The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

(3.) The Idea of the first cause of the world would now quite properly come under the title of relation ; but Kant must reserve this for the fourth title, that of modality, for which otherwise nothing would remain, and under which he forces this idea to come by saying that the contingent (i.e., according to his explanation, which is diametrically opposed to the truth, every consequent of its reason) becomes the necessary through the first cause. Therefore, for the sake of symmetry, the conception of freedom ap: here as the third Idea. By this conception, however, as is distinctly stated in the observations on the t of the third conflict, what is really meant is only Idea of the cause of the world which alone is aumip. 107 here. The third and fourth conflicts are at bottom tautological.

About all this, however, I find and assert that the whole antinomy is a mere delusion, a sham fight. Only the assertions of the antitheses really rest upon the forms of our faculty of knowledge, i.e., if we express it objectively, on the necessary, a priori certain, most universal laws of nature. Their proofs alone are therefore drawn from objective grounds.

On the other hand, the assertions and proofs of the theses have no other than a subjective ground, rest solely on the weakness of the reasoning individual; for his imagination becomes tired with an endless regression, and therefore he puts an end to it by arbitrary assumptions, which he tries to smooth over as well as he can ; and his judgment, moreover, is in this case paralysed by early and deeply imprinted prejudices.

On this account the proof of the thesis in all the four conflicts is throughout a mere sophism, while that of the antithesis is a necessary inference of the reason from the laws of the world as idea known to us a priori. It is, moreover, only with great pains and skill that Kant is able to sustain the thesis, and make it appear to attack its opponent, which is endowed with native power.

Now in this regard his first and constant artifice is, that he does not render prominent the nervus argumentationis, and thus present it in as isolated, naked, and distinct a manner as he possibly can ; but rather introduces the same argument on both sides, concealed under and mixed up with a mass of superfluous and prolix sentences.

The theses and antitheses which here appear in such conflict remind one of the Si/cato? and aSi/co? X0705 which Socrates, in the " Clouds " of Aristophanes, brings forward as contending. Yet this resemblance extends only to the form and not to the content, though this would gladly be asserted by those who ascribe to these most speculative of all questions of theoretical philosophy an influence upon morality, and therefore seriously regard the thesis as the

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St/cato?, and the antithesis as the aSitco? X0705. I shall not, however, accommodate myself here with reference to such small, narrow, and perverse minds; and, giving honour not to them, but to the truth, I shall show that the proofs which Kant adduced of the individual theses are sophisms, while those of the antitheses are quite fairly and correctly drawn from objective grounds. I assume that in this examination the reader has always before him the Kantian antinomy itself.