The Antimony of the Conditioned and the Unconditioned. |
The antinomy of the conditioned and the unconditioned leads us along similar lines. Every individual finite thing or event is dependent on its causes and [pg 072] conditions, which precede it or co-exist in inter-relation with it. It is conditioned, and is only possible through its conditions. But that implies that it can only occur or be granted when all its conditions are first given in complete synthesis. If any one of them failed, it would not have come about. But every one of its conditioning circumstances is in its turn conditioned by innumerable others, and every one of these again by others, and so on into the infinite, backwards and on all sides, so that here again something without end and incapable of end must have come to an end, and must be thought of as having an end, before any event whatever can really come to pass. But this again is a sheer impossibility for our thinking: we require and must demand something completed, because now is really now, and something happens now, and yet in the world as it appears to us we are always forced to face what cannot have an end. |
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