Part 2 / Book 2 — CHAPTER II THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON[1495] (continued 2)

The observations which closed our comment upon the Paralogisms are thus again in order. The teaching of the sections on the Antinomies, no less than that of those on the Paralogisms, is incomplete, and if taken by itself is bound to mislead. The Ideas of an unconditioned self and of an unconditioned ground of nature have thus far been taken as at least conceptually possible, and as signifying what may perhaps be real existences. These Ideas are in certain of the remaining sections of the Dialectic called in question. They are there declared to be without inherent meaning. They are useful fictions—heuristische Fiktionen—and in their psychological nature are simply schemata of regulative principles. Their theoretical significance consists merely in their regulative and limitative functions. They must not be regarded, even hypothetically, as representing real existences. In the practical (i.e. ethical) sphere they do indeed acquire a very different standing. But with that the Critique of Pure Reason is not directly concerned. The reader may therefore be warned not to omit the chapter on the Ideal of Pure Reason, on the supposition that it embodies only a criticism of the Cartesian and teleological proofs of God’s existence. It is an integral part of Critical teaching, and carries Kant’s entire argument forward to its final conclusions. Only in view of the new and deeper considerations, which it brings to light, can his treatment even of the Antinomies be properly understood. Its main opening section (Section II.) is, indeed, among the most scholastically rationalistic in the entire Critique; but in the later sections it unfolds, with a boldness and consistency to which we find no parallel in the treatment of the Paralogisms and of the Antinomies, the full consequences of the more sceptical of Kant’s alternating standpoints. It disintegrates the concepts of the unconditioned, which have hitherto been employed without analysis and without question; and upon their elimination from among the legitimate instruments of Reason, the situation undergoes entire transformation, the two points of view appearing for the first time in the full extent of their divergence and conflict. For Kant’s Idealist view of Reason and of its Ideas still continues to find occasional statement, showing that he has not been able decisively to commit himself to this more sceptical interpretation of the function of Reason; that he is conscious that the Idealist view alone gives adequate expression to certain fundamental considerations which have to be reckoned with; and that unless the two views can in some manner be reconciled with one another, a really definitive and satisfactory solution of the problem has not been reached. When, therefore, we speak of Kant’s final conclusions, we must be taken as referring to the twofold tendencies, sceptical and Idealist, which to the very last persist in competition with one another. The greater adequacy of Kant’s argument in the chapter on the Ideal of Pure Reason and in the important Appendix attached to the Dialectic consists in its forcible and considered exposition of both attitudes. Most of the sections on the Antinomies must, as we have seen, be dated as among the earliest parts of the Critique. Their teaching is correspondingly immature. The chapter on the Ideal and the Appendix, on the other hand, were among the latest to be written, and contain, together with the central portions of the Analytic, our most authoritative exposition of Kant’s Critical principles.