Abstract
Chapter6 discusses the many facets of the relationship between the cosmological antinomy and Kant’s transcendental idealism, from the question of whether the antinomy is a self-generated problem of Kant’s critical turn, to his critical attempt to give metaphysics secure foundations, to his architectonics of metaphysics, the teleology of human reason, and his critique of naturalism. The “experiment of pure reason” explained in the preface to the second edition of the first Critique sheds light on the philosophical significance of the antinomy. It is a thought experiment that presents the cosmological antinomy as an argument in favour of transcendental idealism, and which may be understood as a transcendental argument against transcendental realism. Kant supports his thought experiment by once again drawing an analogy between the method of metaphysics and the analytic-synthetic method of Newtonian science. To this analogy s may add further common features of the pre-critical and the critical cosmology, which have been neglected in Kant research. For Kant, the antinomy is a new case against naturalism, as can also be seen from remarks in his later writings. Ultimately, its significance for Kant’s critical project is to be a critical follower of the pre-critical physico-theology.
The questions whether the world has a beginning and its extension in space a boundary; whether there is anywhere, perhaps in my thinking self, an indivisible and indestructible unity […]; whether my actions are free or, like those of other beings, controlled by the strings of nature and fate; whether, finally, there is a supreme cause of the world, or whether natural things and their order constitute the ultimate object […]—these are questions for whose solution the mathematician would gladly give up his entire science; for that science cannot give him any satisfaction in regard to the highest and most important ends of humanity. (CPR, A 464/B 492)
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Notes
- 1.
In 1791, Kant authorized the publication of an excerpt of the Theory of the Heavens as an appendix to the German translation of William Herschel’s works (Herschel and Gensichen 1791). For details, see De Bianchi (2013); for the differences between the pre-critical and the critical cosmogonies see Ferrini (2004).
- 2.
There are a few exceptions: Buzzoni (2011, 2017) takes up Kant’s experiment of pure reason in the general context of thought experiments in science and philosophy; Fulkerson-Smith (2013a,b) focuses on interpreting it as an illuminating experiment in Bacon’s sense; and Zuckert (2020) discusses Kant’s a priori experimentation as a proof that the attempt to exit the human perspective fails. Kalin (1972) considers Kant’s transcendental arguments in general to be thought experiments.
- 3.
- 4.
Molecules are compound quantum systems in which the electrons belonging to the atomic nuclei can no longer be individuated, similar to the quantum states of solids and the constituent models of nuclear and particle physics. Nevertheless, sum rules for charge, mass, and other dynamic quantities hold, as a residue of classical atomism and the analytic-synthetic method. See Falkenburg (2007, 2015, 2019a).
- 5.
In this context it has to be mentioned that transcendental idealism aimed at providing the foundations of a new, critical metaphysics, with transcendental philosophy as its metaphysica generalis and the MFNS as the remaining part of a metaphysica specialis with objective reality.
- 6.
- 7.
Pasternack (2011, 214–215) criticizes Chignell of overrating Kant’s theory of doctrinal belief, but his objection seems to be met by Kant’s distinction between objective and subjective truth (i.e., mere semblance of truth), given that Kant only attributes the latter to doctrinal belief.
- 8.
Even the end of the architectonic chapter, for Sturm, is to be understood in terms of the philosophy of science: “This obviously demands fundamental considerations of a nonempirical, rational kind, and it explains in part why Kant views the architectonical identification of appropriate ends as a special task of metaphysics—for metaphysics ‘considers reason according to its elements and highest maxims, which must ground even the possibility of some sciences and the use of all of them.’ (KrV, A 851/B 879) We would nowadays assign this task to the philosophy of science; it does not really matter what we call the discipline, however, as long as it is clear that the task described is an important one and that it requires a type of non-empirical, rational thinking about science” (Sturm 2020, 13).
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Falkenburg, B. (2020). Cosmology and Transcendental Idealism. In: Kant’s Cosmology . European Studies in Philosophy of Science, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52290-2_6
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