Kant’s Antinomies

Contents:

1. General Introduction to the Antinomies
2. The Antinomies
3. Transcendental vs. Transcendent
4. Finite vs. Infinite
5. The First and Second Antinomies
6. The Third Antinomy
7. The Fourth Antinomy

General Introduction to the Antinomies

The conflict between rationalism and empiricism that preceded the Critique is responsible for much of the dynamism that appears in Kant’s work. This is certainly true in the case of the Antinomies, where two conflicting viewpoints, one rationalistic and devoted to speculation upon ultimate principles, is paired against another that is purely empirical and admits only what may be sensed as a foundation for knowledge. Thus, while the rationalist approach might be characterized as expansive and speculative, empiricism acts as a corrective to its speculations.

As Kant describes it, the rationalistic approach (“pure reason”) produces an illusion of true understanding when it goes beyond the senses in order to satisfy its own desire for completeness. While it may achieve logical consistency and completeness by doing so, it nevertheless creates an illusion of true understanding. We may avoid falling into an illusion of true understanding by proceeding no further than experience allows us to verify the claims of speculative reason, but doing so requires integration with the corrective grounding of empiricism.

Because it involves a reflection upon philosophy up to his own time, Kant’s philosophical project in the second half of the Critique is thus a project of philosophical self-examination, of philosophy reflecting upon itself in order to distinguish what lines of inquiry are productive from those that should be avoided. His critique of pure reason is, in other words, very much both a critique of the history of Philosophy and a way to ensure its prospects for advancement. If we believe Kant’s critique has been successful, that is, then we may see it as necessitating a new approach to Philosophy: one that knows its limits and understands transcendental idealism as the proper framework for its effort to advance. Of even broader significance, the Critique carries with it not only the spirit of reform, but of an attempt at “saving“ philosophy by rescuing it from an impasse brought about by increasingly extreme versions of dogmatic rationalism and skeptical empiricism.

Finally, the Antinomies have a particular significance for contemporary epistemology. While philosophers in the rationalist tradition (e.g. Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, etc.) tried to stake their philosophical claims on the basis of their pure intelligibility, the degree to which they could be considered self-evident (the most well-known example being the Cartesian cogito) is sometimes taken to be the best way of accounting for its epistemic justification (see Bernard Williams’ Descartes, for example). Yet, much of the transcendental dialectic is devoted to showing the limitations reason encounters even where its principles are self-evident. It is therefore possible to read the Antinomies as a critique of the epistemological position that self-evidence is an adequate criterion for knowledge.

In what follows we’ll take a closer look at the antinomies and the way in which they reflect Kant’s attempt to use his critique of rationalism to dispel the illusions of false or incomplete understanding that reason creates for us. We will do so by attempting to bring about a clear understanding of the antinomies themselves by analyzing them in terms of two oppositional themes that structure his arguments:

1. The opposition between transcendental and transcendent elements.
2. The opposition between the finite and infinite causal series.

Each set of oppositions may be used as an analytical tool for interpreting the Antinomies. We will take up each type of opposition in turn and its application in what follows.

The Antinomies

The antinomies could be discussed at great length, but my focus here will be to simply provide some tools to help the reader take an interest in them and to make better progress in studying them. That being said, I think that the following analytical tools for reading them may prove to be quite useful. One of their virtues is that they may help to tie together the discussion leading up to them in the Transcendental Dialectic as it has developed so far. A second virtue is that by engaging with the topics that are considered in the Antinomies, new pathways might be opened up for many readers to consider the cosmological aspects of Cartesian and Leibnizian philosophical positions and acquire new tools for thinking about cosmological arguments as presented by Aristotle, Aquinas and others in the philosophical tradition.

Originative Transcendental Concepts and Claims

One of the features of transcendental concepts is their conceptual generality. For example, the concepts of unity and totality found among the categories are so general that without them we would have no basis for considering our perceptual objects as objects. Another concomitant attribute is that they may be used as the basis for grounding and developing not just the concepts that are arranged under them, but make entire fields of knowledge possible. Reconsider a few quotations from the Critique in connection with this idea.

I entitle transcendental all knowledge which is occupied not so much with objects as with the mode of our knowledge of objects and so far is this mode of knowledge is to be possible our priori.

B25

If, for example, we have a transcendental idea of the soul (as opposed to an empirical one) what we possess is a general concept of the soul that can be used as a basis for further investigation. Here is another quotation. Our

Concepts of understanding [i.e. transcendental concepts] are…thought a priori antecedently to experience and for the sake of experience, but they contain nothing more than the unity of reflection upon appearances, in so far as these appearances must necessarily belong to a possible empirical consciousness. Through them alone is knowledge and the determination of an object possible. They first provide the material required for making inferences, and they are not preceded by any a priori concepts of objects from which they could be inferred. On the other hand, their objective reality is founded solely on the fact that, since they constitute the intellectual form of all experience, it must always be possible to show their application in experience.”

B367

Thus, the transcendental is “originative“ in this sense: primary and foundational and justified by its necessity for the acquisition of any knowledge at all as the transcendental categories themselves illustrate. Without categories such as “substance“ and “cause-and-effect,“ we would lack the very capacity to make cosmological arguments or to comprehend synthetic relationships among objects in the world of our experience.

Examples of transcendental claims (as opposed to transcendental concepts) the have this function may be found in the major premise of each of the Paralogisms, in which each argument is based upon a transcendental ground (B399). Consider the first premise of the first paralogism, for example:

That, the representation of which is the absolute subject of our judgments and cannot therefore be employed as determination of another thing, is substance.”

A348

Kant is here treating the classical understanding of what a substance is as a transcendentally originative concept, inasmuch as it “first” provides “the material for making inferences” (see the quotation from B367 above). A substance, classically understood, is a self-subsistent entity upon which accidents (quantitative, qualitative, and relational determining features, for example) depend and in which they exist.

Being transcendental, the claim about the soul must be of such a general character that it may apply to anything substantial and indeed, in an a priori fashion (see the final sentence of the quote from B367 above). Of course, the Paralogisms as a whole point out where transcendental claims may be misapplied. Though we can formulate the concept of a substance in relation to the soul, we have no real way of knowing whether the soul is a substance strictly on the basis of our inner experience of it (see B427). The example shows how the Paralogisms may be taken to provide an instance of how transcendental claims are formulated and applied, as well as where error may occur as a result.

This reasoning may be applied to the Antinomies. As long as our reasoning is purely formal fundamentally based upon the concepts of the understanding, i.e. transcendental concepts, and can be assessed purely in terms of the concepts involved, logic itself provides an adequate ground for the correction of our reasoning. But when transcendental claims are mixed with empirical ones (such as occurs when traditional philosophy turns to contemplate the first cause of all things or the objective nature of the soul) we cannot proceed further than experience can serve as a ground for establishing their truth since no means of correcting such claims can be found where the ground of experience is lost.

Logic by itself cannot serve as an adequate corrective, simply because when our subject is an empirical one, the ground for asserting the soundness of synthetic a priori claims must include the possibility of empirical verification. This is a theme that arises again and again in the Critique of Pure Reason.

Finite vs. Infinite

The opposition between the finite and the infinite is a recurring theme of the Antinomies. The reason for this is that cosmological arguments typically involve reasoning in terms of causality and causality itself is understood in terms of a series: of effects determined by certain causes that precede them in time.

If we believe that everything has a cause, or alternatively nothing happens without a cause, the result is an infinite series: since whatever causes a certain effect must itself have its cause or be explained by something else and since there must be something that brought that cause into existence as further cause is required, and so on. We might, on the other hand, decide that since an infinite series is simply incomprehensible, there must be some first clause that brought everything into being. But in making such a supposition we do so by going further in our reasoning then our experience can follow as a corrective guide.

Thus, as was explained above, reason (the demands of rationality) and the requirements of our understanding come into conflict: since reason, in following the trail of a dialectic that attempts to reach first principles, inevitably goes further than experience can reach and understanding is, according to Kant, founded not merely upon logical consistency, but also upon our experience. It follows that this same conflict is implicated in the opposition between the finite and infinite, since reason naturally looks for a first cause in a series by which it might be able to explain why the series came into being and how it might be determined thereby—but in doing so, it inevitably proceeds further than experience can follow.

The First and Second Antinomies

The first and second Antinomies are clear examples of this. In both cases the thesis promotes an argument for a finite series and the antithesis argues in favor of an infinite series. Thus, in the first antinomy, the thesis that the world has a beginning and time and is limited in extent is opposed by the anthesis that the universe is “infinite in respect of past time“ and “has no limits in space“ (B456); and in the second antinomy, The thesis that all matter is made up of simple parts amounts to the claim that matter is not infinitely divisible – a thesis shown to be self–contradictory in the antithesis (B462).

The Third Antinomy

In the third and fourth antinomies the finite/infinite opposition is less straightforward, but it may be seen that the third and fourth build upon basic principles of the first and second. In the third, the thesis proposes that free will introduces a spontaneous, originative causality into the universe. But as is pointed out in the extended argument for the antithesis, a contradiction arises from the very idea of a first cause that is not subject to the laws of nature: for, supposing that free will is undetermined and originative, it follows that the “state of the acting cause” will have “no causal connection with the preceding state of the cause” (B474), from which it follows that “transcendental freedom is opposed to the law of causality” (B474). In other words, building upon what was said in the preceding paragraphs, the very idea of a free will (transcendental freedom) implies an uncaused cause, which would conflict with a basic tool for understanding the world (the law of causality).

Basis in the First Antinomy

This argument is very similar in its reasoning to the one that arises in the extended discussion of the antithesis of the first antinomy. It raises the argument that (1) since an absolute beginning of the universe implies (2) a prior time in which there was “no coming to be of a thing“ (hence, “empty time”) (3) no causal series could have come into being at all. The very idea of an “empty time” conflicts with Kant’s notion that perception itself necessitates that whatever we perceive must be sensed in space and time. Hence, the very idea raises an internal contradiction. It follows that the universe could not have a beginning since a beginning would violate the law of causality and the basic conditions of human perception. In the same way, an originative act of will conflicts with the principle that all our perceptions are subject to the principle of dynamical causal regress (B534).

Nevertheless, the compulsion to understand acts of the will as causally originative is a powerful. In Kant’s words,

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 conditioned.”

B475

This, then, is an application of the first antinomy to the possibility of a free will that only initiates but does not follow from any prior cause.

The Fourth Antinomy

Finally, the fourth antinomy contemplates whether,

• God, as the first cause of the existence of all things, exists in the world as an internal part of the causal sequence that followed creation (the thesis) perhaps in such a way that God “is the world itself” (B485)
• Or whether God must be considered an external initiating cause of all things (the antithesis).

Neither option will work, for reasons that are in every case related to the nature of a causal series that must necessarily exist in time. If the cosmological first cause is conceived as existing in time (perhaps as a prime mover) it must, as Kant states (B486), exist “in accordance with the laws of sensibility“ and would therefore conflict with “the dynamical law of the determination of all appearances in time“ (B481). In other words, if the first cause of all things is thought of as existing in time, then it must be subject to the same physical principles as any other thing existing in space and time. Therefore, we run into the paradox of an uncaused cause, which violates the law of causality (see B485).

On the other hand, if God (as the absolute first cause) exists outside the series, then (so Kant argues) God cannot act upon the world except in time, from which it follows that “it itself, the cause, would not be outside the world “ (B483). If we accept the argument of the antithesis, which Kant argues should be considered logically consistent, then God cannot exist in the world either as a first cause or outside of it as a first cause.

Basis in the Third and First Antinomies

This double bind relates back to the broader theme of the logic of an infinite causal series. If every causal event in a series is contingent, then there is no event in the series that can sufficiently determine the events that follow it. This conclusion relates directly back to the first antinomy, since the universe could never have begun in time unless it were preceded by a prior causal event that sufficiently determined it in time. The result is an infinite regress which conflicts with the idea of any absolute beginning (see B474).