With Halloween upon us, it is appropriate that I should present to my esteemed readers for their delectation if not horror the scariest passage in Kant's magnum opus<\/em>:<\/span><\/p>\n Unconditioned necessity, which we so indispensably require as the last bearer of all things, is for human reason the veritable abyss . . . . We cannot put aside, and yet also cannot endure the thought, that a being, which we represent to ourselves as supreme among all possible beings, should, as it were, say to itself: 'I am from eternity to eternity, and outside of me there is nothing save what is through my will, but whence then am I?<\/em> All support here fails us; and the greatest<\/em> perfection, no less than the least<\/em> perfection, floats insubstantially before the merely speculative reason, which incurs no cost in allowing either the one or the other to vanish entirely. <\/span> (A613 B641, Norman Kemp Smith tr. corrected by BV)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n God thinks to himself: I am a necessary being: I cannot not exist. What's more, I am unconditionally<\/em> necessary: I do not derive my necessity from another like numbers and other abstracta; they derive their necessity from me, but I have my necessity from myself. And yet, while my nonexistence is impossible, I can conceive of my nonexistence: the question Whence then am I?<\/em> makes sense. My nonexistence is thinkable without logical contradiction even if it is impossible. This is troubling. I do not exist of merely logical necessity, but of metaphysical necessity, which is a species of real necessity, and the latter suggests some hidden contingency, some hidden dependence.<\/span><\/p>\n God thinks further to himself: Am I truly unconditioned? I am who am: my nature is to be, to exist. (Exodus<\/em>, 3:14) I do not have existence like my creatures; I am<\/em> existence itself in its primary instance. As such, I cannot not exist, and I cannot cease to exist. I cannot commit suicide. I have no power over my own existence. I am bound to exist. It is my nature to exist, and I have no power over my nature. How then am I absolutely sovereign? I am bound by a condition over which I have no control. <\/span><\/p>\n How then am I absolutely unconditioned? I am not that than which no greater can be conceived. For I can conceive a greater, a being that is not bound by existence but is free to enter nonexistence. If I were absolutely unconditioned, then I would be beyond existence and nonexistence. I would be master of that distinction, and not subject to it. I would be beyond all<\/em> duality.<\/span><\/p>\n As subject to the distinction between existence and nonexistence, I am not the Absolute, the Ultimate, the Unconditioned. I am merely the highest being. I am at the apex of the samsaric pyramid — but still samsaric. The truly Unconditioned is beyond Being and Nonbeing. <\/span><\/p>\n With this, his final thought, God entered nibbana<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With Halloween upon us, it is appropriate that I should present to my esteemed readers for their delectation if not horror the scariest passage in Kant's magnum opus: Unconditioned necessity, which we so indispensably require as the last bearer of all things, is for human reason the veritable abyss . . . . We cannot put … Continue reading “The Scariest Passage in the Critique of Pure Reason<\/i>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[269,143,270],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism","category-god","category-kant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n