Concept
Kant's antinomies
Overview
The antinomies, from the Critique of Pure Reason, are contradictions which Immanuel Kant argued follow necessarily from our attempts to cognize the nature of transcendent reality by means of pure reason.
Kant thought that some certain antinomies of his (God and Freedom) could be resolved as "Postulates of Practical Reason". He used them to describe the equally rational-but-contradictory results of applying the universe of pure thought to the categories or criteria, i.e. applying reason proper to the universe of sensible perception or experience (phenomena). Empirical reason cannot here play the role of establishing rational truths because it goes beyond possible experience and is applied to the sphere of that which transcends it.
The scholar Lewis White Beck suggests that Kant's development of the antinomies may have been influenced by the antinomic mode of argument employed by the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno. In Beck's view, by adopting such a "skeptical method", Kant could avoid the pitfalls of attempting to resolve a conflict between opposing philosophical arguments by asserting instead that the legitimacy of the argument itself may be called into question. Through the use of such a skeptical methodology, Kant could establish the foundation for his claim that "the world we experience is not and does not contain a thing in itself but is only phenomenal." In addition, Beck also argued that Kant's resolution of the "mathematical" antinomy of space and time illustrates his utilization of a philosophical "strategy" which incorporates Ramsey's Maxim.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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But all philosophy is either cognition on the basis of pure reason, or the cognition of reason on the basis of empirical principles. The former is termed pure, the latter empirical philosophy. The philosophy of pure reason is either propædeutic, that is, an inquiry into the powers of reason in regard to pure à priori cognition, and is termed critical philosophy; or it is, secondly, the system of pure reason—a…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
States what Kant's antinomies is; the author is tied to Kant's antinomies in the knowledge graph.
But now that the Critique has shown by that deduction, first, that they are not of empirical origin, but have their seat and source a priori in the pure understanding; secondly, that as they refer to objects in general independently of the intuition of them, hence, although they cannot effect theoretical knowledge, except in application to empirical objects, yet when applied to an object given by pure practical…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason
States what Kant's antinomies is; the author is tied to Kant's antinomies in the knowledge graph.
The method which Kant follows in discussing these antinomies is as follows. He puts the two propositions implied in the dilemma over against each other as thesis and antithesis, and seeks to prove both: that is to say he tries to exhibit them as inevitably issuing from reflection on the…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
States what Kant's antinomies is.
Philosophers who discussed Kant's antinomies
Related ideas
- Zeno of Elea
- Immanuel Kant
- Transcendence (philosophy)
- Frank P. Ramsey
- Experience
- Empirical evidence
- Critique of Pure Reason
- Causality
- Lewis White Beck
- Eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica
- Atom
Place in the tradition
Part of Knowledge.