"All-Crushing" Critic of Metaphysics 247thought or concept. It is the "vehicle" of all concepts (A 342=6399). Kant
also acknowledges that the "I" of this "I think" seems independent of ex¬
perience and is indeed the presumed object of rational psychology, but, he
argues, it is impossible to know anything about this "I" as an object of pure
thought. For it can never be such an object. Whenever we try to focus on
it, it recedes. We can investigate it as a logical presupposition of all thinking,
the "vehicle" of all concepts, but then we are engaging in transcendental
logic, which does not allow us to go beyond the categories, and therefore can¬
not take us beyond experience. We can treat the "I" as an empirical object
of inner intuition, but this is by definition different from rational psychol¬
ogy. In other words, we have no access to our self as a thing in itself.
Kant's critique of rational psychology is followed by the explicitly di¬
alectical parts of Kant's first Critique, namely the four antinomies in the
Antinomy of Pure Reason. They concern traditional problems of cosmol¬
ogy. The results of this section are equally negative. Kant attempts to expose
the necessarily fallacious character of all the arguments developed by tra¬
ditional metaphysicians about a number of fundamental problems, namely
whether or not (1) the world has a beginning, (2) there is something simple,
(3) there is freedom, and (4) there is an absolutely necessary being. Kant
ingeniously argues that the arguments for asserting these claims are just
as good as the arguments for denying them. Both the thesis and its denial
follow logically from basic principles of reason; and this is what he calls
the antinomy of reason. Reason seems ultimately flawed. It is not reliable,
and it cannot possibly answer the very questions that it inevitably raises.
A closer look at the third antinomy, concerning the problem of freedom,
reveals his strategy. Kant argues in the thesis that "causality in accordance
with the laws of nature is not the only causality from which the appear¬
ances of the world can one and all be derived" ^445=6473). We also need
another kind of causality, namely that of freedom. To prove this thesis,
Kant offers an indirect proof. Assuming that this thesis is false, he thinks
he can derive a contradiction: the series of causes in accordance with the
laws of nature leads to an infinite regress, but an infinite series has no
beginning, and thus has no first cause. Therefore the assumption that
"causality in accordance with the laws of nature is the only causality" there
can be, must be false. Similarly, if we assume that there is another kind of
causality than natural causality, we are led to a contradiction. A causality
of freedom is either lawful, but then it is just nature; or it is lawless, and
thus "abrogates those rules through which alone a completely coherent
experience is possible" ^447=8475). We can prove both the thesis and