Causation; Knowledge, Theory of; Philosophy, German; Reason
The ideas which we are at present engaged in discussing I have called
cosmological ideas; partly because by the term world is understood the
entire content of all phenomena, and our ideas are directed solely to
the unconditioned among phenomena; partly also, because world, in the
transcendental sense, signifies the absolute totality of the content of
existing things, and we are directing our attention only to the
completeness of the synthesis—although, properly, only in regression.
In regard to the fact that these ideas are all transcendent, and,
although they do not transcend phenomena as regards their mode, but are
concerned solely with the world of sense (and not with noumena),
nevertheless carry their synthesis to a degree far above all possible
experience—it still seems to me that we can, with perfect propriety,
designate them cosmical conceptions. As regards the distinction between
the mathematically and the dynamically unconditioned which is the aim
of the regression of the synthesis, I should call the two former, in a
more limited signification, cosmical conceptions, the remaining two
transcendent physical conceptions. This distinction does not at present
seem to be of particular importance, but we shall afterwards find it to
be of some value.
Section II. Antithetic of Pure Reason
Thetic is the term applied to every collection of dogmatical
propositions. By antithetic I do not understand dogmatical assertions
of the opposite, but the self-contradiction of seemingly dogmatical
cognitions (thesis cum antithesis), in none of which we can discover
any decided superiority. Antithetic is not, therefore, occupied with
one-sided statements, but is engaged in considering the contradictory
nature of the general cognitions of reason and its causes.
Transcendental antithetic is an investigation into the antinomy of pure
reason, its causes and result. If we employ our reason not merely in
the application of the principles of the understanding to objects of
experience, but venture with it beyond these boundaries, there arise
certain sophistical propositions or theorems. These assertions have the
following peculiarities: They can find neither confirmation nor
confutation in experience; and each is in itself not only
self-consistent, but possesses conditions of its necessity in the very
nature of reason—only that, unluckily, there exist just as valid and
necessary grounds for maintaining the contrary proposition.
The questions which naturally arise in the consideration of this
dialectic of pure reason, are therefore: 1st. In what propositions is
pure reason unavoidably subject to an antinomy? 2nd. What are the
causes of this antinomy? 3rd. Whether and in what way can reason free
itself from this self-contradiction?
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