Kant, Cantor, and the unconditioned

Abstract

In this thesis I inquire into the possible connections between the philosophical problem that Immanuel Kant called the First Antinomy of Pure Reason and some of the paradoxes that were discovered in set theory in the second half of the nineteenth century and at the turn of the twentieth century. I provide arguments in support for the thesis that there are motivational, structural and conceptual similarities between these two problems. The main claim of the investigation is that Kant's discussion of the Antinomy can be interpreted as an early episode in the attainment of a philosophical idea which after the discovery of the set-theoretic paradoxes seems to suggest itself, namely that the concept of an absolutely all-embracing totality (Everything) is problematic in the sense that either paradoxes or puzzlements arise out of it.