The Antimony Of The Conditioned And The Unconditioned
The antinomy of the conditioned and the unconditioned leads us along
similar lines. Every individual finite thing or event is dependent on its
causes and conditions, which precede it or co-exist in inter-relation with
it. It is conditioned, and is only possible through its conditions. But
that implies that it can only occur or be granted when all its conditions
are first given in complete synthesis. If any one of them failed, it wo
ld
not have come about. But every one of its conditioning circumstances is in
its turn conditioned by innumerable others, and every one of these again
by others, and so on into the infinite, backwards and on all sides, so
that here again something without end and incapable of end must have come
to an end, and must be thought of as having an end, before any event
whatever can really come to pass. But this again is a sheer impossibility
for our thinking: we require and must demand something completed, because
now is really now, and something happens now, and yet in the world as it
appears to us we are always forced to face what cannot have an end.