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

If, however, we once begin our proof cosmologically, taking for our foundation the series of phenomena, and the regressus in it, according to the empirical laws of causality, we cannot afterwards suddenly leave this line of argument and pass over to something which does not belong as a member to this series. For the condition must be taken in the same meaning in which the relation of the condition to that condition was taken in the series which, by continuous progress, was to lead to that highest condition. If therefore that relation is sensuous and intended for a possible empirical use of the imderstanding, the highest condition or cause can close the regressus according to the laws of sensibility only, and therefore as belonging to that temporal series itself. The necessary Being must therefore be regarded as the highest member of the cosmical series.

Nevertheless, certain philosophers have taken the liberty of making such a salto {ixerajBacn^ ek aWo yevo^). From the changes in the world they concluded their empirical contingency, that is, their dependence on empirically determining causes, and they thus arrived at an ascendTra7iscendental Dialectic 375

Antithesis (in the world of sense) can never end with a condition empirically unconditioned, and that the cosmological argument, based on the contingency of cosmical states, as proved by their changes, ends in a verdict against the admission of a first cause, absolutely originating the whole series

A curious contrast however meets us in this [p. 459] antinomy. From the same ground on which, in the thesis, the existence of an original Being was proved, its nonexistence is proved in the antithesis with equal stringency. We were first told, that a necessary Being exists^ because the whole of time past comprehends the series of all conditions, and with it also the unconditioned (the necessary). We are now told there is no necessary Beings for the very reason that the whole of past time comprehends the series of all conditions (which therefore altogether are themselves conditioned). The explanation is this. The first argument regards only the absolute totality of the series of conditions determining each other in time, and thus arrives at something unconditioned and necessary. The second, on the contrary, regards the co7ttingency of all that is determined in the temporal series (everything being preceded by a time in which the condition itself must again be determined as conditioned), in which case everything unconditioned, and every absolute necessity, [p.. 461] must absolutely vanish. In both, the manner of concluding is quite in conformity with ordinary human reason, which frequently comes into conflict with itself, from considering its object from two different points of view. Herr von Mairan considered the controversy between two famous astronomers, which arose from a similar difficulty,

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Thesis ing series of empirical conditions. This was quite right. . As, however, in this way they could not find a first beginning, or any highest member, they suddenly left the empirical concept of contingency, and took to the pure category. This led to a purely intelligible series, the completeness of which depended on the existence of an absolutely necessary cause, which cause, as no longer subject to any sensuous conditions, was freed also from the temporal condition of itself beginning its causality. Such a proceeding is entirely illegitimate, as may be seen from what follows.

In the pure sense of the category we call contingent that the contradictory opposite of which is possible. Now we cannot conclude that intelligible contingency from empirical contingency. Of what is being [p. 460] changed we may say that the opposite (of its state) is real, and therefore possible also at another time. But this is not the contradictory opposite of the preceding state. In order to establish that, it is necessary that, at the same time, when the previous state existed, its opposite could have existed in its place, and this can never be concluded from change. A body, for instance, which, when in motion, was A, comes to be, when at rest, = non A. From the fact that the state opposite to the state A follows upon it, we can in no wise conclude that the contradictory opposite of A is possible, and therefore A contingent only. In order to establish this, it would be necessary to prove that, at the same time when there was motion, there might have been, instead of it, rest. But we know no more than that, at a subsequent time, such rest was real, and therefore possible also. Motion at one

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