KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Concept of Infinity 95
to the Second Antinomy, I would, however, like to point out a certain
asymmetry in the structure of the two parts of the First Antinomy.
There is a significant difference with respect to the series of conditions
between the relation of time to the content of time (event) and
that of space to the content of space (body); and this difference leads
to some inconsistencies.
Every period of time is conditioned by the period of time that
precedes it, and every event in time is conditioned by the events that
precede it. For both, going back in time is a regress and going forward
is a progress. The situation is somewhat different for space.
Every space is limited and thus conditioned by the space that surrounds
it. "Inasmuch as one part of space is not given through the
others but only limited by them, we must consider each space, in so
far as it is limited, as being also conditioned, in that it presupposes
another space as the condition of its limits and so on" (B440). The
content of space, on the other hand, the material body (or the aggregation
of such bodies to systems) is not conditioned by the bodies that
surround it or by the system of which it is a part; on the contrary, it
is conditioned by its own parts. The body is "a conditioned, whose
own parts are its inner conditions, and the parts of the parts are its
remote conditions" (B*440). The movement "outwards" from part to
whole is a regress for space but a progress for matter. While surveying
a space is a regress, compounding a material system is a
progress.
When Kant introduced the pair of concepts, condition and
conditioned, and the stylized vocabulary associated with them, he
also used the concepts ground (Grund) and result (Folge). In fact, it
is quite difficult to give the concept-pair condition/conditioned anything
other than a causal sense, if it is to be applied to material
objects. With regard to the formal intuitions, space and time, one
can at least imagine such conditions in terms of representability in
formal intuition. But if the condition is to be considered the material
ground of a material object, then we are dealing with causality; and
in a causal nexus — there is no doubt for Kant — the parts condition
the whole.
It seems therefore that the series of compounding the material
world out of bodies must be a progress from condition to conditioned
and not a regress, and thus it ought to be able to proceed in
infinitum and not just in indefinitum. Furthermore, since it does
not proceed from the conditioned to its condition but rather from