Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
The translator’s English as printed (F. Max Müller). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
Transcendental Dialectic 471
an individual thing, containing in itself all empirical reality. Afterwards, by means of the aforementioned tran- [p. 5 83] scendental subreption, this is taken for the concept of a thing standing at the head of the possibility of all things, and supplying the real conditions for their complete determination.^
THE IDEAL OF PURE REASON Section III
Of the Arguments of Speculative Reason in Proof of the Existence of a Supreme Being
Notwithstanding this urgent want of reason to presuppose something, as a foundation for the complete determination of the concepts of the understanding, reason nevertheless becomes too soon aware of the purely ideal and factitious character of such a supposition to allow itself to be persuaded by it alone to admit a [p. 584] mere creation of thought as a real being, unless it were forced by something else to seek for some rest in its regressus from the conditioned, which is given, to the unconditioned which, though in itself and according to its mere concept not given as real, can alone complete the series of conditions followed up to their causes. This is
1 This ideal of the most real of all things, although merely a representation, is first realised, that is, changed into an object, then hypostasised, and lastly, by the natural progress of reason towards unity, as we shall presently show, personified ; because the regulative unity of experience does not rest on the phenomena themselves (sensibility alone), but on the connection of the manifold, through the understanding (in an apperception^ y so that the unity of the highest reality, and the complete determinability (possibility) of all things, seem to reside in a supreme understanding, and therefore in an intelligence.
472 Transcendental Dialectic the natural course, taken by the reason of every, even the most ordinary, human being, although not every one can hold out in it. It does not begin with concepts, but with common experience, and thus has something really existing for its foundation. That foundation however sinks, unless it rests upon the immoveable rock of that which is absolutely necessary ; and this itself hangs without a support, if without and beneath it there be empty space, and everything be not filled by it, so that no room be left for a why^ — in fact, if it be not infinite in reality.
If we admit the existence of something, whatever it may be, we must also admit that something exists by necessity. For the contingent exists only under the condition of something else as its cause, and from this the same conclusion leads us on till we reach a cause which is not contingent, and therefore unconditionally necessary. This is the argument on which reason founds its progress towards an original being.
Now reason looks out for the concept of a [p. 585] being worthy of such a distinction as the unconditioned necessity of its existence, not in order to conclude a priori its existence from its concept (for if it ventured to do this, it might confine itself altogether to mere concepts, without looking for a given existence as their foundation), but only in order to find among all concepts of possible things one which has nothing incompatible with absolute necessity. For that something absolutely necessary must exist, is regarded as certain after the first conclusion. And after discarding everything else, as incompatible with that necessity, reason takes the one being that remains for the absolutely necessary being, whether its necessity can be comprehended, that is, derived from its concept alone, or
Transcendental Dialectic 473
not. Now the being the concept of which contains a therefore for every wherefore, which is in no point and no respect defective, and is sufficient as a condition everywhere, seems, on that account, to be most compatible with absolute necessity, because, being in possession of all conditions of all that is possible, it does not require, nay, is not capable of any condition, and satisfies at least in this one respect the concept of unconditioned necessity more than any other concept which, because it is deficient and in need of completion, does not exhibit any such [p. 586] characteristic of independence from all further conditions. It is true that we ought not to conclude that what does not contain the highest and in every respect complete condition, must therefore be conditioned even in its existence ; yet it does not exhibit the only characteristic of unconditioned existence, by which reason is able to know any being as unconditioned by means of a concept a priori.
The concept of a being of the highest reality {ens realissimum) would therefore seem of all concepts of all possible things to be the most compatible with the concept of an unconditionally necessary Being, and though it may not satisfy that concept altogether, yet no choice is left to us, and we are forced to keep to it, because we must not risk the existence of a necessary Being, and, if we admit it, can, in the whole field of possibility, find nothing that could produce better founded claims on such a distinction in existence.
This therefore is the natural course of human reason. It begins by persuading itself of the existence of some necessary Being. In this being it-T-ecognises unconditioned existence. It then seeks for the concept of that which is
No commentary for this page under the selected tracks.
There is commentary on page 1.