends on the chain of events in the natural order; and finally whether there exists any being com- pletely unconditioned and necessary in itself, or whether every- thing is conditioned in its existence and therefore dependent on external things and itself contingent. All these questions refer to an object which can be found nowhere save in our thoughts, namely, to the absolutely unconditioned totality of the syn- thesis of appearances. If from our own concepts we are unable to assert and determine anything certain, we must not throw the blame upon the object as concealing itself from us. Since such an object is nowhere to be met with outside our idea, it is not possible for it to be given. The cause of failure we must seek in our idea itself. For so long as we obstinately persist in assuming that there is an actual object corresponding to the idea, the problem, as thus viewed, allows of no solution. A clear exposition of the dialectic which lies within our concept itself would soon yield us complete certainty how we ought to judge in reference to such a question. The pretext that we are unable to obtain certainty in regard to these problems can be at once met with the following question which certainly calls for a clear answer: Whence come those ideas, the solution of which involves us in such difficulty? Is it, perchance, appearances that demand explanation, and do we, in accordance with these ideas, have to seek only the principles or rules of their exposition? Even if we suppose the whole of nature to be spread out before us, and that of all that is pre- sented to our intuition nothing is concealed from our senses and consciousness, yet still through no experience could the object of our ideas be known by us in concreto. For that purpose, in addition to this exhaustive intuition, we should require what is not possible through any empirical knowledge, namely, a completed synthesis and the consciousness of its absolute totality. Accordingly our question does not require to be raised in the explanation of any given appearance, and is therefore not a question which can be regarded as imposed on us by the object itself. The object can never come before us, since it cannot be given through any possible experience. In all P 435 possible perceptions we always remain involved in conditions, whether in space or in time, and come upon nothing un- conditioned requiring us to determine whether this uncondi- tioned is to be located in an absolute beginning of synthesis, or in an absolute totality of a series that has no beginning. In its empirical meaning, the term 'whole' is always only com- parative. The absolute whole of quantity (the universe), the whole of division, of derivation, of the condition of existence in general, with all questions as to whether it is brought about through finite synthesis or through a synthesis requiring infinite extension, have nothing to do with any possible experience. We should not, for instance, in any wise be able to explain the appearances of a body better, or even differently, in assuming that it consisted either of simple or of inexhaustibly com- posite parts; for neither a simple appearance nor an infinite composition can ever come before us. Appearances demand explanation only so far as the conditions of their explanation are given in perception; but all that may ever be given in this way, when taken together in an absolute whole, is not itself a perception. Yet it is just the explanation of this very whole that is demanded in the transcendental problems of reason. Thus the solution of these problems can never be found in experience, and this is precisely the reason why we should not say that it is uncertain what should be ascribed to the object [of our idea]. For as our object is only in our brain, and cannot be given outside it, we have only to take care to be at one with ourselves, and to avoid that amphiboly which transforms our idea into a supposed representation of an object that is empirically given and therefore to be known according to the laws of experience. The dogmatic solution is therefore not only uncertain, but impossible. The critical solu- tion, which allows of complete certainty, does not consider the question objectively, but in relation to the foundation of the knowledge upon which the question is based. P 436 THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON Section 5 SCEPTICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE COSMOLOGICAL QUESTIONS IN THE FOUR TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS We should of ourselves desist from the demand that our questions be answered dogmatically, if from the start we understood that whatever the dogmatic answer might turn out to be it would only increase our ignorance, and cast us from one inconceivability into another, from one obscurity into another still greater, and perhaps even into contradictions. If our question is directed simply to a yes or no, we are well advised to leave aside the supposed grounds of the answer, and first consider what we should gain according as the answer is in the affirmative or in the negative. Should we then find that in both cases the outcome is mere nonsense, there will be good reason for instituting a critical examination of our question, to determine whether the question does not itself rest on a ground- less presupposition, in that it plays with an idea the falsity of which can be more easily detected through study of its applica- tion and consequences than in its own separate representation. This is the great utility of the sceptical mode of dealing with the questions which pure reason puts to pure reason. By its means we can deliver ourselves, at but a small cost, from a great body of sterile dogmatism, and set in its place a sober critique, which as a true cathartic will effectively guard us against such groundless beliefs and the supposed polymathy to which they lead. If therefore, in dealing with a cosmological idea, I were able to appreciate beforehand that whatever view may be taken of the unconditioned in the successive synthesis of ap- pearances, it must either be too large or too small for any con- cept of the understanding, I should be in a position to under- stand that since the cosmological idea has no bearing save upon an object of experience which has to be in conformity with a possible concept of the understanding, it must be P 437 entirely empty and without meaning; for its object, view it as we may, cannot be made to agree with it. This is in fact the case with all cosmical concepts; and this is why reason, so long as it holds to them, is involved in an unavoidable antinomy. For suppose: -- First, that the world has no beginning: it is then too large for our concept, which, consisting as it does in a successive regress, can never reach the whole eternity that has elapsed. Or suppose that the world has a beginning, it will then, in the necessary empirical regress, be too small for the concept of the understanding. For since the beginning still presupposes a time which precedes it, it is still not unconditioned; and the law of the empirical employment of the understanding therefore obliges us to look for a higher temporal condition; and the world [as limited in time] is therefore obviously too small for this law. This is also true of the twofold answer to the question regarding the magnitude of the world in space. If it is infinite and unlimited, it is too large for any possible empirical con- cept. If it is finite and limited, we have a right to ask what determines these limits. Empty space is no self-subsistent correlate of things, and cannot be a condition at which we could stop; still less can it be an empirical condition, forming part of a possible experience. (For how can there be any ex- perience of the absolutely void? ) And yet to obtain absolute totality in the empirical synthesis it is always necessary that the unconditioned be an empirical concept. Consequently, a limited world is too small for our concept. Secondly, if every appearance in space (matter) consists of infinitely many parts, the regress in the division will always be too great for our concept; while if the division of space is to stop at any member of the division (the simple), the regress will be too small for the idea of the unconditioned. For this member always still allows of a regress to further parts con- tained in it. Thirdly, if we suppose that nothing happens in the world save in accordance with the laws of nature, the causality of the cause will always itself be something that happens, making necessary a regress to a still higher cause, and thus a con- tinuation of the series of conditions a parte priori without end. P 438 Nature, as working always through efficient causes, is thus too large for any of the concepts which we can employ in the synthesis of cosmical events. If, in certain cases, we admit the occurrence of self-caused events, that is, generation through freedom, then by an un- avoidable law of nature the question 'why' still pursues us, constraining us, in accordance with the law of causality [which governs] experience, to pass beyond such events; and we thus find that such totality of connection is too small for our necessary empirical concept. Fourthly, if we admit an absolutely necessary being (whether it be the world itself, or something in the world, or the cause of the world), we set it in a time infinitely remote from any given point of time, because otherwise it would be dependent upon another and antecedent being. But such an existence is then too large for our empirical concept, and is unapproachable through any regress, however far this be carried. If, again, we hold that everything belonging to the world (whether as conditioned or as condition) is contingent, any and every given existence is too small for our concept. For we are constrained always still to look about for some other existence upon which it is dependent. We have said that in all these cases the cosmical idea is either too large or too small for the empirical regress, and therefore for any possible concept of the understanding. We have thus been maintaining that the fault lies with the idea, in being too large or too small for that to which it is directed, namely, possible experience. Why have we not expressed our- selves in the opposite manner, saying that in the former case the empirical concept is always too small for the idea, and in the latter too large, and that the blame therefore attaches to the empirical regress? The reason is this. Possible experience is that which can alone give reality to our concepts; in its absence a concept is a mere idea, without truth, that is, without relation to any object. The possible empirical concept is there- fore the standard by which we must judge whether the idea is a mere idea and thought-entity, or whether it finds its object in the world. For we can say of anything that it is too large P 439 or too small relatively to something else, only if the former is required for the sake of the latter, and has to be adapted to it. Among the puzzles propounded in the ancient dialectical Schools was the question, whether, if a ball cannot pass through a hole, we should say that the ball is too large or the hole too small. In such a case it is a matter of indifference how we choose to express ourselves, for we do not know which exists for the sake of the other. In the case, however, of a man and his coat, we do not say that a man is too tall for his coat, but that the coat is too short for the man. We have thus been led to what is at least a well-grounded suspicion that the cosmological ideas, and with them all the mutually conflicting pseudo-rational assertions, may perhaps rest on an empty and merely fictitious concept of the manner in which the object of these ideas is given to us; and this sus- picion may set us on the right path for laying bare the illusion which has so long led us astray. THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON Section 6 TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM AS THE KEY TO THE SOLUTION OF THE COSMOLOGICAL DIALECTIC We have sufficiently proved in the Transcendental Aesthetic that everything intuited in space or time, and therefore all objects of any experience possible to us, are nothing but ap- pearances, that is, mere representations, which, in the manner in which they are represented, as extended beings, or as series of alterations, have no independent existence outside our thoughts. This doctrine I entitle transcendental idealism. The realist, in the transcendental meaning of this term, treats these modifica- tions of our sensibility as self-subsistent things, that is, treats mere representations as things in themselves. ++ I have also, elsewhere, sometimes entitled it formal idealism, to distinguish it from material idealism, that is, from the usual type of idealism which doubts or denies the existence of outer things themselves. P 439 It would be unjust to ascribe to us that long-decried P 440 empirical idealism, which, while it admits the genuine reality of space, denies the existence of the extended beings in it, or at least considers their existence doubtful, and so does not in this regard allow of any properly demonstrable distinction between truth and dreams. As to the appearances of inner sense in time, empirical idealism finds no difficulty in regard- ing them as real things; indeed it even asserts that this inner experience is the sufficient as well as the only proof of the actual existence of its object (in itself, with all this time- determination). Our transcendental idealism, on the contrary, admits the reality of the objects of outer intuition, as intuited in space, and of all changes in time, as represented by inner sense. For since space is a form of that intuition which we entitle outer, and since without objects in space there would be no empirical re- presentation whatsoever, we can and must regard the extended beings in it as real; and the same is true of time. But this space and this time, and with them all appearances, are not in them- selves things; they are nothing but representations, and cannot exist outside our mind. Even the inner and sensible intuition of our mind (as object of consciousness) which is represented as being determined by the succession of different states in time, is not the self proper, as it exists in itself -- that is, is not the transcendental subject -- but only an appearance that has been given to the sensibility of this, to us unknown, being. This inner appearance cannot be admitted to exist in any such manner in and by itself; for it is conditioned by time, and time cannot be a determination of a thing in itself. The empirical truth of appearances in space and time is, however, sufficiently secured; it is adequately distinguished from dreams, if both dreams and genuine appearances cohere truly and completely in one experience, in accordance with empirical laws. The objects of experience, then, are never given in them- selves, but only in experience, and have no existence outside it. That there may be inhabitants in the moon, although no one has ever perceived them, must certainly be admitted. This, however, only means that in the possible advance of experi- ence we may encounter them. For everything is real which stands in connection with a perception in accordance with the P 441 laws of empirical advance. They are therefore real if they stand in an empirical connection with my actual consciousness, although they are not for that reason real in themselves, that is, outside this advance of experience. Nothing is really given us save perception and the empiri- cal advance from this to other possible perceptions. For the appearances, as mere representations, are in themselves real only in perception, which perception is in fact nothing but the reality of an empirical representation, that is, appearance. To call an appearance a real thing prior to our perceiving it, either means that in the advance of experience we must meet with such a perception, or it means nothing at all. For if we were speaking of a thing in itself, we could indeed say that it exists in itself apart from relation to our senses and possible experi- ence. But we are here speaking only of an appearance in space and time, which are not determinations of things in them- selves but only of our sensibility. Accordingly, that which is in space and time is an appearance; it is not anything in itself but consists merely of representations, which, if not given in us -- that is to say, in perception -- are nowhere to be met with. The faculty of sensible intuition is strictly only a recep- tivity, a capacity of being affected in a certain manner with representations, the relation of which to one another is a pure intuition of space and of time (mere forms of our sensibility), and which, in so far as they are connected in this manner in space and time, and are determinable according to laws of the unity of experience, are entitled objects. The non-sensible cause of these representations is completely unknown to us, and cannot therefore be intuited by us as object. For such an object would have to be represented as neither in space nor in time (these being merely conditions of sensible representation), and apart from such conditions we cannot think any intuition. We may, however, entitle the purely intelligible cause of appearances in general the transcendental object, but merely in order to have something corresponding to sensibility viewed as a receptivity. To this transcendental object we can ascribe the whole extent and connection of our possible perceptions, and can say that it is given in itself prior to all experience. But the appearances, P 442 while conforming to it, are not given in themselves, but only in this experience, being mere representations, which as percep- tions can mark out a real object only in so far as the perception connects with all others according to the rules of the unity of experience. Thus we can say that the real things of past time are given in the transcendental object of experience; but they are objects for me and real in past time only in so far as I repre- sent to myself (either by the light of history or by the guiding- clues of causes and effects) that a regressive series of possible perceptions in accordance with empirical laws, in a word, that the course of the world, conducts us to a past time-series as con- dition of the present time -- a series which, however, can be re- presented as actual not in itself but only in the connection of a possible experience. Accordingly, all events which have taken place in the immense periods that have preceded my own ex- istence mean really nothing but the possibility of extending the chain of experience from the present perception back to the conditions which determine this perception in respect of time. If, therefore, I represent to myself all existing objects of the senses in all time and in all places, I do not set them in space and time [as being there] prior to experience. This representation is nothing but the thought of a possible ex- perience in its absolute completeness. Since the objects are nothing but mere representations, only in such a possible experience are they given. To say that they exist prior to all my experience is only to assert that they are to be met with if, starting from perception, I advance to that part of experience to which they belong. The cause of the empirical conditions of this advance (that which determines what mem- bers I shall meet with, or how far I can meet with any such in my regress) is transcendental, and is therefore necessarily unknown to me. We are not, however, concerned with this transcendental cause, but only with the rule of the advance in the experience in which objects, that is to say, appearances, are given to me. Moreover, in outcome it is a matter of in- difference whether I say that in the empirical advance in space I can meet with stars a hundred times farther removed than the outermost now perceptible to me, or whether I say that they are perhaps to be met with in cosmical space even P 443 though no human being has ever perceived or ever will per- ceive them. For even supposing they were given as things in themselves, without relation to possible experience, it still remains true that they are nothing to me, and therefore are not objects, save in so far as they are contained in the series of the empirical regress. Only in another sort of relation, when these appearances would be used for the cosmological idea of an absolute whole, and when, therefore, we are dealing with a question which oversteps the limits of possible experience, does distinction of the mode in which we view the reality of those objects of the senses become of importance, as serving to guard us against a deceptive error which is bound to arise if we misinterpret our empirical concepts. THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON Section 7 CRITICAL SOLUTION OF THE COSMOLOGICAL CONFLICT OF REASON WITH ITSELF The whole antinomy of pure reason rests upon the dia- lectical argument: If the conditioned is given, the entire series of all its conditions is likewise given; objects of the senses are given as conditioned; therefore, etc. Through this syllogism, the major premiss of which appears so natural and evident, as many cosmological ideas are introduced as there are differ- ences in the conditions (in the synthesis of appearances) that constitute a series. The ideas postulate absolute totality of these series; and thereby they set reason in unavoidable conflict with itself. We shall be in a better position to detect what is deceptive in this pseudo-rational argument, if we first correct and define some of the concepts employed in it. In the first place, it is evident beyond all possibility of doubt, that if the conditioned is given, a regress in the series of all its conditions is set us as a task. For it is involved in the very concept of the conditioned that something is referred to a condition, and if this condition is again itself conditioned, to a more remote condition, and so through all the members of the P 444 series. The above proposition is thus analytic, and has nothing to fear from a transcendental criticism. It is a logical postulate of reason, that through the understanding we follow up and extend as far as possible that connection of a concept with its conditions which directly results from the concept itself. Further, if the conditioned as well as its condition are things in themselves, then upon the former being given, the regress to the latter is not only set as a task, but therewith already really given. And since this holds of all members of the series, the complete series of the conditions, and therefore the unconditioned, is given therewith, or rather is presupposed in view of the fact that the conditioned, which is only possible through the complete series, is given. The synthesis of the conditioned with its condition is here a synthesis of the mere understanding, which represents things as they are, without considering whether and how we can obtain knowledge of them. If, however, what we are dealing with are appearances -- as mere representations appearances cannot be given save in so far as I attain knowledge of them, or rather attain them in themselves, for they are nothing but empirical modes of knowledge -- I cannot say, in the same sense of the terms, that if the conditioned is given, all its conditions (as appearances) are likewise given, and therefore cannot in any way infer the absolute totality of the series of its conditions. The appear- ances are in their apprehension themselves nothing but an empirical synthesis in space and time, and are given only in this synthesis. It does not, therefore, follow, that if the con- ditioned, in the [field of] appearance, is given, the synthesis which constitutes its empirical condition is given therewith and is presupposed. This synthesis first occurs in the regress, and never exists without it. What we can say is that a regress to the conditions, that is, a continued empirical synthesis, on the side of the conditions, is enjoined or set as a task, and that in this regress there can be no lack of given conditions. These considerations make it clear that the major premiss of the cosmological inference takes the conditioned in the transcendental sense of a pure category, while the minor pre- miss takes it in the empirical sense of a concept of the under- standing applied to mere appearances. The argument thus commits that dialectical fallacy which is entitled sophisma P 445 figurae dictionis. This fallacy is not, however, an artificial one; a quite natural illusion of our common reason leads us, when anything is given as conditioned, thus to assume in the major premiss, as it were without thought or question, its conditions and their series. This assumption is indeed simply the logical requirement that we should have adequate pre- misses for any given conclusion. Also, there is no reference to a time-order in the connection of the conditioned with its con- dition; they are presupposed as given together with it. Further, it is no less natural, in the minor premiss, to regard appear- ances both as things in themselves and as objects given to the pure understanding, than to proceed as we have done in the major, in which we have [similarly] abstracted from all those conditions of intuition under which alone objects can be given. Yet in so doing we have overlooked an important distinction between the concepts. The synthesis of the conditioned with its conditions (and the whole series of the latter) does not in the major premiss carry with it any limitation through time or any concept of succession. The empirical synthesis, on the other hand, that is, the series of the conditions in appearance, as subsumed in the minor premiss, is necessarily successive, the members of the series being given only as following upon one another in time; and I have therefore, in this case, no right to assume the absolute totality of the synthesis and of the series thereby represented. In the major premiss all the mem- bers of the series are given in themselves, without any condi- tion of time, but in this minor premiss they are possible only through the successive regress, which is given only in the process in which it is actually carried out. When this error has thus been shown to be involved in the argument upon which both parties alike base their cosmo- *********** unable to offer any sufficient title in support of their claims. But the quarrel is not thereby ended -- as if one or both of the parties had been proved to be wrong in the actual doctrines they assert, that is, in the conclusions of their arguments. For although they have failed to support their contentions by valid grounds of proof, nothing seems to be clearer than that since one of them asserts that the world has a beginning and the other that it has no beginning and is from eternity, one of the P 446 two must be in the right. But even if this be so, none the less, since the arguments on both sides are equally clear, it is im- possible to decide between them. The parties may be com- manded to keep the peace before the tribunal of reason; but the controversy none the less continues. There can therefore be no way of settling it once for all and to the satisfaction of both sides, save by their becoming convinced that the very fact of their being able so admirably to refute one another is evidence that they are really quarrelling about nothing, and that a certain transcendental illusion has mocked them with a reality where none is to be found. This is the path which we shall now proceed to follow in the settlement of a dispute that defies all attempts to come to a decision. * * * Zeno of Elea, a subtle dialectician, was severely repri- manded by Plato as a mischievous Sophist who, to show his skill, would set out to prove a proposition through convincing arguments and then immediately overthrow them by other arguments equally strong. Zeno maintained, for example, that God (probably conceived by him as simply the world) is neither finite nor infinite, neither in motion nor at rest, neither similar nor dissimilar to any other thing. To the critics of his procedure he appeared to have the absurd intention of denying both of two mutually contradictory propositions. But this ac- cusation does not seem to me to be justified. The first of his propositions I shall consider presently more in detail. As re- gards the others, if by the word 'God' he meant the universe, he would certainly have to say that it is neither abidingly present in its place, that is, at rest, nor that it changes its place, that is, is in motion; because all places are in the universe, and the universe is not, therefore, itself in any place. Again, if the universe comprehends in itself everything that exists, it cannot be either similar or dissimilar to any other thing, because there is no other thing, nothing outside it, with which it could be compared. If two opposed judgments presuppose an inad- missible condition, then in spite of their opposition, which does not amount to a contradiction strictly so-called, both fall to the ground, inasmuch as the condition, under which alone either of them can be maintained, itself falls. P 447 If it be said that all bodies have either a good smell or a smell that is not good, a third case is possible, namely, that a body has no smell at all; and both the conflicting proposi- tions may therefore be false. If, however, I say: all bodies are either good-smelling or not good-smelling (vel suaveolens vel non suaveolens), the two judgments are directly contradictory to one another, and the former only is false, its contradictory opposite, namely, that some bodies are not good-smelling, comprehending those bodies also which have no smell at all. Since, in the previous opposition (per disparata), smell, the contingent condition of the concept of the body, was not removed by the opposed judgment, but remained attached to it, the two judgments were not related as contradictory opposites. If, therefore, we say that the world is either infinite in extension or is not infinite (non est infinitus), and if the former proposition is false, its contradictory opposite, that the world is not infinite, must be true. And I should thus deny the exist- ence of an infinite world, without affirming in its place a finite world. But if we had said that the world is either infinite or finite (non-infinite), both statements might be false. For in that case we should be regarding the world in itself as determined in its magnitude, and in the opposed judgment we do not merely remove the infinitude, and with it perhaps the entire separate existence of the world, but attach a determination to the world, regarded as a thing actually existing in itself. This assertion may, however, likewise be false; the world may not be given as a thing in itself, nor as being in its magnitude either infinite or finite. I beg permission to entitle this kind of opposition dialectical, and that of contradictories analytical. Thus of two dialectically opposed judgments both may be false; for the one is not a mere contradictory of the other, but says something more than is required for a simple contradiction. If we regard the two propositions, that the world is infinite in magnitude and that it is finite in magnitude, as contra- dictory opposites, we are assuming that the world, the com- plete series of appearances, is a thing in itself that remains even if I suspend the infinite or the finite regress in the series of its appearances. If, however, I reject this assumption, or P 448 rather this accompanying transcendental illusion, and deny that the world is a thing in itself, the contradictory opposition of the two assertions is converted into a merely dialectical opposition. Since the world does not exist in itself, independ- ently of the regressive series of my representations, it exists in itself neither as an infinite whole nor as a finite whole. It exists only in the empirical regress of the series of appear- ances, and is not to be met with as something in itself. If, then, this series is always conditioned, and therefore can never be given as complete, the world is not an unconditioned whole, and does not exist as such a whole, either of infinite or of finite magnitude. What we have here said of the first cosmological idea, that is, of the absolute totality of magnitude in the [field of] appearance, applies also to all the others. The series of conditions is only to be met with in the regressive synthesis itself, not in the [field of] appearance viewed as a thing given in and by itself, prior to all regress. We must therefore say that the number of parts in a given appearance is in itself neither finite nor infinite. For an appearance is not something existing in itself, and its parts are first given in and through the regress of the decomposing synthesis, a regress which is never given in absolute completeness, either as finite or as infinite. This also holds of the series of subordinated causes, and of the series that proceeds from the conditioned to unconditioned necessary existence. These series can never be regarded as being in themselves in their totality either finite or infinite. Being series of subordinated representations, they exist only in the dynamical regress, and prior to this regress can have no existence in themselves as self-subsistent series of things. Thus the antinomy of pure reason in its cosmological ideas vanishes when it is shown that it is merely dialectical, and that it is a conflict due to an illusion which arises from our applying to appearances that exist only in our representations, and therefore, so far as they form a series, not otherwise than in a successive regress, that idea of absolute totality which holds only as a condition of things in themselves. From this antinomy we can, however, obtain, not indeed a dogmatic, but a critical and doctrinal advantage. It affords indirect proof of P 449 the transcendental ideality of appearances -- a proof which ought to convince any who may not be satisfied by the direct proof given in the Transcendental Aesthetic. This proof would consist in the following dilemma. If the world is a whole exist- ing in itself, it is either finite or infinite. But both alternatives are false (as shown in the proofs of the antithesis and thesis respectively). It is therefore also false that the world (the sum of all appearances) is a whole existing in itself. From this it then follows that appearances in general are nothing outside our representations -- which is just what is meant by their transcendental ideality. This remark is of some importance. It enables us to see that the proofs given in the fourfold antinomy are not merely baseless deceptions. On the supposition that appearances, and the sensible world which comprehends them all, are things in themselves, these proofs are indeed well-grounded. The conflict which results from the propositions thus obtained shows, however, that there is a fallacy in this assumption, and so leads us to the discovery of the true constitution of things, as objects of the senses. While the transcendental dialectic does not by any means favour scepticism, it certainly does favour the sceptical method, which can point to such dialectic as an example of its great services. For when the arguments of reason are allowed to oppose one another in unrestricted freedom, something advantageous, and likely to aid in the correction of our judgments, will always accrue, though it may not be what we set out to find. THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON Section 8 THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLE OF PURE REASON IN ITS APPLICATION TO THE COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS Since no maximum of the series of conditions in a sensible world, regarded as a thing in itself, is given through the cos- mological principle of totality, but can only be set as a task that calls for regress in the series of conditions, the principle of pure reason has to be amended in these terms; and it P 450 then preserves its validity, not indeed as the axiom that we think the totality as actually in the object, but as a problem for the understanding, and therefore for the subject, leading it to undertake and to carry on, in accordance with the completeness prescribed by the idea, the regress in the series of conditions of any given conditioned. For in our sensibility, that is, in space and time, every condition to which we can attain in the exposition of given appearances is again conditioned. For they are not objects in themselves -- were they such, the abso- lutely unconditioned might be found in them -- but simply empirical representations which must always find in intui- tion the condition that determines them in space and time. The principle of reason is thus properly only a rule, pre- scribing a regress in the series of the conditions of given appearances, and forbidding it to bring the regress to a close by treating anything at which it may arrive as absolutely un- conditioned. It is not a principle of the possibility of experience and of empirical knowledge of objects of the senses, and there- fore not a principle of the understanding; for every experience, in conformity with the given [forms of] intuition, is enclosed within limits. Nor is it a constitutive principle of reason, en- abling us to extend our concept of the sensible world beyond all possible experience. It is rather a principle of the greatest pos- sible continuation and extension of experience, allowing no em- pirical limit to hold as absolute. Thus it is a principle of reason which serves as a rule, postulating what we ought to do in the regress, but not anticipating what is present in the object as it is in itself, prior to all regress. Accordingly I entitle it a regulative principle of reason, to distinguish it from the prin- ciple of the absolute totality of the series of conditions, viewed as actually present in the object (that is, in the appearances), which would be a constitutive cosmological principle. I have tried to show by this distinction that there is no such con- stitutive principle, and so to prevent what otherwise, through a transcendental subreption, inevitably takes place, namely, the ascribing of objective reality to an idea that serves merely as a rule. In order properly to determine the meaning of this rule of P 451 pure reason, we must observe, first, that it cannot tell us what the object is, but only how the empirical regress is to be carried out so as to arrive at the complete concept of the object. If it attempted the former task, it would be a constitutive principle, such as pure reason can never supply. It cannot be regarded as maintaining that the series of conditions for a given con- ditioned is in itself either finite or infinite. That would be to treat a mere idea of absolute totality, which is only produced in the idea, as equivalent to thinking an object that cannot be given in any experience. For in terms of it we should be as- cribing to a series of appearances an objective reality which is independent of empirical synthesis. This idea of reason can therefore do no more than prescribe a rule to the regressive synthesis in the series of conditions; and in accordance with this rule the synthesis must proceed from the conditioned, through all subordinate conditions, up to the unconditioned. Yet it can never reach this goal, for the absolutely un- conditioned is not to be met with in experience. We must therefore first of all determine what we are to mean by the synthesis of a series, in cases in which the syn- thesis is never complete. In this connection two expressions are commonly employed, which are intended to mark a dis- tinction, though without correctly assigning the ground of the distinction. Mathematicians speak solely of a progressus in infinitum. Philosophers, whose task it is to examine concepts, refuse to accept this expression as legitimate, substituting for it the phrase progressus in indefinitum. We need not stop to examine the reasons for such a distinction, or to enlarge upon its useful or useless employment. We need only determine these concepts with such accuracy as is required for our par- ticular purposes. Of a straight line we may rightly say that it can be pro- duced to infinity. In this case the distinction between an in- finite and an indeterminately great advance (progressus in in- definitum) would be mere subtlety. When we say, ' Draw a line', it sounds indeed more correct to add in indefinitum than in infinitum. Whereas the latter means that you must not cease producing it -- which is not what is intended -- the former means only, produce it as far as you please; and if we are referring only to what it is in our power to do, this expression is quite P 452 correct, for we can always make the line longer, without end. So is it in all cases in which we speak only of the progress, that is, of the advance from the condition to the conditioned: this possible advance proceeds, without end, in the series of ap- pearances. From a given pair of parents the descending line of generation may proceed without end, and we can quite well regard the line as actually so continuing in the world. For in this case reason never requires an absolute totality of the series, since it does not presuppose that totality as a condition and as given (datum), but only as something con- ditioned, that allows of being given (dabile), and is added to without end. Quite otherwise is it with the problem: how far the regress extends, when it ascends in a series from something given as conditioned to its conditions. Can we say that the regress is in infinitum, or only that it is indeterminately far extended (in indefinitum)? Can we, for instance, ascend from the men now living, through the series of their ancestors, in infinitum; or can we only say that, so far as we have gone back, we have never met with an empirical ground for regarding the series as limited at any point, and that we are therefore justified and at the same time obliged, in the case of every ancestor, to search further for progenitors, though not indeed to presuppose them? We answer: when the whole is given in empirical intui- tion, the regress in the series of its inner conditions pro- ceeds in infinitum; but when a member only of the series is given, starting from which the regress has to proceed to abso- lute totality, the regress is only of indeterminate character (in indefinitum). Accordingly, the division of a body, that is, of a portion of matter given between certain limits, must be said to proceed in infinitum. For this matter is given as a whole, and therefore with all its possible parts, in empirical intuition. Since the condition of this whole is its part, and the condition of this part is the part of the part, and so on, and since in this regress of decomposition an unconditioned (indivisible) member of this series of conditions is never met with, not only is there never any empirical ground for stopping in the divi- sion, but the further members of any continued division are themselves empirically given prior to the continuation of the division. The division, that is to say, goes on in infinitum. On P 453 the other hand, since the series of ancestors of any given man is not given in its absolute totality in any possible experience, the regress proceeds from every member in the series of genera- tions to a higher member, and no empirical limit is encoun- tered which exhibits a member as absolutely unconditioned. And since the members, which might supply the condition, are not contained in an empirical intuition of the whole, prior to the regress, this regress does not proceed in infinitum, by divi- sion of the given, but only indefinitely far, searching for further members additional to those that are given, and which are themselves again always given as conditioned. In neither case, whether the regress be in infinitum or in indefinitum, may the series of conditions be regarded as being given as infinite in the object. The series are not things in themselves, but only appearances, which, as conditions of one another, are given only in the regress itself. The question, therefore, is no longer how great this series of conditions may be in itself, whether it be finite or infinite, for it is nothing in itself; but how we are to carry out the empirical regress, and how far we should continue it. Here we find an important dis- tinction in regard to the rule governing such procedure. When the whole is empirically given; it is possible to proceed back in the series of its inner conditions in infinitum. When the whole is not given, but has first to be given through empirical regress, we can only say that the search for still higher conditions of the series is possible in infinitum. In the former case we could say: there are always more members, empirically given, than I can reach through the regress of decomposition; in the latter case, however, the position is this: we can always proceed still further in the regress, because no member is empirically given as abso- lutely unconditioned; and since a higher member is therefore always possible, the enquiry regarding it is necessary. In the one case we necessarily find further members of the series; in the other case, since no experience is absolutely limited, the necessity is that we enquire for them. For either we have no perception which sets an absolute limit to the empirical re- gress, in which case we must not regard the regress as com- pleted, or we have a perception limiting our series, in which case the perception cannot be part of the series traversed (for that which limits must be distinct from that which is P 454 thereby limited), and we must therefore continue our regress to this condition also, and the regress is thus again resumed. These observations will be set in their proper light by their application in the following section. THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON Section 9 THE EMPIRICAL EMPLOYMENT OF THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLE OF REASON, IN RESPECT OF ALL COSMO- LOGICAL IDEAS We have already, on several occasions, shown that no trans- cendental employment can be made of the pure concepts either of the understanding or of reason; that the [assertion of] abso- lute totality of the series of conditions in the sensible world rests on a transcendental employment of reason in which reason demands this unconditioned completeness from what it assumes to be a thing in itself; and that since the sensible world contains no such completeness, we are never justified in enquiring, as regards the absolute magnitude of the series in the sensible world, whether it be limited or in itself unlimited, but only how far we ought to go in the empirical regress, when we trace experience back to its conditions, obeying the rule of reason, and therefore resting content with no answer to its questions save that which is in conformity with the object. What therefore alone remains to us is the validity of the principle of reason as a rule for the continuation and magnitude of a possible experience; its invalidity as a constitutive prin- ciple of appearances [viewed as things] in themselves has been sufficiently demonstrated. If we can keep these conclusions steadily in view, the self-conflict of reason will be entirely at an end. For not only will this critical solution destroy the illusion which set reason at variance with itself, but will replace it by teaching which, in correcting the misinterpretation that has been the sole source of the conflict, brings reason into agree- ment with itself. A principle which otherwise would be dialec- tical will thus be converted into a doctrinal principle. In fact, if this principle can be upheld as determining, in accordance P 455 with its subjective significance, and yet also in conformity with the objects of experience, the greatest possible empirical use of understanding, the outcome will be much the same as if it were -- what is impossible from pure reason -- an axiom which determined a priori the objects in themselves. For only in pro- portion as the principle is effective in directing the widest possible empirical employment of the understanding, can it exercise, in respect of the objects of experience, any influence in extending and correcting our knowledge. 1. Solution of the Cosmological Idea of the Totality of the Composition of the Appearances of a Cosmic Whole Here, as in the other cosmological questions, the regula- tive principle of reason is grounded on the proposition that in the empirical regress we can have no experience of an absolute limit, that is, no experience of any condition as being one that empirically is absolutely unconditioned. The reason is this: such an experience would have to contain a limitation of appearances by nothing, or by the void, and in the con- tinued regress we should have to be able to encounter this limitation in a perception -- which is impossible. This proposition, which virtually states that the only con- ditions which we can reach in the empirical regress are con- ditions which must themselves again be regarded as empiric- ally conditioned, contains the rule in terminis, that however far we may have advanced in the ascending series, we must always enquire for a still higher member of the series, which may or may not become known to us through experience. For the solution, therefore, of the first cosmological prob- lem we have only to decide whether in the regress to the un- conditioned magnitude of the universe, in time and space, this never limited ascent can be called a regress to infinity, or only an indeterminately continued regress (in indefinitum). The quite general representation of the series of all past states of the world, as well as of all the things which coexist in cosmic space, is itself merely a possible empirical regress which I think to myself, though in an indeterminate manner. Only in this way can the concept of such a series of conditions P 456 for a given perception arise at all. Now we have the cosmic whole only in concept, never, as a whole, in intuition. We cannot, therefore, argue from the magnitude of the cosmic whole to the magnitude of the regress, determining the latter in accordance with the former; on the contrary, only by reference to the magnitude of the empirical regress am I in a position to make for myself a concept of the magnitude of the world. But of this empirical regress the most that we can ever know is that from every given member of the series of conditions we have always still to advance empirically to a higher and more remote member. The magnitude of the whole of appearances is not thereby determined in any abso- lute manner; and we cannot therefore say that this regress proceeds to infinity. In doing so we should be anticipating members which the regress has not yet reached, represent- ing their number as so great that no empirical synthesis could attain thereto, and so should be determining the magnitude of the world (although only negatively) prior to the regress -- which is impossible. Since the world is not given me, in its totality, through any intuition, neither is its magnitude given me prior to the regress. We cannot, therefore, say anything at all in regard to the magnitude of the world, not even that there is in it a regress in infinitum. All that we can do is to seek for the concept of its magnitude according to the rule which determines the empirical regress in it. This rule says no more than that, however far we may have attained in the series of empirical conditions, we should never assume an absolute limit, but should subordinate every appearance, as con- ditioned, to another as its condition, and that we must advance to this condition. This is the regressus in indefini- tum, which, as it determines no magnitude in the object, is clearly enough distinguishable from the regressus in infini- tum. ++ This cosmic series can, therefore, be neither greater nor smaller than the possible empirical regress upon which alone its concept rests. And since this regress can yield neither a determinate infinite nor a determinate finite (that is, anything absolutely limited), it is evident that the magnitude of the world can be taken neither as finite nor as infinite. The regress, through which it is represented, allows of neither alternative. P 457 I cannot say, therefore, that the world is infinite in space or as regards past time. Any such concept of magnitude, as being that of a given infinitude, is empirically impossible, and therefore, in reference to the world as an object of the senses, also absolutely impossible. Nor can I say that the regress from a given perception to all that limits it in a series, whether in space or in past time, proceeds to infinity; that would be to presuppose that the world has infinite magnitude. I also can- not say that the regress is finite; an absolute limit is likewise empirically impossible. Thus I can say nothing regarding the whole object of experience, the world of sense; I must limit my assertions to the rule which determines how experience, in conformity with its object, is to be obtained and further extended. Thus the first and negative answer to the cosmological problem regarding the magnitude of the world is that the world has no first beginning in time and no outermost limit in space. For if we suppose the opposite, the world would be limited on the one hand by empty time and on the other by empty space. Since, however, as appearance, it cannot in itself be limited in either manner -- appearance not being a thing in itself -- these limits of the world would have to be given in a possible experience, that is to say, we should require to have a perception of limitation by absolutely empty time or space. But such an experience, as completely empty of content, is impossible. Consequently, an absolute limit of the world is impossible empirically, and therefore also absolutely. The affirmative answer likewise directly follows, namely, that the regress in the series of appearances, as a determina- tion of the magnitude of the world, proceeds in indefinitum. ++ It may be noted that this proof is presented in a very different manner from the dogmatic proof of the antithesis of the first antinomy. In that argument we regarded the sensible world, in accordance with the common and dogmatic view, as a thing given in itself, in its totality, prior to any regress; and we asserted that unless it occupies all time and all places, it cannot have any deter- minate position whatsoever in them. The conclusion also was there- fore different from that given above; for in the dogmatic proof we inferred the actual infinity of the world. P 458 This is equivalent to saying that, although the sensible world has no absolute magnitude, the empirical regress (through which alone it can be given on the side of its conditions) has its own rule, namely, that it must always advance from every member of the series, as conditioned, to one still more remote; doing so by means either of our own experience, or of the guiding-thread of history, or of the chain of effects and causes. And as the rule further demands, our sole and constant aim must be the extension of the possible empirical employment of the understanding, this being the only proper task of reason in the application of its principles. This rule does not prescribe a determinate empirical regress that must proceed without end in some one kind of appearance, e.g. that in proceeding from a living person through a series of progenitors we must never expect to meet with a first pair, or that in the series of cosmic bodies we must never admit an outermost sun. All that the rule requires is that the advance from appearances be to appearances; for even if these latter yield no actual perception (as is the case when for our con- sciousness they are too weak in degree to become experience), as appearances they none the less still belong to a possible experience. All beginning is in time and all limits of the extended are in space. But space and time belong only to the world of sense. Accordingly, while appearances in the world are conditionally limited, the world itself is neither conditionally nor uncon- ditionally limited. Similarly, since the world can never be given as complete, and since even the series of conditions for that which is given as conditioned cannot, as a cosmic series, be given as complete, the concept of the magnitude of the world is given only through the regress and not in a collective intuition prior to it. But the regress consists only in the determining of the magnitude, and does not give any determinate concept. It does not, therefore, yield any concept of a magnitude which, in relation to a certain [unit-] measure, can be described as infinite. In other words, the regress does not proceed to the infinite, as if the infinite could be given, but only indeterminately far, in order [by means of the regress] to give that empirical magnitude which first becomes actual in and through this very regress. P 459 II Solution of the Cosmological Idea of the Totality of Division of a Whole given in Intuition If we divide a whole which is given in intuition, we pro- ceed from something conditioned to the conditions of its pos- sibility. The division of the parts (subdivisio or decompositio) is a regress in the series of these conditions. The absolute totality of this series would be given only if the regress could reach simple parts. But if all the parts in a continuously pro- gressing decomposition are themselves again divisible, the division, that is, the regress from the conditioned to its con- ditions, proceeds in infinitum. For the conditions (the parts) are themselves contained in the conditioned, and since this is given complete in an intuition that is enclosed between limits the parts are one and all given together with the con- ditioned. The regress may not, therefore, be entitled merely a regress in indefinitum. This was permissible in regard to the first cosmological idea, since it required an advance from the conditioned to its conditions, which, as outside it, were not given through and along with it, but were first added to it in the em- pirical regress. We are not, however, entitled to say of a whole which is divisible to infinity, that it is made up of infinitely many parts. For although all parts are contained in the intuition of the whole, the whole division is not so contained, but consists only in the continuous decomposition, that is, in the regress itself, whereby the series first becomes actual. Since this regress is infinite, all the members or parts at which it arrives are contained in the given whole, viewed as an aggregate. But the whole series of the division is not so contained, for it is a successive infinite and never whole, and cannot, therefore, exhibit an infinite multiplicity, or any combination of an infinite multiplicity in a whole. This general statement is obviously applicable to space. Every space intuited as within limits is such a whole, the parts of which, as obtained by decomposition, are always themselves spaces. Every limited space is therefore infinitely divisible. From this a second application of the statement quite naturally follows, namely, to an outer appearance enclosed P 460 within limits, that is, to body. Its divisibility is grounded in the divisibility of space, which constitutes the possibility of the body as an extended whole. Body is therefore infinitely divis- ible, without consisting, however, of infinitely many parts. It may seem, indeed, that a body, since it has to be repre- sented in space as substance, will, as regards the law of the divisibility of space, differ from space. We may certainly grant that decomposition can never remove all compositeness from space; for that would mean that space, in which there is nothing self-subsistent, had ceased to be space, which is impos- sible. On the other hand, the assertion that if all compositeness of matter be thought away nothing at all will remain, does not appear to be compatible with the concept of a substance which is meant to be the subject of all compositeness, and which must persist in the elements of the composite, even although the connection in space, whereby they constitute a body, be removed. But while this is true of a thing in itself, as thought through a pure concept of the understanding, it does not hold of that which we entitle substance in the [field of] appearance. For this latter is not an absolute subject, but only an abiding image of sensibility; it is nothing at all save as an intuition, in which unconditionedness is never to be met with. But although this rule of progress in infinitum undoubtedly applies to the subdivision of an appearance, viewed as a mere filling of space, it cannot be made to apply to a whole in which already, as given, the parts are so definitely distinguished off from one another that they constitute a quantum discretum. We cannot assume that every part of an organised whole is itself again so organised that, in the analysis of the parts to infinity, still other organised parts are always to be met with; in a word, that the whole is organised to infinity. This is not a thinkable hypothesis. It is true, indeed, that the parts of matter, [as found] in their decomposition in infinitum, may be organ- ised. The infinitude of the division of a given appearance in space is grounded solely on the fact that, through this infini- tude, only the divisibility (in itself, as regards the number of its parts, absolutely indeterminate) is given -- the parts themselves being given and determined only through the subdivision. In a word, the whole is not in itself already divided. The number P 461 of parts, therefore, which a division may determine in a whole, will depend upon how far we care to advance in the regress of the division. On the other hand, in the case of an organic body conceived as organised in infinitum the whole is represented as already divided into parts, and as yielding to us, prior to all regress, a determinate and yet infinite number of parts. This, however, is self-contradictory. This infinite involution is re- garded as an infinite (that is, never to be completed) series, and yet at the same time as completed in a [discrete] com- plex. Infinite divisibility belongs to appearance only in so far as it is a quantum continuum; it is inseparable from the occupation of space, which is indeed its ground. To view any- thing as being a quantum discretum, is to take the number of units in it as being determined, and therefore as being in every case equal to some number. How far organisation can go in an organised body, only experience can show; and although, so far as our experience has gone, we may not have arrived with certainty at any inorganic part, the possibility of experiencing such parts must at least be recognised. When, however, we have in mind the transcendental division of an appearance in general, the question how far it may extend does not await an answer from experience; it is decided by a principle of reason which prescribes that, in the decomposition of the ex- tended, the empirical regress, in conformity with the nature of this appearance, be never regarded as absolutely completed. Concluding Note on the Solution of the Mathematical - trans- cendental Ideas, and Preliminary Observation on the Solution of the Dynamical - transcendental Ideas. In representing the antinomy of pure reason, through all the transcendental ideas, in tabular form, and in showing that the ground of this conflict and the only means of removing it is by declaring both the opposed assertions to be false, we have represented the conditions as, in all cases, standing to the con- ditioned in relations of space and time. This is the assumption ordinarily made by the common understanding, and to it the conflict is exclusively due. On this view all the dialectical representations of totality, in the series of conditions for a given conditioned, are throughout of the same character. The P 462 condition is always a member of a series along with the con- ditioned, and so is homogeneous with it. In such a series the regress was never thought as completed, or if it had to be so thought, a member, in itself conditioned, must have been falsely supposed to be a first member, and therefore to be unconditioned; the object, that is, the conditioned, might not always be considered merely according to its magnitude, but at least the series of its conditions was so regarded. Thus arose the difficulty -- a difficulty which could not be disposed of by any compromise but solely by cutting the knot -- that reason made the series either too long or too short for the understanding, so that the understanding could never be equal to the prescribed idea. But in all this we have been overlooking an essential dis- tinction that obtains among the objects, that is, among those concepts of understanding which reason endeavours to raise to ideas. According to the table of categories given above, two of these concepts imply a mathematical, the other two a dynamical synthesis of appearances. Hitherto it has not been necessary to take account of this distinction; for just as in the general representation of all transcendental ideas we have been conforming to conditions within the [field of] appearance, so in the two mathematical - transcendental ideas the only object we have had in mind is object as appearance. But now that we are proceeding to consider how far dynamical con- cepts of the understanding are adequate to the idea of reason, the distinction becomes of importance, and opens up to us an entirely new view of the suit in which reason is implicated. This suit, in our previous trial of it, has been dismissed as resting, on both sides, on false presuppositions. But since in the dynamical antinomy a presupposition compatible with the pretensions of reason may perhaps be found, and since the judge may perhaps make good what is lacking in the pleas which both sides have been guilty of misstating, the suit may be settled to the satisfaction of both parties, a procedure im- possible in the case of the mathematical antinomies. If we consider solely the extension of the series of condi- tions, and whether the series are adequate to the idea, or the idea too large or too small for the series, the series are indeed in P 463 these respects all homogeneous. But the concept of the under- standing, which underlies these ideas, may contain either a synthesis solely of the homogeneous (which is presupposed alike in the composition and in the division of every magni- tude), or a synthesis of the heterogeneous. For the hetero- geneous can be admitted as at least possible in the case of dynamical synthesis, alike in causal connection and in the connection of the necessary with the contingent. Hence in the mathematical connection of the series of appearances no other than a sensible condition is admissible, that is to say, none that is not itself a part of the series. On the other hand, in the dynamical series of sensible conditions, a heterogeneous condition, not itself a part of the series, but purely intelligible, and as such outside the series, can be allowed. In this way reason obtains satisfaction and the unconditioned is set prior to the appearances, while yet the invariably conditioned character of the appearances is not obscured, nor their series cut short, in violation of the principles prescribed by the understanding. Inasmuch as the dynamical ideas allow of a condition of appearances outside the series of the appearances, that is, a condition which is not itself appearance, we arrive at a con- clusion altogether different from any that was possible in the case of the mathematical antinomy. In it we were obliged to denounce both the opposed dialectical assertions as false. In the dynamical series, on the other hand, the completely conditioned, which is inseparable from the series considered as appearances, is bound up with a condition which, while indeed empirically unconditioned, is also non-sensible. We are thus able to obtain satisfaction for understanding on the one hand and for reason on the other. ++ Understanding does not admit among appearances any condi- tion which can itself be empirically unconditioned. But if for some conditioned in the [field of] appearance we can conceive an intellig- ible condition, not belonging to the series of appearances as one of its members, and can do so without in the least interrupting the series of empirical conditions, such a condition may be accepted as empirically unconditioned, without prejudice to the continuity of the empirical regress. P 464 The dialectical arguments, which in one or other way sought unconditioned totality in mere appearances, fall to the ground, and the pro- positions of reason, when thus given this more correct inter- pretation, may both alike be true. This can never be the case with those cosmological ideas which refer only to a mathe- matically unconditioned unity; for in them no condition of the series of appearances can be found that is not itself appear- ance, and as appearance one of the members of the series. III Solution of the Cosmological Idea of Totality in the Derivation of Cosmical Events from their Causes When we are dealing with what happens there are only two kinds of causality conceivable by us; the causality is either according to nature or arises from freedom. The former is the connection in the sensible world of one state with a pre- ceding state on which it follows according to a rule. Since the causality of appearances rests on conditions of time, and the preceding state, if it had always existed, could not have pro- duced an effect which first comes into being in time, it follows that the causality of the cause of that which happens or comes into being must itself also have come into being, and that in accordance with the principle of the understanding it must in its turn itself require a cause. By freedom, on the other hand, in its cosmological mean- ing, I understand the power of beginning a state spontane- ously. Such causality will not, therefore, itself stand under another cause determining it in time, as required by the law of nature. Freedom, in this sense, is a pure transcendental idea, which, in the first place, contains nothing borrowed from ex- perience, and which, secondly, refers to an object that cannot be determined or given in any experience. That everything which happens has a cause is a universal law, conditioning the very possibility of all experience. Hence the causality of the cause, which itself happens or comes to be, must itself in turn have a cause; and thus the entire field of experience, however far it may extend, is transformed into a sum-total of the merely natural. But since in this way no absolute totality of P 465 conditions determining causal relation can be obtained, reason creates for itself the idea of a spontaneity which can begin to act of itself, without requiring to be determined to action by an antecedent cause in accordance with the law of causality. It should especially be noted that the practical concept of freedom is based on this transcendental idea, and that in the latter lies the real source of the difficulty by which the ques- tion of the possibility of freedom has always been beset. Freedom in the practical sense is the will's independence of coercion through sensuous impulses. For a will is sensuous, in so far as it is pathologically affected, i.e. by sensuous motives; it is animal (arbitrium brutum), if it can be pathologically necessitated. The human will is certainly an arbitrium sensi- tivum, not, however, brutum but liberum. For sensibility does not necessitate its action. There is in man a power of self- determination, independently of any coercion through sensuous impulses. Obviously, if all causality in the sensible world were mere nature, every event would be determined by another in time, in accordance with necessary laws. Appearances, in determin- ing the will, would have in the actions of the will their natural effects, and would render the actions necessary. The denial of transcendental freedom must, therefore, involve the elimina- tion of all practical freedom. For practical freedom presup- poses that although something has not happened, it ought to have happened, and that its cause, [as found] in the [field of] appearance, is not therefore, so determining that it excludes a causality of our will -- a causality which, independently of those natural causes, and even contrary to their force and influence, can produce something that is determined in the time-order in accordance with empirical laws, and which can therefore begin a series of events entirely of itself. Here then, as always happens when reason, in venturing beyond the limits of possible experience, comes into conflict with itself the problem is not really physiological but trans- cendental. The question as to the possibility of freedom does indeed concern psychology; since it rests on dialectical arguments of pure reason, its treatment and solution belong exclusively to transcendental philosophy. Before attempting P 466 this solution, a task which transcendental philosophy cannot decline, I must define somewhat more accurately the procedure of transcendental philosophy in dealing with the problem. If appearances were things in themselves, and space and time forms of the existence of things in themselves, the condi- tions would always be members of the same series as the con- ditioned; and thus, in the present case, as in the other transcen- dental ideas, the antinomy would arise, that the series must be too large or too small for the understanding. But the dynami- cal concepts of reason, with which we have to deal in this and the following section, possess this peculiarity that they are not concerned with an object considered as a magnitude, but only with its existence. Accordingly we can abstract from the mag- nitude of the series of conditions, and consider only the dynami- cal relation of the condition to the conditioned. The difficulty which then meets us, in dealing with the question regarding nature and freedom, is whether freedom is possible at all, and if it be possible, whether it can exist along with the universality of the natural law of causality. Is it a truly disjunctive propo- sition to say that every effect in the world must arise either from nature or from freedom; or must we not rather say that in one and the same event, in different relations, both can be found? That all events in the sensible world stand in thorough- going connection in accordance with unchangeable laws of nature is an established principle of the Transcendental Ana- lytic, and allows of no exception. The question, therefore, can only be whether freedom is completely excluded by this inviol- able rule, or whether an effect, notwithstanding its being thus determined in accordance with nature, may not at the same time be grounded in freedom. The common but fallacious pre- supposition of the absolute reality of appearances here mani- fests its injurious influence, to the confounding of reason. For if appearances are things in themselves, freedom cannot be up- held. Nature will then be the complete and sufficient deter- mining cause of every event. The condition of the event will be such as can be found only in the series of appearances; both it and its effect will be necessary in accordance with the law of nature. If, on the other hand, appearances are not taken for more than they actually are; if they are viewed not as things in themselves, but merely as representations, connected accord- P 467 ing to empirical laws, they must themselves have grounds which are not appearances. The effects of such an intelligible cause appear, and accordingly can be determined through other appearances, but its causality is not so determined. While the effects are to be found in the series of empirical con- ditions, the intelligible cause, together with its causality, is outside the series. Thus the effect may be regarded as free in respect of its intelligible cause, and at the same time in respect of appearances as resulting from them according to the neces- sity of nature. This distinction, when stated in this quite general and abstract manner, is bound to appear extremely subtle and obscure, but will become clear in the course of its application. My purpose has only been to point out that since the thorough- going connection of all appearances, in a context of nature, is an inexorable law, the inevitable consequence of obstinately insisting upon the reality of appearances is to destroy all freedom. Those who thus follow the common view have never been able to reconcile nature and freedom. Possibility of Causality through Freedom, in Harmony with the Universal Law of Natural Necessity. Whatever in an object of the senses is not itself appearance, I entitle intelligible. If, therefore, that which in the sensible world must be regarded as appearance has in itself a faculty which is not an object of sensible intuition, but through which it can be the cause of appearances, the causality of this being can be regarded from two points of view. Regarded as the causality of a thing in itself, it is intelligible in its action; re- garded as the causality of an appearance in the world of sense, it is sensible in its effects. We should therefore have to form both an empirical and an intellectual concept of the causality of the faculty of such a subject, and to regard both as referring to one and the same effect. This twofold manner of conceiving the faculty possessed by an object of the senses does not contradict any of the concepts which we have to form of appearances and of a possible experience. For since they are not things in them- selves, they must rest upon a transcendental object which deter- mines them as mere representations; and consequently there is nothing to prevent us from ascribing to this transcendental P 468 object, besides the quality in terms of which it appears, a causality which is not appearance, although its effect is to be met with in appearance. Every efficient cause must have a character, that is, a law of its causality, without which it would not be a cause. On the above supposition, we should, therefore, in a subject belonging to the sensible world have, first, an empirical character, whereby its actions, as appear- ances, stand in thoroughgoing connection with other appear- ances in accordance with unvarying laws of nature. And since these actions can be derived from the other appearances, they constitute together with them a single series in the order of nature. Secondly, we should also have to allow the subject an intelligible character, by which it is indeed the cause of those same actions [in their quality] as appearances, but which does not itself stand under any conditions of sensibility, and is not itself appearance. We can entitle the former the character of the thing in the [field of] appearance, and the latter its char- acter as thing in itself. Now this acting subject would not, in its intelligible character, stand under any conditions of time; time is only a condition of appearances, not of things in themselves. In this subject no action would begin or cease, and it would not, there- fore, have to conform to the law of the determination of all that is alterable in time, namely, that everything which happens must have its cause in the appearances which precede it. In a word, its causality, so far as it is intelligible, would not have a place in the series of those empirical conditions through which the event is rendered necessary in the world of sense. This intelligible character can never, indeed, be immediately known, for nothing can be perceived except in so far as it appears. It would have to be thought in accordance with the empirical character-- just as we are constrained to think a transcendental object as underlying appearances, though we know nothing of what it is in itself. In its empirical character, therefore, this subject, as ap- pearance, would have to conform to all the laws of causal determination. To this extent it could be nothing more than a part of the world of sense, and its effects, like all other P 469 appearances, must be the inevitable outcome of nature. In proportion as outer appearances are found to influence it, and in proportion as its empirical character, that is, the law of its causality, becomes known through experience, all its actions must admit of explanation in accordance with the laws of nature. In other words, all that is required for their complete and necessary determination must be found in a possible experience. In its intelligible character (though we can only have a general concept of that character) this same subject must be considered to be free from all influence of sensibility and from all determination through appearances. Inasmuch as it is noumenon, nothing happens in it; there can be no change requiring dynamical determination in time, and therefore no causal dependence upon appearances. And consequently, since natural necessity is to be met with only in the sensible world, this active being must in its actions be independent of, and free from all such necessity. No action begins in this active being itself; but we may yet quite correctly say that the active being of itself begins its effects in the sensible world. In so doing, we should not be asserting that the effects in the sensible world can begin of themselves; they are always prede- termined through antecedent empirical conditions, though solely through their empirical character (which is no more than the appearance of the intelligible), and so are only pos- sible as a continuation of the series of natural causes. In this way freedom and nature, in the full sense of these terms, can exist together, without any conflict, in the same actions, accord- ing as the actions are referred to their intelligible or to their sensible cause. Explanation of the Cosmological Idea of Freedom in its con- nection with Universal Natural Necessity. I have thought it advisable to give this outline sketch of the solution of our transcendental problem, so that we may be the better enabled to survey the course which reason has to adopt in arriving at the solution. I shall now proceed to set forth the various factors involved in this solution, and to con- sider each in detail. That everything which happens has a cause, is a law of nature. Since the causality of this cause, that is, the action of P 470 the cause, is antecedent in time to the effect which has ensued upon it, it cannot itself have always existed, but must have happened, and among the appearances must have a cause by which it in turn is determined. Consequently, all events are empirically determined in an order of nature. Only in virtue of this law can appearances constitute a nature and become objects of experience. This law is a law of the understanding, from which no departure can be permitted, and from which no appearance may be exempted. To allow such exemption would be to set an appearance outside all possible experience, to distinguish it from all objects of possible experience, and so to make of it a mere thought-entity, a phantom of the brain. This would seem to imply the existence of a chain of causes which in the regress to their conditions allows of no absolute tot- ality. But that need not trouble us. The point has already been dealt with in the general discussion of the antinomy into which reason falls when in the series of appearances it proceeds to the unconditioned. Were we to yield to the illusion of transcendental realism, neither nature nor freedom would remain. The only question here is this: -- Admitting that in the whole series of events there is nothing but natural necessity, is it yet possible to regard one and the same event as being in one aspect merely an effect of nature and in another aspect an effect due to free- dom; or is there between these two kinds of causality a direct contradiction? Among the causes in the [field of] appearance there cer- tainly cannot be anything which could begin a series abso- lutely and of itself. Every action, [viewed] as appearance, in so far as it gives rise to an event, is itself an event or happening, and presupposes another state wherein its cause is to be found. Thus everything which happens is merely a continuation of the series, and nothing that begins of itself is a possible mem- ber of the series. The actions of natural causes in the time- sequence are thus themselves effects; they presuppose causes antecedent to them in the temporal series. An original act, such as can by itself bring about what did not exist before, is not to be looked for in the causally connected appearances. Now granting that effects are appearances and that their cause is likewise appearance, is it necessary that the causality of their cause should be exclusively empirical? May it not P 471 rather be, that while for every effect in the [field of] appear- ance a connection with its cause in accordance with the laws of empirical causality is indeed required, this empirical causality, without the least violation of its connection with natural causes, is itself an effect of a causality that is not empirical but intelligible? This latter causality would be the action of a cause which, in respect of appearances, is original, and therefore, as pertaining to this faculty, not appearance but intelligible; although it must otherwise, in so far as it is a link in the chain of nature, be regarded as entirely belonging to the world of sense. The principle of the causal connection of appearances is required in order that we may be able to look for and to determine the natural conditions of natural events, that is to say, their causes in the [field of] appearance. If this principle be admitted, and be not weakened through any exception, the requirements of the understanding, which in its empirical employment sees in all happenings nothing but nature, and is justified in so doing, are completely satisfied; and physical ex- planations may proceed on their own lines without interference. These requirements are not in any way infringed, if we assume, even though the assumption should be a mere fiction, that some among the natural causes have a faculty which is intelligible only, inasmuch as its determination to action never rests upon empirical conditions, but solely on grounds of understanding. We must, of course, at the same time be able to assume that the action of these causes in the [field of] appearance is in con- formity with all the laws of empirical causality. In this way the acting subject, as causa phaenomenon, would be bound up with nature through the indissoluble dependence of all its actions, and only as we ascend from the empirical object to the transcendental should we find that this subject, together with all its causality in the [field of] appearance, has in its noumenon certain conditions which must be regarded as purely intelligible. For if in determining in what ways appear- ances can serve as causes we follow the rules of nature, we need not concern ourselves what kind of ground for these appearances and their connection may have to be thought as existing in the transcendental subject, which is empirically P 472 unknown to us. This intelligible ground does not have to be considered in empirical enquiries; it concerns only thought in the pure understanding; and although the effects of this thought and action of the pure understanding are to be met with in the appearances, these appearances must none the less be capable of complete causal explanation in terms of other appearances in accordance with natural laws. We have to take their strictly empirical character as the supreme ground of explanation, leaving entirely out of account their intelligible character (that is, the transcendental cause of their empirical character) as being completely unknown, save in so far as the empirical serves for its sensible sign. Let us apply this to experience. Man is one of the appear- ances of the sensible world, and in so far one of the natural causes the causality of which must stand under empirical laws. Like all other things in nature, he must have an em- pirical character. This character we come to know through the powers and faculties which he reveals in his actions. In lifeless, or merely animal, nature we find no ground for thinking that any faculty is conditioned otherwise than in a merely sensible manner. Man, however, who knows all the rest of nature solely through the senses, knows himself also through pure apperception; and this, indeed, in acts and inner determinations which he cannot regard as impressions of the senses. He is thus to himself, on the one hand phenomenon, and on the other hand, in respect of certain faculties the action of which cannot be ascribed to the receptivity of sensibility, a purely intelligible object. We entitle these faculties understanding and reason. The latter, in particular, we distinguish in a quite peculiar and especial way from all empirically conditioned powers. For it views its objects ex- clusively in the light of ideas, and in accordance with them determines the understanding, which then proceeds to make an empirical use of its own similarly pure concepts. That our reason has causality, or that we at least represent it to ourselves as having causality, is evident from the impera- tives which in all matters of conduct we impose as rules upon our active powers. 'Ought' expresses a kind of necessity and of connection with grounds which is found nowhere else in the P 473 whole of nature. The understanding can know in nature only what is, what has been, or what will be. We cannot say that anything in nature ought to be other than what in all these time-relations it actually is. When we have the course of nature alone in view, 'ought' has no meaning whatsoever. It is just as absurd to ask what ought to happen in the natural world as to ask what properties a circle ought to have. All that we are justified in asking is: what happens in nature? what are the properties of the circle? This 'ought' expresses a possible action the ground of which cannot be anything but a mere concept; whereas in the case of a merely natural action the ground must always be an appearance. The action to which the 'ought' applies must in- deed be possible under natural conditions. These conditions, however, do not play any part in determining the will itself, but only in determining the effect and its consequences in the [field of] appearance. No matter how many natural grounds or how many sensuous impulses may impel me to will, they can never give rise to the 'ought', but only to a willing which, while very far from being necessary, is always conditioned; and the 'ought' pronounced by reason confronts such willing with a limit and an end -- nay more, forbids or authorises it. Whether what is willed be an object of mere sensibility (the pleasant) or of pure reason (the good),reason will not give way to any ground which is empirically given. Reason does not here follow the order of things as they present themselves in appearance, but frames to itself with perfect spontaneity an order of its own ac- cording to ideas, to which it adapts the empirical conditions, and according to which it declares actions to be necessary, even although they have never taken place, and perhaps never will take place. And at the same time reason also presupposes that it can have causality in regard to all these actions, since otherwise no empirical effects could be expected from its ideas. Now, in view of these considerations, let us take our stand, and regard it as at least possible for reason to have causality with respect to appearances. Reason though it be, it must none the less exhibit an empirical character. For every cause presupposes a rule according to which certain appear- ances follow as effects; and every rule requires uniformity in the effects. This uniformity is, indeed, that upon which the P 474 concept of cause (as a faculty) is based, and so far as it must be exhibited by mere appearances may be named the em- pirical character of the cause. This character is permanent, but its effects, according to variation in the concomitant and in part limiting conditions, appear in changeable forms. Thus the will of every man has an empirical character, which is nothing but a certain causality of his reason, so far as that causality exhibits, in its effects in the [field of] appearance, a rule from which we may gather what, in their kind and de- grees, are the actions of reason and the grounds thereof, and so may form an estimate concerning the subjective principles of his will. Since this empirical character must itself be dis- covered from the appearances which are its effect and from the rule to which experience shows them to conform, it follows that all the actions of men in the [field of] appear- ance are determined in conformity with the order of nature, by their empirical character and by the other causes which co- moderate with that character; and if we could exhaustively in- vestigate all the appearances of men's wills, there would not be found a single human action which we could not predict with certainty, and recognise as proceeding necessarily from its antecedent conditions. So far, then, as regards this em- pirical character there is no freedom; and yet it is only in the light of this character that man can be studied -- if, that is to say, we are simply observing, and in the manner of anthro- pology seeking to institute a physiological investigation into the motive causes of his actions. But when we consider these actions in their relation to reason -- I do not mean speculative reason, by which we en- deavour to explain their coming into being, but reason in so far as it is itself the cause producing them -- if, that is to say, we compare them with [the standards of] reason in its practical bearing, we find a rule and order altogether different from the order of nature. For it may be that all that has happened in the course of nature, and in accordance with its empirical grounds must inevitably have happened, ought not to have happened. Sometimes, however, we find, or at least believe that we find, that the ideas of reason have in actual fact proved their caus- ality in respect of the actions of men, as appearances; and that these actions have taken place, not because they were P 475 determined by empirical causes, but because they were deter- mined by grounds of reason. Granted, then, that reason may be asserted to have caus- ality in respect of appearance, its action can still be said to be free, even although its empirical character (as a mode of sense) is completely and necessarily determined in all its detail. This empirical character is itself determined in the in- telligible character (as a mode of thought). The latter, how- ever, we do not know; we can only indicate its nature by means of appearances; and these really yield an immediate knowledge only of the mode of sense, the empirical char- acter. The action, in so far as it can be ascribed to a mode of thought as its cause, does not follow therefrom in accord- ance with empirical laws; that is to say, it is not preceded by the conditions of pure reason, but only by their effects in the [field of] appearance of inner sense. Pure reason, as a purely intelligible faculty, is not subject to the form of time, nor consequently to the conditions of succession in time. The causality of reason in its intelligible character does not, in pro- ducing an effect, arise or begin to be at a certain time. For in that case it would itself be subject to the natural law of appear- ances, in accordance with which causal series are determined in time; and its causality would then be nature, not freedom. Thus all that we are justified in saying is that, if reason can have causality in respect of appearances, it is a faculty through which the sensible condition of an empirical series of effects first begins. For the condition which lies in reason is not sensible, and therefore does not itself begin to be. And thus what we failed to find in any empirical series is disclosed as being possible, namely, that the condition of a successive series of events may itself be empirically unconditioned. ++ The real morality of actions, their merit or guilt, even that of our own conduct, thus remains entirely hidden from us. Our im- putations can refer only to the empirical character. How much of this character is ascribable to the pure effect of freedom, how much to mere nature, that is, to faults of temperament for which there is no responsibility, or to its happy constitution (merito fortunae), can never be determined; and upon it therefore no perfectly just judg- ments can be passed. P 476 For here the condition is outside the series of appearances (in the intelligible), and therefore is not subject to any sensible con- dition, and to no time-determination through an antecedent cause. The same cause does, indeed, in another relation, belong to the series of appearances. Man is himself an appearance. His will has an empirical character, which is the empirical cause of all his actions. There is no condition determining man in accordance with this character which is not contained in the series of natural effects, or which is not subject to their law -- the law according to which there can be no empirically unconditioned causality of that which happens in time. There- fore no given action (since it can be perceived only as appear- ance) can begin absolutely of itself. But of pure reason we cannot say that the state wherein the will is determined is preceded and itself determined by some other state. For since reason is not itself an appearance, and is not subject to any conditions of sensibility, it follows that even as regards its causality there is in it no time-sequence, and that the dyna- mical law of nature, which determines succession in time in accordance with rules, is not applicable to it. Reason is the abiding condition of all those actions of the will under [the guise of] which man appears. Before ever they have happened, they are one and all predetermined in the empirical character. In respect of the intelligible character, of which the empirical character is the sensible schema, there can be no before and after; every action, irrespective of its relation in time to other appearances, is the immediate effect of the intelligible character of pure reason. Reason therefore acts freely; it is not dynamically determined in the chain of natural causes through either outer or inner grounds antecedent in time. This freedom ought not, therefore, to be conceived only negatively as independence of empirical conditions. The faculty of reason, so regarded, would cease to be a cause of 5852)appearances. It must also be described in positive terms, as the power of originating a series of events. In reason itself nothing begins; as unconditioned condition of every voluntary act, it admits of no conditions antecedent to itself in time. Its effect has, indeed, a beginning in the series of appearances, but never in this series an absolutely first beginning. P 477 In order to illustrate this regulative principle of reason by an example of its empirical employment -- not, however, to con- firm it, for it is useless to endeavour to prove transcendental propositions by examples -- let us take a voluntary action, for example, a malicious lie by which a certain confusion has been caused in society. First of all, we endeavour to discover the motives to which it has been due, and then, secondly, in the light of these, we proceed to determine how far the action and its consequences can be imputed to the offender. As regards the first question, we trace the empirical character of the action to its sources, finding these in defective education, bad company, in part also in the viciousness of a natural disposition insensitive to shame, in levity and thoughtlessness, not neglecting to take into account also the occasional causes that may have inter- vened. We proceed in this enquiry just as we should in ascer- taining for a given natural effect the series of its determining causes. But although we believe that the action is thus deter- mined, we none the less blame the agent, not indeed on account of his unhappy disposition, nor on account of the circum- stances that have influenced him, nor even on account of his previous way of life; for we presuppose that we can leave out of consideration what this way of life may have been, that we can regard the past series of conditions as not having occurred and the act as being completely unconditioned by any preceding state, just as if the agent in and by himself began in this action an entirely new series of consequences. Our blame is based on a law of reason whereby we regard reason as a cause that irrespective of all the above-mentioned empirical conditions could have determined, and ought to have determined, the agent to act otherwise. This causality of reason we do not re- gard as only a co-operating agency, but as complete in itself, even when the sensuous impulses do not favour but are directly opposed to it; the action is ascribed to the agent's intelligible character; in the moment when he utters the lie, the guilt is entirely his. Reason, irrespective of all empirical conditions of the act, is completely free, and the lie is entirely due to its default. Such imputation clearly shows that we consider reason to be unaffected by these sensible influences, and not liable to alteration. Its appearances -- the modes in which it manifests P 478 itself in its effects -- do alter; but in itself [so we consider] there is no preceding state determining the state that follows. That is to say, it does not belong to the series of sensible conditions which render appearances necessary in accordance with laws of nature. Reason is present in all the actions of men at all times and under all circumstances, and is always the same; but it is not itself in time, and does not fall into any new state in which it was not before. In respect to new states, it is deter- mining, not determinable. We may not, therefore, ask why reason has not determined itself differently, but only why it has not through its causality determined the appearances differ- ently. But to this question no answer is possible. For a different intelligible character would have given a different empirical character. When we say that in spite of his whole previous course of life the agent could have refrained from lying, this only means that the act is under the immediate power of reason, and that reason in its causality is not subject to any conditions of appearance or of time. Although difference of time makes a fundamental difference to appearances in their relations to one another -- for appearances are not things in themselves and therefore not causes in themselves -- it can make no difference to the relation in which the action stands to reason. Thus in our judgments in regard to the causality of free actions, we can get as far as the intelligible cause, but not be- yond it. We can know that it is free, that is, that it is deter- mined independently of sensibility, and that in this way it may be the sensibly unconditioned condition of appearances. But to explain why in the given circumstances the intelligible char- acter should give just these appearances and this empirical character transcends all the powers of our reason, indeed all its rights of questioning, just as if we were to ask why the trans- cendental object of our outer sensible intuition gives intuition in space only and not some other mode of intuition. But the problem which we have to solve does not require us to raise any such questions. Our problem was this only: whether freedom and natural necessity can exist without conflict in one and the same action; and this we have sufficiently answered. We have shown that since freedom may stand in relation to a quite different kind of conditions from those of natural necessity, the law of the latter does not affect the former, and that both P 479 may exist, independently of one another and without inter- fering with each other. * * * The reader should be careful to observe that in what has been said our intention has not been to establish the reality of freedom as one of the faculties which contain the cause of the appearances of our sensible world. For that enquiry, as it does not deal with concepts alone, would not have been trans- cendental. And further, it could not have been successful, since we can never infer from experience anything which can- not be thought in accordance with the laws of experience. It has not even been our intention to prove the possibility of freedom. For in this also we should not have succeeded, since we cannot from mere concepts a priori know the possibility of any real ground and its causality. Freedom is here being treated only as a transcendental idea whereby reason is led to think that it can begin the series of conditions in the [field of] appearance by means of the sensibly unconditioned, and so becomes involved in an antinomy with those very laws which it itself prescribes to the empirical employment of the under- standing. What we have alone been able to show, and what we have alone been concerned to show, is that this antinomy rests on a sheer illusion, and that causality through freedom is at least not incompatible with nature. IV Solution of the Cosmological Idea of the Totality of the De- pendence of Appearances as regards their Existence in general In the preceding subsection we have considered the changes of the sensible world in so far as they form a dynamical series, each member being subordinate to another as effect to cause. We shall now employ this series of states merely to guide us in our search for an existence that may serve as the supreme condition of all that is alterable, that is, in our search for necessary being. We are concerned here, not with unconditioned causality, but with the unconditioned existence of substance itself. The series which we have in P 480 view is, therefore, really a series of concepts, not a series of intuitions in which one intuition is the condition of the other. But it is evident that since everything in the sum-total of appearances is alterable, and therefore conditioned in its existence, there cannot be in the whole series of dependent ex- istence any unconditioned member the existence of which can be regarded as absolutely necessary. Hence, if appearances were things in themselves, and if, as would then follow, the condition and the conditioned always belonged to one and the same series of intuitions, by no possibility could a necessary being exist as the condition of the existence of appearances in the world of sense. The dynamical regress is distinguished in an important re- spect from the mathematical. Since the mathematical regress is concerned only with the combining of parts to form a whole, or the division of a whole into parts, the conditions of this series must always be regarded as parts of the series, and there- fore as homogeneous and as appearances. In the dynamical regress, on the other hand, we are concerned, not with the pos- sibility of an unconditioned whole of given parts, or with an unconditioned part for a given whole, but with the derivation of a state from its cause, or of the contingent existence of sub- stance itself from necessary existence. In this latter regress, it is not, therefore, necessary that the condition should form part of an empirical series along with the conditioned. A way of escape from this apparent antinomy thus lies open to us. Both of the conflicting propositions may be true, if taken in different connections. All things in the world of sense may be contingent, and so have only an empirically conditioned existence, while yet there may be a non-empirical condition of the whole series; that is, there may exist an un- conditionally necessary being. This necessary being, as the intelligible condition of the series, would not belong to it as a member, not even as the highest member of it, nor would it render any member of the series empirically unconditioned. The whole sensible world, so far as regards the empirically conditioned existence of all its various members, would be left unaffected. This way of conceiving how an unconditioned P 481 being may serve as the ground of appearance differs from that which we followed in the preceding subsection, in dealing with the empirically unconditioned causality of freedom. For there the thing itself was as cause (substantia phaenomenon) con- ceived to belong to the series of conditions, and only its causality was thought as intelligible. Here, on the other hand, the necessary being must be thought as entirely outside the series of the sensible world (as ens extramundanum), and as purely intelligible. In no other way can it be secured against the law which renders all appearances contingent and de- pendent. The regulative principle of reason, so far as it bears upon our present problem, is therefore this, that everything in the sensible world has an empirically conditioned existence, and that in no one of its qualities can it be unconditionally neces- sary; that for every member in the series of conditions we must expect, and as far as possible seek, an empirical condition in some possible experience; and that nothing justifies us in deriving an existence from a condition outside the empirical series or even in regarding it in its place within the series as absolutely independent and self-sufficient. At the same time this principle does not in any way debar us from recognis- ing that the whole series may rest upon some intelligible being that is free from all empirical conditions and itself contains the ground of the possibility of all appearances. In these remarks we have no intention of proving the un- conditionally necessary existence of such a being, or even of establishing the possibility of a purely intelligible condition of the existence of appearances in the sensible world. Just as, on the one hand, we limit reason, lest in leaving the guiding- thread of the empirical conditions it should go straying into the transcendent, adopting grounds of explanation that are incapable of any representation in concreto, so, on the other hand, we limit the law of the purely empirical employment of the understanding, lest it should presume to decide as to the possibility of things in general, and should declare the in- telligible to be impossible, merely on the ground that it is not of any use in explaining appearances. Thus all that we have shown is that the thoroughgoing contingency of all natural things, and of all their empirical conditions, is quite P 482 consistent with the optional assumption of a necessary, though purely intelligible, condition; and that as there is no real con- tradiction between the two assertions, both may be true. Such an absolutely necessary being, as conceived by the under- standing, may be in itself impossible, but this can in no wise be inferred from the universal contingency and dependence of everything belonging to the sensible world, nor from the prin- ciple which interdicts us from stopping at any one of its con- tingent members and from appealing to a cause outside the world. Reason proceeds by one path in its empirical use, and by yet another path in its transcendental use. The sensible world contains nothing but appearances, and these are mere representations which are always sensibly con- ditioned; in this field things in themselves are never objects to us. It is not therefore surprising that in dealing with a member of the empirical series, no matter what member it may be, we are never justified in making a leap out beyond the context of sensibility. To do so is to treat the appearances as if they were things in themselves which exist apart from their tran- scendental ground, and which can remain standing while we seek an outside cause of their existence. This certainly would ultimately be the case with contingent things, but not with mere representations of things, the contingency of which is itself merely phenomenon, and can lead to no other regress than that which determines the phenomena, that is, solely to the empirical regress. On the other hand, to think an intelli- gible ground of the appearances, that is, of the sensible world, and to think it as free from the contingency of appearances, does not conflict either with the unlimited empirical regress in the series of appearances nor with their thoroughgoing con- tingency. That, indeed, is all that we had to do in order to remove the apparent antinomy; and it can be done in this way only. If for everything conditioned in its existence the con- dition is always sensible, and therefore belongs to the series, it must itself in turn be conditioned, as we have shown in the antithesis of the fourth antinomy. Either, therefore, reason through its demand for the unconditioned must remain in conflict with itself, or this unconditioned must be posited out- side the series, in the intelligible. Its necessity will not then P 483 require, or allow of, any empirical condition; so far as appear- ances are concerned, it will be unconditionally necessary. The empirical employment of reason, in reference to the conditions of existence in the sensible world, is not affected by the admission of a purely intelligible being; it proceeds, in accordance with the principle of thoroughgoing contingency, from empirical conditions to higher conditions which are always again empirical. But it is no less true, when what we have in view is the pure employment of reason, in reference to ends, that this regulative principle does not exclude the assumption of an intelligible cause which is not in the series. For the intelligible cause then signifies only the purely tran- scendental and to us unknown ground of the possibility of the sensible series in general. Its existence as independent of all sensible conditions and as in respect of these conditions un- conditionally necessary, is not inconsistent with the unlimited contingency of appearances, that is to say, with the never- ending regress in the series of empirical conditions. Concluding Note on the whole Antinomy of Pure Reason. So long as reason, in its concepts, has in view simply the totality of conditions in the sensible world, and is considering what satisfaction in this regard it can obtain for them, our ideas are at once transcendental and cosmological. Immedi- ately, however, the unconditioned (and it is with this that we are really concerned) is posited in that which lies entirely outside the sensible world, and therefore outside all possible experi- ence, the ideas become transcendent. They then no longer serve only for the completion of the empirical employment of reason -- an idea [of completeness] which must always be pursued, though it can never be completely achieved. On the contrary, they detach themselves completely from experience, and make for themselves objects for which experience supplies no material, and whose objective reality is not based on comple- tion of the empirical series but on pure a priori concepts. Such transcendent ideas have a purely intelligible object; and this object may indeed be admitted as a transcendental object, but only if we likewise admit that, for the rest, we have no know- P 484 ledge in regard to it, and that it cannot be thought as a deter- minate thing in terms of distinctive inner predicates. As it is independent of all empirical concepts, we are cut off from any reasons that could establish the possibility of such an object, and have not the least justification for assuming it. It is a mere thought-entity. Nevertheless the cosmological idea which has given rise to the fourth antinomy impels us to take this step. For the existence of appearances, which is never self-grounded but always conditioned, requires us to look around for something different from all appearances, that is, for an intelligible object in which this contingency may terminate. But once we have allowed ourselves to assume a self-subsistent reality entirely outside the field of sensibility, appearances can only be viewed as contingent modes whereby beings that are themselves intelli- gences represent intelligible objects. Consequently, the only resource remaining to us is the use of analogy, by which we employ the concepts of experience in order to form some sort of concept of intelligible things -- things of which as they are in themselves we have yet not the least knowledge. Since the contingent is not to be known save through ex- perience, and we are here concerned with things which are not to be in any way objects of experience, we must derive the knowledge of them from that which is in itself necessary, that is, from pure concepts of things in general. Thus the very first step which we take beyond the world of sense obliges us, in seeking for such new knowledge, to begin with an enquiry into absolutely necessary being, and to derive from the concepts of it the concepts of all things in so far as they are purely intelligible. This we propose to do in the next chapter.