Antinomies of Pure Reason
The antinomies of pure reason ( Greek anti “against”, nomoi “laws”) are logically contradicting answers to the questions of reason. Immanuel Kant discusses them in the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason (cf. Immanuel Kant: AA III, 281–382).
In the preface to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason , Kant wrote:
“Human reason has a special fate in one species of its knowledge: that it is troubled by questions that it cannot reject; for they are given to it by the nature of reason itself, which it cannot answer either, for they exceed all the capabilities of human reason. "
According to Kant, reason necessarily tends to seek a comprehensive unity of our ideas and judgments in order to expand the scope of its knowledge. In doing so, she lets herself be carried away by principles or ideas to make judgments that leave the realm of possible experience: “transcendent judgments”. Since even pure reason is capable of making these judgments a priori before any experience, only a critique of reason can uncover the contradictions or antinomies and the errors that can arise in the process. Part of this critique of reason are the “antinomies of pure reason”, which have the idea of a “world whole” as their object.
Individual antinomies
The individual "contradictions" or antinomies are initially compared with Kant in the form of thesis and antithesis. Then a proof for the thesis and for the antithesis is given. The evidence is followed by a note explaining the origin of the contradiction and providing information on how to resolve it. They follow the order of the category titles . The thesis and the antithesis are each:
| thesis | Antithesis | |
|---|---|---|
| I. | "The world has a beginning in time, and according to space it is also enclosed within limits." | "The world has no beginning and no limits in space, but is, both in terms of time and space, infinite." |
| II. | "Every compound substance in the world consists of simple parts, and everywhere there is nothing but the simple, or that which is composed of it." | "No compound thing in the world consists of simple parts, and nothing simple exists in the same anywhere." |
| III. | “Causality according to the laws of nature is not the only one from which the phenomena of the world as a whole can be derived. It is still necessary to assume a causality through freedom to explain it. " | "It is not freedom, everything in the world just happens according to the laws of nature." |
| IV. | "Something belongs to the world which, either as its part or its cause, is an absolutely necessary being." | "There is no absolutely necessary being everywhere, neither in the world nor outside the world, as its cause." |
Dissolution (according to Kant)
According to Kant, the contradiction of the opposing theses and antitheses cannot be decided in favor of thesis or antithesis. For both there is an argument which, according to the rules of general logic accepted by Kant, results in an apparently compelling proof. Since there are contradicting necessities , Kant speaks of antinomies . Its deducibility from pure reason shows that even this requires a criticism of its use. The wrong use of reason in traditional metaphysics is, according to Kant, the cause of contradicting judgments (see also the critique of metaphysics ). According to Kant, the questions listed above can only be solved with the means of transcendental philosophy: If reason observes both sources of knowledge, understanding and sensuality , and distinguishes their respective share, it notices that the term "world" is used in theses, antitheses and proofs sometimes empirically, as a collective term for all observed phenomena, sometimes “intellectual” as the epitome of a system of all objects. Without this confusion, the thesis and antithesis of the first two antinomies turn out to be equally false, those of the third and fourth antinomies as possibly both true for one of the two ways in which the concept of the world is used. The result of the third, so-called freedom antinomy, allows Kant to postulate freedom in his practical philosophy .
literature
- Eric Watkins: The Antinomy of Pure Reason. Sections 3–8 . In: Georg Mohr, Marcus Willaschek (ed.): Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (= classic interpretation ). Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-05-003277-4 , pp. 447-465 .
- Henry Allison: The Antinomy of Pure Reason. Section 9 . In: Georg Mohr, Marcus Willaschek (ed.): Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (= classic interpretation ). Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-05-003277-4 , pp. 465-491 .
- Lothar Kreimendahl : The Antinomy of Pure Reason. 1st and 2nd section . In: Georg Mohr, Marcus Willaschek (ed.): Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (= classic interpretation ). Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-05-003277-4 , pp. 413-447 .
- Rudolf Eisler : Entry. In: Kant-Lexikon . 1930.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Immanuel Kant, Collected Writings. Ed .: Vol. 1-22 Prussian Academy of Sciences, Vol. 23 German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, from Vol. 24 Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Berlin 1900ff., AA III, 281–382 .
- ↑ Immanuel Kant, Collected Writings. Ed .: Vol. 1-22 Prussian Academy of Sciences, Vol. 23 German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, from Vol. 24 Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Berlin 1900ff., AA IV, 7 / A VII.
- ↑ Christoph Helferich: History of Philosophy: From the Beginnings to the Present and Eastern Thinking . Springer-Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-476-00760-5 , pp. 249 .