Antinomy. By this title Kant denotes contradictory results at which the pure reason arrives, on matters transcending experience, not by paralogism, but in virtue of its own laws. Of these he gives four, the contrary members of which he calls respectively the thesis and the antithesis.
1st Thesis. The world is eternal and infinite.
Antithesis. There is a beginning in time and a limit to space.
2nd Thesis. There are simple substances.
Antithesis. Everything is compounded.
3rd Thesis. There is above all things a cause that is absolutely free.
Antithesis. All is subjected to fixed laws.
4th Thesis. There exists necessary being.
Antithesis. All is contingent.
There is also an antinomy of the practical reason. Virtue and blessedness constitute an inviolable harmony. Virtue and blessedness in many things are mutually exclusive. This antinomy is not, however, like those of the pure reason, unconquerable. The prospect of a future life reconciles the contradiction.
