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not fruitfully applicable in this problem, and no theoretical conclusion
can be drawn. (Thus saith Kant!)
Answer to the argument.---In the case of this second antinomy
(actually the fourth in Kant's own list), it is impossible to
espouse the whole thesis as correct, since Kant not only asserts
there the existence of an absolutely necessary being, but attempts
to argue that this being must itself be a member of the
temporal series. The argument for an absolutely necessary being
appears to be valid enough and is in fact merely the formulation
of the cosmological argument. But the second part of the
thesis---that the absolute being must belong to the temporal series---is
a wholly untenable position. Not only has such a view
been amply refuted in numerous previous contexts, but Kant
himself, in his formulation of the antithesis that there is no absolutely
necessary being, clearly and cogently refutes the notion
that such a being can be either a part of the temporal series or
the whole of it, since either of these positions reduces to selfcontradiction.
Hence our only relevant task in this connection is to show
that the assertion of an absolutely necessary being existing
apart from the world is not subject to the self-contradiction that
Kant alleges. His relevant argument here is that, since the
cause of the world must initiate the temporal series, it must be a
member of the series---and this he has already shown to be impossible.
Now there are two ways of escaping the charge that is
thus leveled against argumentative theism, both of which ways
seem to me to be legitimate, though the first admittedly postpones
the ultimate problem. The first mode of [[267]] escape
consists in the fact that the whole question may be abstracted
from the temporal framework by considering the totality of existence
at a given isolated moment.
Take, for example, the present moment in which I am writing
these words. I am holding the pen which writes the words,
but a whole series of conditions is at this very moment sustain-