Oyonale - Créations 3D et expériences graphiques
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Cliquer sur les phrases pour les voir dans leur contexte. Les textes de Immanuel Kant et David Hume sont disponibles auprès du Projet Gutenberg.
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Now, as the causality of phenomena is subject to conditions of time, and the preceding state, if it had always existed, could not have produced an effect which would make its first appearance at a particular time, the causality of a cause must itself be an effect--must itself have begun to be, and therefore, according to the principle of the understanding, itself requires a cause. For we are not speaking here of an absolutely first beginning in relation to time, but as regards causality alone. This, however, I touch upon only in passing, for with causality I have at present nothing to do. It follows that this cannot be the only kind of causality. In the latter case--although representation alone (for of its causality, by means of the will, we do not here speak) does not produce the object as to its existence, it must nevertheless be a priori determinative in regard to the object, if it is only by means of the representation that we can cognize anything as an object. A causality of freedom is also necessary to account fully for these phenomena. The causality, therefore, of a cause, whereby something happens, is itself a thing that has happened. Suppose now, on the other hand, that we have undertaken this criticism, and have learnt that an object may be taken in two senses, first, as a phenomenon, secondly, as a thing in itself; and that, according to the deduction of the conceptions of the understanding, the principle of causality has reference only to things in the first sense.