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.
But all these pretended examples are taken without exception from judgments only, not from things^ and their C existence. Now the unconditioned necessity of judgments is not the same thing as an absolute necessity of things. The absolute necessity of a judgment is only a conditioned \ necessity of the thing, or of the predicate in the [p. 594] judgment. The above proposition did not say that three i angles were absolutely necessary, but that under the con- " dition of the existence of a triangle, three angles are given t) by necessity. Nevertheless, this pure logical neces- ]
y has exerted so powerful an illusion, that, after having formed of a thing a concept a priori so constituted that it seemed to include existence in its sphere, people thought they could conclude with certainty that, because existence necessarily belongs to the object of that concept, provided always that I accept the thing as given (existing), r^^s existence also must necessarily be accepted (according . to the rule of identity), and that the Being therefore must | itself be absolutely necessary, because its existence is i implied in a concept, which is accepted voluntarily only, ' and always under the condition that I accept the object of it as given.
If in an identical judgment I reject the predicate and retain the subject, there arises a contradiction, and hence, I say, that the former belongs to the latter necessarily. But if I reject the subject as well as the predicate, there is no contradiction, because there is nothing left that can be contradicted. To accept a triangle and yet to reject
480 Transcendental Dialectic its three angles is contradictory, but there is no contradiction at all in admitting the non-existence of the triangle and of its three angles. The same applies to the concept of an absolutely necessary Being. Remove its [p. 595] existence, and you remove the thing itself, with all its predicates, so that a contradiction becomes impossible.
There is nothing external to which the contradiction could apply, because the thing is not meant to be externally necessary ; nor is there anything internal that could be contradicted, for in removing the thing out of existence, you have removed at the same time all its internal qualities.
If you say, God is almighty, that is a necessary judgment, because almightiness cannot be removed, if you accept a deity, that is, an infinite Being, with the concept of which that other concept is identical.
But if you say, God is not, then neither his almightiness, nor any other of his predicates is given ; they are all, together with the subject, removed out of existence, and therefore there is not the slightest contradiction in that sentence. \ We have seen therefore that, if I remove the predicate of a judgment together with its subject, there can never be an internal contradiction, whatever the predicate may be.
The only way of evading this conclusion would be to say that there are subjects which cannot be removed but of existence, but must always remain. But this would be the same as to say that there exist absolutely necessary subjects, an assumption the correctness of which I have called in question, and the possibility of which you had undertaken to prove.
For I cannot form to myself the smallest concept of a thing which, if it had been removed together with all its predicates, should leave be- [p. 596] hind a contradiction ; and except contradiction, I have
Transce7idental Dialectic 481
no other test of impossibility by pure concepts a priori.
Against all these generat-^Tguments (which no one can object to) you challenge me with a case, which you represent as a proof by a fact, namely, that there is one, and this one concept only, in which the non-existence or the removal of its object would be self-contradictory, namely, the concept of the most real Being {ens realissifnum). You say that it possesses all realityTahd you ate no" doubt justified in accepting such a Being as possible. This for Tlie present I may admit, though the absence of self-contradictoriness in a concept is far from proving the possi- ' liility of its object.^ Now reality comprehends existence, and therefore existence is contained in the concept of a thing possible. If that thing is removed, the [p. 597] internal possibility of the thing would be removed, and this is self-contradictory.
I answer: — Even in introducing into the concept of a thing, which you wish to think in its possibility only, the concept of its existence, under whatever disguise it may be, you have been guilty of a contradiction. If you were allowed to do this, you would apparently have carried your point ; but in reality you have achieved nothing, but have only committed a tautology^ I simply ask you, whether the proposition, that this or that thing (which, r ^ A concept is always possible, if it is not self-contradictory. This is the logical characteristic of possibility, and by it the object of the concept is dis-
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