antinomy

is a phenomenon that appears in all objects of every kind, in all conceptions, notions and ideas.

The antinomies after Kant were reincarnated in the bizarre form of the schematic 'Marxist' dialectic of thesis-antithesissynthesis. This schema arose from a misunderstanding of Hegel's claim in the Encyclopaedia Logic 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' (Hegel, 1830, 48). Hegel wished to extend the anti-dogmatic import of Kant's statement of the antinomies from cosmology to all areas of thought... however, it ironically became a new schematic dogmatism. The anti-dogmatic character of antinomy was revived in Luka cs's analysis of German idealism in History and Class Consciousness (1922). In the section entitled 'The Antinomies of Bourgeois Thought' he points to the 'reified structure of consciousness' which concentrates on the products of human activity to the exclusion of that activity itself. Following Luka cs, the antinomic form of argument was further developed by 'Western Marxist' philosophers, notably T. W. Adorno. (Caygill 'kant dict' 78)

is a presentation showing that time and space and causality are not things out there, but modes of arrangement and classification which the mind applies to sense-experience.

So with the paralogisms of "rational" theology-—which attempts to prove by theoretical reason that the soul is an incorruptible substance, that the will is free and above the law of cause and effect, and that there exists a "necessary being," God, as the presupposition of all reality. Transcendental dialectic must remind theology that substance and cause and necessity are finite categories, modes of arrangement and classification which the mind applies to sense-experience, and reliably valid only for the phenomena that appear to such experience; we cannot apply these conceptions to the noumenal (or merely inferred and conjectural) world. Religion cannot be proved by theoretical reason.

is an insoluble dilemma born of a science that tries to overleap experience.

Antinomies are the insoluble dilemmas born of a science that tries to overleap experience.

is the vain attempt of reason to escape from the enclosing circle of sensation and appearance into the unknowable world of things "in themselves."

Such transcendental science loses itself in "antinomies," and such transcendental theology loses itself in "paralogisms." It is the cruel function of "transcendental dialectic" to examine the validity of these attempts of reason to escape from the enclosing circle of sensation and appearance into the unknowable world of things "in themselves."

is, for example, the impossible position where thought fails at conceiving a universe that either has a beginning in time or does not. Neither position makes sense.

Again: did the world have a beginning in time? We cannot conceive eternity ; but then, too, we cannot conceive any point in the past without feeling at once that before that, something was. Or has that chain of causes which science studies, a beginning, a First Cause? Yes, for an endless chain is inconceivable; no, for a first cause uncaused is inconceivable as well.

is, for example, the impossible position where thought fails at conceiving a world that is either finite or infinite in space. Neither position makes sense.

So, for example, when knowledge attempts to decide whether the world is finite or infinite in space, thought rebels against either supposition: beyond any limit, we are driven to conceive something further, endlessly ; and yet infinity is itself inconceivable.

antinomy, n.All

antinomy