/lit/ - Literature

>>13928896
>>13928916
>>13928950
Causa prima is, just as well as causa sui, a contradictio in adjecto. A first cause is just as inconceivable as the point at which Space ends or the moment when Time first began. For every cause is a change, which necessarily obliges us to ask for the preceding change that brought it about, and so on in infinitum, in infinitum! Even a first state of Matter, from which, as it has ceased to be, all following states could have proceeded, is inconceivable. For if this state had in itself been the cause of the following ones, they must like wise have existed from all eternity, and the actual state existing at the present moment could not have only just now come into being. If, on the other hand, that first state only began to be causal at some given period, some thing or other must have changed it, for its inactivity to have ceased; but then something must have occurred, some change must have taken place; and this again obliges us to ask for its cause i.e. a change which preceded it; and here we are once more on the causal ladder, up which we are whipped step by step, higher and higher, in infinitum, in infinitum! The causal law therefore is not so accommodating as to let itself be used like a hired cab, which we dismiss when we have reached our destination.

The general meaning of the Principle of Sufficient Reason may, in the main, be brought back to this: that every thing existing no matter when or where, exists ~by reason of something else. Now, the Principle of Sufficient Eeason is nevertheless a priori in all its forms: that is, it has its root in our intellect, therefore it must not be applied to the totality of existent things, the Universe, including that intellect in which it presents itself. For a world like this, which presents itself in virtue of a priori forms, is just on that account mere phenomenon; consequently that which holds good with reference to it as the result of these forms, cannot be applied to the world itself, i.e. to the thing in itself, representing itself in that world. Therefore we can not say, "the world and all things in it exist by reason of something else;" and this proposition is precisely the Cosmological Proof.

>>13825424
>metaphysical absolutes