The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 2 of 3). Артур Шопенгауэр
according to his explanation, which is diametrically opposed to the truth, every consequent of its reason) becomes the necessary through the first cause. Therefore, for the sake of symmetry, the conception of freedom appears here as the third Idea. By this conception, however, as is distinctly stated in the observations on the thesis of the third conflict, what is really meant is only that Idea of the cause of the world which alone is admissible here. The third and fourth conflicts are at bottom tautological.
About all this, however, I find and assert that the whole antinomy is a mere delusion, a sham fight. Only the assertions of the antitheses really rest upon the forms of our faculty of knowledge, i. e., if we express it objectively, on the necessary, a priori certain, most universal laws of nature. Their proofs alone are therefore drawn from objective grounds. On the other hand, the assertions and proofs of the theses have no other than a subjective ground, rest solely on the weakness of the reasoning individual; for his imagination becomes tired with an endless regression, and therefore he puts an end to it by arbitrary assumptions, which he tries to smooth over as well as he can; and his judgment, moreover, is in this case paralysed by early and deeply imprinted prejudices. On this account the proof of the thesis in all the four conflicts is throughout a mere sophism, while that of the antithesis is a necessary inference of the reason from the laws of the world as idea known to us a priori. It is, moreover, only with great pains and skill that Kant is able to sustain the thesis, and make it appear to attack its opponent, which is endowed with native power. Now in this regard his first and constant artifice is, that he does not render prominent the nervus argumentationis, and thus present it in as isolated, naked, and distinct a manner as he possibly can; but rather introduces the same argument on both sides, concealed under and mixed up with a mass of superfluous and prolix sentences.
The theses and antitheses which here appear in such conflict remind one of the δικαιος and αδικος λογος which Socrates, in the “Clouds” of Aristophanes, brings forward as contending. Yet this resemblance extends only to the form and not to the content, though this would gladly be asserted by those who ascribe to these most speculative of all questions of theoretical philosophy an influence upon morality, and therefore seriously regard the thesis as the δικαιος, and the antithesis as the αδικος λογος. I shall not, however, accommodate myself here with reference to such small, narrow, and perverse minds; and, giving honour not to them, but to the truth, I shall show that the proofs which Kant adduced of the individual theses are sophisms, while those of the antitheses are quite fairly and correctly drawn from objective grounds. I assume that in this examination the reader has always before him the Kantian antinomy itself.
If the proof of the thesis in the first conflict is to be held as valid, then it proves too much, for it would be just as applicable to time itself as to change in time, and would therefore prove that time itself must have had a beginning, which is absurd. Besides, the sophism consists in this, that instead of the beginninglessness of the series of states, which was at first the question, suddenly the endlessness (infinity) of the series is substituted; and now it is proved that this is logically contradicted by completeness, and yet every present is the end of the past, which no one doubted. The end of a beginningless series can, however, always be thought, without prejudice to the fact that it has no beginning; just as, conversely, the beginning of an endless series can also be thought. But against the real, true argument of the antithesis, that the changes of the world necessarily presuppose an infinite series of changes backwards, absolutely nothing is advanced. We can think the possibility that the causal chain will some day end in an absolute standstill, but we can by no means think the possibility of an absolute beginning.8
With reference to the spatial limits of the world, it is proved that, if it is to be regarded as a given whole, it must necessarily have limits. The reasoning is correct, only it was just the first link of it that was to be proved, and that remains unproved. Totality presupposes limits, and limits presuppose totality; but here both together are arbitrarily presupposed. For this second point, however, the antithesis affords no such satisfactory proof as for the first, because the law of causality provides us with necessary determinations only with reference to time, not to space, and affords us a priori the certainty that no occupied time can ever be bounded by a previous empty time, and that no change can be the first change, but not that an occupied space can have no empty space beside it. So far no a priori decision on the latter point would be possible; yet the difficulty of conceiving the world in space as limited lies in the fact that space itself is necessarily infinite, and therefore a limited finite world in space, however large it may be, becomes an infinitely small magnitude; and in this incongruity the imagination finds an insuperable stumbling-block, because there remains for it only the choice of thinking the world either as infinitely large or infinitely small. This was already seen by the ancient philosophers: Μητροδωρος, ὁ καθηγητης Επικουρου, φηδιν ατοπον ειναι εν μεγαλῳ πεδιῳ ἑνα σταχυν γεννηθηναι, και ἑνα κοσμον εν τῳ απειρῳ (Metrodorus, caput scholæ Epicuri, absurdum ait, in magno campo spicam unam produci, et unum in infinito mundum) Stob. Ecl., i. c. 23. Therefore many of them taught (as immediately follows), απειρους κοσμους εν τῳ απειρῳ (infinitos mundos in infinito). This is also the sense of the Kantian argument for the antithesis, only he has disfigured it by a scholastic and ambiguous expression. The same argument might be used against the limitation of the world in time, only we have a far better one under the guidance of causality. In the case of the assumption of a world limited in space, there arises further the unanswerable question, What advantage has the filled part of space enjoyed over the infinite space that has remained empty? In the fifth dialogue of his book, “Del Infinito, Universo e Mondi,” Giordano Bruno gives a full account of the arguments for and against the finiteness of the world, which is very well worth reading. For the rest, Kant himself asserts seriously, and upon objective grounds, the infinity of the world in space in his “Natural History of the Theory of the Heavens,” part ii. ch. 7. Aristotle also acknowledges the same, “Phys.,” iii. ch. 4, a chapter which, together with the following one, is very well worth reading with reference to this antinomy.
In the second conflict the thesis is at once guilty of a very palpable petitio principii, for it commences, “Every compound substance consists of simple parts.” From the compoundness here arbitrarily assumed, no doubt it afterwards very easily proves the simple parts. But the proposition, “All matter is compound,” which is just the point, remains unproved, because it is simply a groundless assumption. The opposite of simple is not compound, but extended, that which has parts and is divisible. Here, however, it is really tacitly assumed that the parts existed before the whole, and were brought together, whence the whole has arisen; for this is the meaning of the word “compound.” Yet this can just as little be asserted as the opposite. Divisibility means merely the possibility of separating the whole into parts, and not that the whole is compounded out of parts and thus came into being. Divisibility merely asserts the parts a parte post; compoundness asserts them a parte ante. For there is essentially no temporal relation between the parts and the whole; they rather condition each other reciprocally, and thus always exist at the same time, for only so far as both are there is there anything extended in space. Therefore what Kant says in the observations on the thesis, “Space ought not to be called a compositum, but a totum,” &c., holds good absolutely of matter also, which is simply space become perceptible. On the other hand, the infinite divisibility of matter, which the antithesis asserts, follows a priori and incontrovertibly from that of space, which it fills. This proposition has absolutely nothing against it; and therefore Kant also (p. 513; V. 541), when he speaks seriously and in his own person, no longer as the mouthpiece of the αδικος λογος, presents it as objective truth; and also in the “Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science” (p. 108, first edition), the proposition, “Matter is infinitely divisible,” is placed at the beginning of the proof of the first proposition of mechanics as established truth, having appeared and been proved as the fourth proposition in the Dynamics. But here Kant spoils the proof of the antithesis by the greatest obscurity of style and useless accumulation of words, with the cunning
That the assumption of a limit of the world in time is certainly not a necessary thought of the reason may be also proved historically, for the Hindus teach nothing of the kind, even in the religion of the people, much less in the Vedas, but try to express mythologically by means of monstrous chronology the infinity of this phenomenal world, this fleeting and baseless web of Mâyâ, for they at once bring out very ingeniously the relativity of all periods of time in the following mythus (Polier,