The Antinomy of Pure Reason

Abstract

Chapter5 analyzes the general structure of the antinomy of pure reason and the specific structures of its four versions, including a detailed logical reconstruction of all thesis and antithesis proofs. To understand the logical structure and epistemological significance of the antinomy, it is crucial to distinguish carefully between the pre-cretical views which correspond to the standpoint of transcendental realism on which the proofs are based, and the critical point of view, which is the key to Kant’s resolution of the antinomy. Kant was well aware that the proofs are defective. His critical diagnosis is that they seem conclusive from the point of view of transcendental realism, whereas transcendental idealism reveals that they derive from a self-contradictory cosmological concept. Our reconstruction shows that the proofs employ rationalist, empiricist, or verificationist arguments, including Kant’s own pre-critical conception of the infinite, but do not depend fatally on claims of transcendental idealism; and that the proof results are due to the logical fallacy of an ambiguous middle term in the proofs derive from semantic equivocations inherent to the cosmological concept of the spatio-temporal world, which Kant considered to be inevitable in particular in the case of the “mathematical” antinomy.