Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller
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The translator’s English as printed (F. Max Müller). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
ordinated to each other, is given, for the conditioned is given through the conditions only. When we come to phenomena, however, we find a particular limitation of the mode in which conditions are given, namely, [p. 417] through the successive synthesis of the manifold of intuition which should become complete by the regresstis. Whether this completeness, however, is possible, with regard to sensuous phenomena, is still a question. But the idea of that completeness is no doubt contained in reason, without reference to the possibility or impossibility of connecting with it adequate empirical concepts. As therefore in the absolute totality of the regressive synthesis of the manifold in intuition (according to the categories which represent that totality as a series of conditions of something given as conditioned) the unconditioned is necessarily contained without attempting to determine whether and how such a totality be possible, reason here takes the road to start from the idea of totality, though her final aim is the unconditioned^ whether of the whole series or of a part thereof.
This unconditioned may be either conceived as existing in the whole series only, in which all members without exception are conditioned and the whole of them only absolutely unconditioned — and in this case the regresstis is called infinite — or the absolutely unconditioned is only a part of the series, the other members being subordinate to it, while it is itself conditioned by nothing else.^ In the
^ The absolute total of a series of conditions of anything given as conditioned, is itself always unconditioned; because there are no conditions beyond on which it could depend. Such an absolute total of a series is, however, an idea only, or rather a problematical concept, the possibility of which has to be investigated with reference to the mode in which the unconditioned,
33^ Transcendental Dialectic former case the series is without limits a parte [p. 418] priori (without a beginning), that is infinite ; given however as a whole in which the regressiis is never complete, and can therefore be called infinite potentially only. In the latter case there is something that stands first in the series, which, with reference to time past, is called the beginning of the world ; with reference to space, the limit of the world; with reference to the parts of a limited given whole, the simple ; with reference to causes, absolute spontaneity (liberty) ; with reference to the existence of changeable things, the absolute necessity of nature. We have two expressions, world and nature^ which frequently run into each other. The first denotes the mathematical total of all phenomena and the totality of their synthesis of large and small in its progress whether by composition or division. That world, however, is called nature^ if we look upon it as a dynamical [p. 419] whole, and consider not the aggregation in space and time, in order to produce a quantity, but the unity in the existence of phenomena. In this case the condition of that which happens is called caicse, the unconditioned causality of the cause as phenomenal, liberty, while the conditioned causality, in its narrower meaning, is called natural cause. That of which the existence is conditioned that is, in reality, the transcendental idea with which we are concerned, may be contained in it.
1 Nature, if taken adjective (^formaliter) , is meant to express the whole complex of the determinations of a thing, according to an inner principle of causality; while, if taken substantive {jnaterialiter^, it denotes the totality of phenomena, so far as they are all held together by an internal principle of causality. In the former meaning we speak of the nature of liquid matter, of fire, etc., using the word adjective ; while, if we speak of the objects of nature, or of natural objects, we have in our mind the idea of a subsisting whole.
Transcendental Dialectic 339
is called contingent, that of which it is unconditioned, necessary. The unconditioned necessity of phenomena may be called natural necessity.
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