Kant Third Antinomy

The antinomies of pure reason are among the most important sections in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and transcendental philosophy in general. Among the antinomies, none were more well-recognized than the third antinomy, which concerns the nature of freedom and determinism. This antinomy went on to pave the way for the rest of German Idealism and several issues regarding interpretation and relevance are still pertinent today: the relationship between the second analogy and the third antinomy, the exact relationship with transcendental Idealism and the coherence and completeness of the arguments. Among contemporary Kant scholars, Henry Allison and Eric Watkins both have radically different interpretations on the success and importance of the third antinomy. This essay will argue that both of these interpretations of the third antinomy run into several fatal problems that demand a radical reinterpretation of the third antinomy.

The paper will begin with an outline of the antinomies in general and how they relate to a failure in the
Reason is the faculty that applies to and attempts to unify the cognitions that we have already gained as the result of the faculty of the understanding and not the faculty of sensibility. This is a "subjective" unity that does not apply directly to objects. The various distinct unities of the understanding are themselves unified into some form of whole. Logically, this means that reason aims towards finding the condition behind the conditioned. Reason "moves upward" from a conclusion in order to find the condition that is needed for said conclusion. If we know that all X are mortal, Socrates is X and therefore Socrates is mortal, reason helps us find what exactly this X is (human). In its role of introducing economy into the understanding's conditions, reason is always situated towards finding the condition for the