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.
It was something quite unnatural, and a mere innovation of scholastic wisdom, to attempt to pick out of an entirelyarbitrary idea the existence of the object corresponding to it. Such an attempt would never have been made, if there had not existed beforehand a need of our reason of admitting for existence in general something necessary, to which we may ascend and in which we may rest ; and if, as that necessity must be unconditioned and a priori certain, reason had not been forced to seek a concept which, if possible, should satisfy such a demand and give us a knowledge of an existence entirely a prio7'i. Such a concept was supposed to exist in the idea of an ens realissinrnm, and that idea was therefore used for a more definite knowledge of that, the existence of which one had admitted or been persuaded of independently, namely, of the necessary Being. This very natural procedure of reason was carefully concealed, and instead of ending with that concept, an attempt was made to begin with it, and thus to derive from it the necessity of existence, which it was only meant to supplement. Hence arose [p. 604] that unfortunate ontological proof, which satisfies neither
Transcendental Dialectic 487
the demands of our natural and healthy understanding, nor the requirements of the schools.
The cosmological proof , which we have now to examine, retains the connection of absolute necessity with the highest reality, but instead of concluding, like the former, from the highest reality necessity in existence, it concludes from the given unconditioned necessity of any being, its unlimited reality. It thus brings everything at least into the groove of a natural, though I know not whether of a really or only apparently rational syllogism, which carries the greatest conviction, not only for the common, but also for the speculative understanding, and has evidently drawn the first outline of all proofs of natural theology, which have been followed at all times, and will be followed in future also, however much they may be hidden and disguised. We shall now proceed to exhibit and to examine this cosmological proof which Leibniz calls also the proof a contingentia mundi.
It runs as follows : If there exists anything, there must exist an absolutely necessary Being also. Now I, at least, exist ; therefore there exists an absolutely necessary Being. The minor contains an experience, the major the conclusion from experience in general to the existence of [p. 605] the necessary.^ This proof therefore begins with experi^ ence, and is not entirely a priori^ or ontological ; and, as the object of all possible experience is called the world, this proof is called the cosmological proof. As it takes
^ This conclusion is too well known to require detailed exposition. It rests on the apparently transcendental law of causality in nature, that everything contingent has its cause, which, if contingent again, must likewise have a cause, till the series of subordinate causes ends in an absolutely necessary cause, without which it could not be complete.
488 Transcendental Dialectic no account of any peculiar property of the objects of experience, by which this world of ours may differ from any other possible world, it is distinguished, in its name also, from the physico-theological proof, which employs as arguments, observations of the peculiar property of this our world of sense.
The proof then proceeds as follows : The necessary Being can be determined in one way only, that is, by one only of all possible opposite predicates ; it must therefore be determined completely by its own concept. Now, there is only one concept of a thing possible, which a priori completely determines it, namely, that of the ens realissimtnn. It follows, therefore, that the concept of the ens realissimnm is the only one by which a necessary Being can be thought, and therefore it is concluded [p. 606] that a highest Being exists by necessity.
There are so many sophistical propositions in this cosmological argument, that it really seems as if speculative reason had spent all her dialectical skill in order to produce the greatest possible transcendental illusion. Before examining it, we shall draw up a list of them, by which reason has put forward an old argument disguised as a new one, in order to appeal to the agreement of two witnesses, one supplied by pure reason, the other by experience, while in reality there is only one, namely, the first, who changes his dress and voice in order to be taken for a second. In order to have a secure foundation, this proof takes its stand on experience, and pretends to be different from the ontological proof, which places its whole confidence in pure concepts a prio7'i only. The cosmological proof, however, uses that experience only in order to make one step, namely, to the existence of a necessary Being in
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