Antinomianism

“ It may now be well to translate the terms of this antinomy into the language of our common life, and thus to show that they involve no merely seeming difficulty artfully conjured up by a process of dialectics in order that it may be removed by another process, but a difficulty that we must all feel to be involved in every act of consciousness. I find myself in a world of objects, by many of which I am affected. ”

“ Matter must be conceived either as endlessly divisible, or as consisting of atoms. The third antinomy bears upon the antithesis of freedom and necessity, to such extent as it is embraced in the question, Whether everything in the world must be supposed subject to the condition of causality, or if we can also assume free beings, in other words, absolute initial points of action, in the world. Finally, the fourth antinomy is the dilemma: Either the world as a whole has a cause or it is uncaused. ”

“ First, we meet that antinomy which we always find where we try to pass beyond the limits of our empirical knowledge by means of conception. For, if the atoms still occupy space, we can not understand why they should not be further divisible, and if they do not occupy space, we can not understand how any sum of that which does not occupy space, can finally succeed in filling space. It is true, this very antinomy has led to the overcoming of that dualism of force and matter which so long enchained science, and the overcoming of which we greet as a progress of our theoretical knowledge of nature. ”

“ The second antinomy illustrates the dependence of the problem of continuity upon that of infinity. The thesis states: “Every complex substance in the world consists of simple parts, and there exists everywhere nothing but the simple or what is composed of it.” The antithesis states: “No complex thing in the world consists of simple parts, and everywhere in it there exists nothing simple.” Here, as before, the proofs of both thesis and antithesis are open to criticism, but for the purpose of vindicating physics and the world of sense it is enough to find a fallacy in one of the proofs. ”

“ Employing what has subsequently become a favourite fashion, he simply put the object under a rubric otherwise ready to hand, instead of deducing its characteristics from its notion. Further deficiencies in the treatment of the Antinomies I have pointed out, as occasion offered, in my 'Science of Logic' Here it will be sufficient to say that the Antinomies are not confined to the four special objects taken from Cosmology: they appear in all objects of every kind, in all conceptions, notions and Ideas. ”

“ But neither contradiction nor antinomy, which analysis discovers at the bottom of every simple idea, is the principle of truth. Contradiction is always synonymous with nullity; as for antinomy, sometimes called by the same name, it is indeed the forerunner of truth, the material of which, so to speak, it supplies; but it is not truth, and, considered in itself, it is the efficient cause of disorder, the characteristic form of delusion and evil. ”

“ There are no plants; we only fallaciously think there are plants. There are no animals; we only fallaciously think there are animals. But there are minds, which, by some occult process, exist not in time or space, and in this occult sense are internal, whatever that may be. The furniture of the world, which we suppose to be external, does not exist, except as fallacy, or, as Hegel calls it, phenomenon. Antinomies arise, when we consider them as realities. But antinomies disappear, if we consider them as ideas. ”

“ This impossibility is demonstrated when it can be proven that a thing is at the same time A and not-A, or when it can be shown that a thing is neither A nor not-A. The first mode of proof is called antinomy, the second, dilemma. ”

“ The cosmological argument contends that if anything exists, there must also exist an absolutely necessary being. Now, at least I myself exist. Hence there exists an absolutely necessary being. The argument coincides with that by which the thesis of the fourth antinomy is supposed. The objections to it are summed up in the proof of the antithesis of the fourth antimony. As soon as we have recognised the true conception of causality, we have already transcended the sensible world. ”

“ Manicheism.—Admitting the existence of evil in the universe, the scholastic apparently withdraws the admission forthwith by denying the reality of evil. The paradox explains itself by comparing the notions of good and evil, and thus trying to arrive at a proper conception of the latter.
If ontological goodness is really identical with actual being, if being is good in so far as it is actual, then it would appear that ontological evil must be identical with non-being, nothingness. And so it is, in the sense that no evil is a positive, actual reality, that all evil is an absence of reality. ”

“ There are others, indeed, who are styled Antinomians, whose conversation is blameless, and are not therefore to be ranked with these men, or judged Antinomians in practice; who, nevertheless, do great disservice to the truth ”

“ But even if we do not agree with Kant that the human understanding, in attempting to deal with certain subjects beyond its reach, inevitably falls into such contradictory reasonings; yet it can hardly be doubted that we not unfrequently hold opinions which, if logically developed, result in Antinomies. And, accordingly, the Antinomy, if it cannot be imputed to Reason herself, may be a very fair, and a very wholesome argumentum ad hominem. It was the favourite weapon of the Pyrrhonists against the dogmatic philosophies that flourished after the death of Aristotle. ”

“ I propose to adduce some arguments to show that "antagonism," a word generally used to signify something disagreeable, pervades all things; that it is not the baneful thing which many consider it; that it produces at least quite as much good as evil; but that, whatever be its effect, my theory—call it, if you will, speculation—is that it is a necessity of existence, and of the organism of the universe so far as we understand it; that motion and life can not go on without it ”

“ Such antagonism does not exist. It cannot exist, because it is certain from the outset that both faith and science unfold the truth. Truth, however, can never be in conflict with truth. Nor has that antagonism ever existed historically in any of the great representatives of science. This antagonism is fictitious, it is false in its very essence. It is fabricated, either by distorting faith into a blind belief of absurd things, or else by distorting the human faculty of conception into infallible omniscience, or, the other extreme, by denying its faculty for a higher perception. ”

“ Hence, he properly explained antinomies as the final harmonizing of judgments by the last process in conception as ideation. So far, I believe his work to be sound; surely it possesses this germ of truth. But he did not clearly understand the nature of ideation, for he was an idealist, and reified the property—the psychic property—of bodies; he was a monist of an abstraction, and he believed the external world to be a fallacy—a phantasm, an illusion, a delusion if you will—something which does not exist in itself. ”

“ There have been false antinomies in all the sciences (heavy and light, terrestrial and celestial, for instance) , and scientists have removed them one by one. Hegel, instead of performing the same task in the field of philosophy by a direct criticism of false philosophic antinomies, chose the form of metaphysics, and was led on by his enthusiasm to give the appearance of a system of reality to what was in fact merely a correction of method. ”

“ Antithetic is not, therefore, occupied with one-sided statements, but is engaged in considering the contradictory nature of the general cognitions of reason and its causes. Transcendental antithetic is an investigation into the antinomy of pure reason, its causes and result. ”

“ In this statement, we have the definite problem, which he undertook to solve, and we have reached the point in the discussion where his solution of the problem is given.
We have recognized, all along, the antinomy between the practical and the theoretical reason. The practical is represented by the absolute I, which posits itself, which will recognize no contradiction, which will be all and in all. Wherever it finds opposition to itself, it demands conformity. It will lay down the law for the universe. ”

“ The third antinomy is the opposition between freedom and necessity. The first is the self-determining, the point of view pertaining to infinity: causality according to the laws of freedom is the only causality. The other is: Determinism alone is to be found: everything is determined by means of an external ground or reason. ”

“ Now there is nothing to hinder us from admitting these ideas to possess an objective and hyperbolic existence, except the cosmological ideas, which lead reason into an antinomy: the psychological and theological ideas are not antinomial. They contain no contradiction; and how, then, can any one dispute their objective reality, since he who denies it knows as little about their possibility as we who affirm? And yet, when we wish to admit the existence of a thing, it is not sufficient to convince ourselves that there is no positive obstacle in the way ”

“ Any reasoned ontological conclusion establishing what alone absolutely exists, is obviously impossible in a system which admits our ignorance without entering into any critical inquiry as to its nature; while, on the other hand, the ontology of a system which denies our ignorance, or passes it over sub silentio, must either rest upon a false ground, or upon no ground at all—on a false ground if our ignorance is denied—on no ground at all if it is not taken into account. ”

“ The solution of the antinomy lies in asserting that the beyond is itself content of an actual experience, the experience to which the beyond is presented being in such intimate relation to the experience which asserts the possibility, that both must be viewed as aspects of one whole, fragments of one organisation. The realist, in so far as he is opposed to the half-idealist, is merely a thoroughgoing idealist who does not know his own mind. He rejects bare possibilities, in favour of something beyond them which is their ground. ”

“ Reality is posited absolutely by the I in itself. But we have posited the Not-me as a quantum; and every quantum is something, and thus has reality. Therefore, the Not-me becomes not merely negative, but a negative quantity. We thus have two quantities opposed to each other. So far as we now see, we might cull either positive or either negative. If the Not-me is negative to the Me, it is equally true that the Me may be regarded as the negative of the Not-me. Unless this ambiguity is removed, the unity of consciousness is destroyed. The Me and the Not-me have, each, reality. ”

“ The "I" stands in a direct antithesis to the natural man; it is realized through consciousness, an act of antagonism against his passive modifications. Are we then to suppose that this "I" stands completely under the law of causality, or of virtual surrender—that the man entirely assents, and offers no resistance to the passive states into which he may be cast?—then, in this case, no act of antagonism taking place, consciousness, of course, disappears, and the "I" becomes extinct. ”

“ It enables us to see that the proofs of the fourfold antinomy are not mere sophistries—are not fallacious, but grounded on the nature of reason, and valid—under the supposition that phenomena are things in themselves. The opposition of the judgements which follow makes it evident that a fallacy lay in the initial supposition, and thus helps us to discover the true constitution of objects of sense. ”

“ It is through it, alone, that the infinite activity affirms itself. This, then, is the very root of the antinomy that we have been tracing. The I cannot affirm itself without affirming that which is not itself. The infinite cannot affirm itself without becoming finite. Finiteness is the only means for an end which ii contradicts. ”

“ By the aid of this theory, every inveterate belief and every intense feeling, of which the origin is not remembered, is enabled to dispense with the obligation of justifying itself by reason, and is erected into its own all-sufficient voucher and justification. There never was such an instrument devised for consecrating all deep-seated prejudices. And the chief strength of this false philosophy in morals, politics, and religion, lies in the appeal which it is accustomed to make to the evidence of mathematics and of the cognate branches of physical science. ”

“ By this time we are familiar with the difficulties which this antithesis has in store for a philosophy which yet admits that it is only in the mind or in relation to consciousness—in one word, as ‘ideas’—that facts are to be found at all, while by the ‘mind’ it understands an abstract generalization from the many minds which severally are born and grow, sleep and wake, with each of us. The antithesis itself, like every other form in which the impulse after true knowledge finds expression, implies a distinction between the seeming and the real ”

“ But, in the first place, those who hold to the dogma of Agnosticism, that what underlies things as they are known to us is the Unknowable, cannot admit that we know or can find out whether the Unknowable is good or bad. Induction, the logical method to which science owes so many of its discoveries, and by which we proceed from the known to the unknown, does not avail us here. No logical method could discover what is not merely unknown, but absolutely unknowable. ”