Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/124

114 conflicts, and that in the third and fourth both, are right. It is really the confirmation of the antitheses by the explanation of their assertions.

First Kant asserts, in this solution, obviously wrongly, that both sides started from the assumption, as their first principle, that with the conditioned the completed (thus rounded off) series of its conditions is given. Only the thesis laid down this proposition, Kant's principle of pure reason, as the ground of its assertions; the antithesis, on the other hand, expressly denied it throughout, and asserted the contrary. Further, Kant charges both sides with this assumption, that the world exists in itself, i.e., independently of being known and of the forms of this knowledge, but this assumption also is only made by the thesis; indeed, it is so far from forming the ground of the assertions of the antithesis that it is absolutely inconsistent with them. For that it should all be given is absolutely contradictory of the conception of an infinite series. It is therefore essential to it that it should always exist only with reference to the process of going through it, and not independently of this. On the other hand, in the assumption of definite limits also lies that of a whole which exists absolutely and independently of the process of completely measuring it. Thus it is only the thesis that makes the false assumption of a self-existent universe, i.e., a universe given prior to all knowledge, and to which knowledge came as to something external to itself. The antithesis from the outset combats this assumption absolutely; for the infinity of the series which it asserts merely under the guidance of the principle of sufficient reason can only exist if the regressus is fully carried out, but not independently of it. As the object in general presupposes the subject, so also the object which is determined as an endless chain of conditions necessarily presupposes in the subject the kind of knowledge corresponding to this, that is, the constant following of the links of that chain. But this is just what Kant gives as the solution