Critique of Pure Reason

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1781

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prefaces and Introduction

Part I: “Transcendental Aesthetic”

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Book I, Chapter I

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Book I, Chapter II

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Book II, Chapters I-II

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Book II, Chapter III

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Division II, Books I-II, Chapter I

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Division II, Book II, Chapter II

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Division II, Book II, Chapter III

Transcendental Doctrine of the Method

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Division II, Book II, Chapter IIChapter Summaries & Analyses

Transcendental Doctrine of Elements

Part II: Transcendental Logic, Division II: Transcendental Dialectic, Book II, Chapter II Summary

In the very extensive second chapter of the “Transcendental Dialectic” Kant turns his attention to the second source of dialectical illusion of pure reason: the antinomies. Antinomies are contradictory views that are both, at least in appearance, legitimate and reasonable views held with good bases. Kant writes that “just as the paralogisms of pure reason laid the basis for a dialectical psychology, so will the antinomy of pure reason put before us the transcendental principles of a supposed pure (rational) cosmology” (444). Kant will show that this rational cosmology is just as empty as rational psychology turned out to be.

Each antinomy is two-sided. There is the thesis, which presents a positive account that the world is some particular way, and then there is its antithesis, which always claims that the world is the opposite way. The four antinomies are:

1. The world has a beginning in time and is bounded in space (thesis) and the world does not have a beginning in time and is endless in space (antithesis).

2. The world is composed of simple, atomic parts (thesis) and the world is not composed of simple parts but rather is endlessly composite (antithesis).

3. Things can be caused through free action (thesis), and nothing is caused by freedom but is instead totally determined by natural law (antithesis).

4. There is a necessary Being that caused/created the world (thesis) and there is no such Being nor could there be (antithesis).

In every case, Kant presents the best argument for both the thesis and the antithesis. He shows that neither side is ever internally contradictory. At the same time, they cannot both be right. Speculative reason does not provide the grounds for choosing one over the other, though, since they equally fulfill the need of reason to reach the unconditioned. This does not mean that the questions underlying the antinomies cannot be answered. In fact, Kant writes that “the same concept that enables us to ask the question must assuredly also make us competent to answer it” (497).

This answer cannot lie in the objective correctness of either the thesis or the antithesis since this cannot be given. The answer can be given by transcendental idealism, which shows that both sides assume they are discussing things in themselves. Really, though, all consciousness observes appearances and never things in themselves. Realizing that it is dealing merely with appearances, reason posits a regulative principle for answering these questions. The regulative principles are for the practical use of reason. Even if reason cannot provide affirmative answers to the theses of the antinomies, it can still accept them as practically useful ideas that must be employed on those grounds. Therefore, these ideas do not have to be proven to be objectively correct or even possible–and indeed they cannot be–but they also cannot be proven to be incorrect.

Part II: “Transcendental Logic,” Division II, Book II, Chapter II Analysis

The antinomies of reason are mistaken metaphysical positions based on the false assumption that consciousness has access to things in themselves and not merely the appearances of things. Understanding why this fundamental mistake leads to various antinomies like this is not a small task, which is why Kant makes such elaborate and repetitive arguments responding to this problem. The “cosmological” illusions caused by the belief that we have access to things in themselves is the result of reason’s natural propensity to look for the unconditioned basis for any given situation.

For instance, reason inherits the law of causality from the view that states that everything that is must have a cause. Reason always looks for the original, unconditioned first principle and it infers this from what is given. If, in experience, we find that everything has a cause, then reason will infer that there must be a first cause that initiates everything subsequent. There must be a first cause because, without one, the chain of events would regress infinitely, and no cause would have an ultimate basis. Thus, the law of causality would not hold. However, reason can just as easily infer the opposite: that there is no first cause. If there is a first cause, then that cause is itself uncaused, which cannot be right since the law of causality holds that everything has a cause. Reason is in a bind because both options can appear as right.

In each of the antinomies reason is faced with the same dilemma and can infer contradictory principles, one of which is an unconditioned first state (whether that be spontaneous freedom or a necessary being, like God) and the other of which is a response claiming the impossibility of that state. Kant is adamant that these contests of reason are not the sort of thing to which one can remain a mere spectator. It is of deep practical importance whether God, the soul, and free will are real. Pure speculative reason is incapable of proving this, though, so Kant turns to the regulative idea, which is posited from the transcendental standpoint. It is the philosophy of transcendental idealism, which recognizes the objects of cognition as appearances.

Because of this, the transcendental idealist understands the futility of any attempt to prove the constitutive unconditioned principles of experience. In other words, the transcendental idealist knows that the proofs in the antinomies are foolhardy. Instead, Kant realizes that the answer we need must be one appropriate to appearances, not things in themselves. This answer is a regulative unconditional principle because it is necessary for regulating practical action in the world of experience. We cannot know how the world is outside of our experience, but we can determine how it must be for experience to be as it is and should be.