Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller

Antithesis We have, therefore, nothing but nature^ in which we must try to find the connection and order of cosmical events. Freedom (independence) from the law^ of nature is no doubt a deliverance from restraint, but also from the gtiidance of all rules. For we cannot say that, instead of the laws of nature, laws of freedom may enter into the causality of the course of the world, because, if determined by laws, it would not be freedom, but nothing else but nature. Nature, therefore, and transcendental freedom differ from each other like legality and lawlessness. The former, no doubt, imposes upon the understanding the difficult task of looking higher and higher for the origin of events in the series of causes, because their causality is always conditioned. In return for this, however, it promises a complete and well-ordered unity of experience ; while, on the other side, the fiction of freedom promises, no doubt, to the enquiring mind, rest in the chain of causes, leading him up to an unconditioned causality, which begins to act by itself, but which, as it is blind Itself, tears the thread of rules by which alone a complete and coherent experience is possible.

THIRD ANTINOMY • [p. 449]

II

On the Antithesis

He who stands up for the omnipotence of nature (transcendental physiocracy), in opposition to the doctrine of freedom, would defend his position against the sophistical conclusions of that doctrine in the following manner. If

366 Transcendental Dialectic

Thesis imputability ; it is, however, the real stone of offence in the eyes of philosophy, which finds its unsurmountable difficulties in admitting this kind of unconditioned causality.

That element in the question of the freedom of the will, which has always so much embarrassed speculative reason, is therefore in reality transcendental only, and refers merely to the question whether we must admit a faculty of spontaneously originating a series of successive things or states.

How such a faculty is possible need not be answered, because, wilji regard to the causality, according to the laws of nature also, we must be satisfied to know a priori that such a causality has to be admitted, though we can in no wise understand the possibility how, through one existence, the existence of another is given, but must for that purpose appeal to experience alone.

The necessity of a first beginning of a series of phenomena from freedom has been proved so far only as it is necessary in order to comprehend an origin of the world, while all successive states may be regarded as a result in succession according to mere laws of nature.

But as thus [p. 450] the faculty of originating a series in time by itself has been 'proved, though by no means understood, it is now permitted also to admit, within the course of the world, different series, beginning by themselves, with regard to their causality, and to attribute to their substances a faculty of acting with freedom.

But we must not allow ourselves to be troubled by a misapprehension, namely that, as every successive series in the world can have only a relatively primary beginning, some other state of things always preceding in the world, therefore no absolutely primary beginning of different series is possible in the

Transcendental Dialectic '^Gy

Antithesis you do not admit something mathematically the first in the world with reference to time^ there is no necessity zvhy yon should look for something dyftamically the first with reference to causality. Who has told you to invent an absolutely first state of the world, and with it an absolute beginning of the gradually progressing series of phenomena, and to set limits to unlimited nature in order to give to your imagination something to rest on ? As substances have always existed in the world, or as the unity of experience renders at least such a supposition necessary, there is no difficulty in assuming that a change of their states, that is, a series of their changes, has always existed also, so that there is no necessity for looking for a first beginning either mathematically or dynamically. It is true we cannot render the possibility of such an infinite descent comprehensible without the first member to which everything else is subsequent. But, if for this reason you reject this riddle of nature, you will feel yourselves constrained to reject many synthetical fundamental properties (natural forces), which you cannot comprehend any more, nay, the very possibility of change in general would be [p. 451] full of difficulties. For if you did not know from experience that change exists, you would never be able to conceive a priori how such a constant succession of being and not being is possible.

And, even if the transcendental faculty of freedom might somehow be conceded to start the changes of the world, such faculty would at all events have to be outside the world (though it would always remain a bold assumption to admit, outside the sum total of all possible intuitions, an object that cannot be given in any possible