Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller
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Transcendental Dialectic 389
no escape from the press except adhesion to one or the other of the opposite doctrines, in a state of constant oscillation. To-day they would be convinced that the human will is free ; to-morrow, when considering the indissoluble chain of nature, they would think that freedom is nothing but self-deception, and nature all in all. When afterwards they come to act, this play of purely speculative reason would vanish like the shadows of a dream, and they would choose their principles according to practical interests only. But, as it well befits a reflecting and enquiring being to devote a certain time entirely to the examination of his own reason, divesting himself of all partiality, and then to publish his observations for the judgment of others, no one ought to be blamed, still less be prevented, if he wishes to produce the thesis [p. 476] as well as the antithesis, so that they may defend themselves, terrified by no menace, before a jury of his peers, that is, before a jury of weak mortals.
THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON Section IV
Of the Transcendental Problems of Pure Reason, and the Absolute Necessity of their Solution
To attempt to solve all problems, and answer all questions, would be impudent boasting, and so extravagant a self-conceit, that it would forfeit all confidence. Nevertheless there are sciences the very nature of which requires that every question which can occur in them should be answerable at once from what is known, because the answer must arise from the same sources from which the
390 Transcendejital Dialectic question springs. Here it is not allowed to plead inevitable ignorance, but a solution can be demanded. We must be able, for instance, to know, according to a rule, what in every possible case is rigJit or wrong, because this touches our obligation, and we cannot have any obligation to that which we cannot know. In the explanation, [p. 477] however, of the phenomena of nature, many things must remain uncertain, and many a question insoluble, because what we know of nature is by no means sufficient, in all cases, to explain what has to be explained. It has now to be considered, whether there exists in transcendental philosophy any question relating to any object of reason which, by that pure reason, is unanswerable, and whether we have a right to decline its decisive answer by treating the object as absolutely uncertain (from all that we are able to know), and as belonging to that class of objects of which we may form a sufficient conception for starting a question, without having the power or means of ever answering it.
Now I maintain that transcendental philosophy has this peculiarity among all speculative knowledge, that no question, referring to an object of pure reason, can be insoluble for the same human reason ; and that no excuse of inevitable ignorance on our side, or of unfathomable depth on the side of the problem, can release us from the obligation to answer it thoroughly and completely ; because the same concept, which enables us to ask the question, must qualify us to answer it, considering that, as in the case of right and wrong, the <5bject itself does not exist, except in the concept.
There are, however, in transcendental philoso- [p. 478] phy no other questions but the cosmological, with regard
Transcendental Dialectic 39 1
to which we have a right to demand a satisfactory answer, touching the quality of the object ; nor is the philosopher allowed here to decline an answer by pleading impenetrable obscurity. These questions can refer to cosmological ideas only, because the object must be given empirically, and the question only refers to the adequateness of it to an idea.
If the object is transcendental and therefore itself unknown, as, for instance, whether that something the phenomenal appearance of which (within ourselves) is the thinking (soul), be in itself a simple being, whether there be an absolutely necessary cause of all things, etc., we are asked to find an object for our idea of which we may well confess that it is unknown to us, though not therefore impossible.^ The cosmological ideas alone possess this peculiarity that they may presuppose [p. 479] their object, and the empirical synthesis required for the object, as given, and the question which they suggest refers only to the progress of that synthesis, so far as it is to contain absolute totality, such absolute totality being no longer empirical, because it cannot be given in any experience. As we are here concerned solely with a thing, as an object of possible experience, not as a thing
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