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Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804

"The Critique of Practical Reason"


{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 50}
The above-mentioned difficulty is resolved briefly and clearly as
follows: If existence in time is a mere sensible mode of
representation belonging to thinking beings in the world and
consequently does not apply to them as things in themselves, then
the creation of these beings is a creation of things in themselves,
since the notion of creation does not belong to the sensible form of
representation of existence or to causality, but can only be
referred to noumena. Consequently, when I say of beings in the world
of sense that they are created, I so far regard them as noumena. As it
would be a contradiction, therefore, to say that God is a creator of
appearances, so also it is a contradiction to say that as creator He
is the cause of actions in the world of sense, and therefore as
appearances, although He is the cause of the existence of the acting
beings (which are noumena). If now it is possible to affirm freedom in
spite of the natural mechanism of actions as appearances (by regarding
existence in time as something that belongs only to appearances, not
to things in themselves), then the circumstance that the acting beings
are creatures cannot make the slightest difference, since creation
concerns their supersensible and not their sensible existence, and,
therefore, cannot be regarded as the determining principle of the
appearances.


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