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Full Idea
These sophistical assertions [the antinomies] open us a dialectical battlefield where each party will keep the upper hand as long as it is allowed to attack, and will certainly defeat that which is compelled to conduct itself merely defensively.
Gist of Idea
The battle of the antinomies is usually won by the attacker, and lost by any defender
Source
Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B450/A423)
Book Ref
Kant,Immanuel: 'Critique of Pure Reason', ed/tr. Guyer,P /Wood,A W [CUO 1998], p.468
A Reaction
This seems related to the interesting question of where the 'onus of proof' lies in a major dispute. Kant's implication is that the battles are not rational, if they are settled in such a fashion.
| 13986 | Plato found antinomies in ideas, Kant in space and time, and Bradley in relations [Plato, by Ryle] |
| 14150 | Plato's 'Parmenides' is perhaps the best collection of antinomies ever made [Russell on Plato] |
| 21454 | The battle of the antinomies is usually won by the attacker, and lost by any defender [Kant] |
| 15628 | The idea that contradiction is essential to rational understanding is a key modern idea [Hegel] |
| 15629 | Tenderness for the world solves the antinomies; contradiction is in our reason, not in the essence of the world [Hegel] |
| 15630 | Antinomies are not just in four objects, but in all objects, all representations, all objects and all ideas [Hegel] |
| 17626 | The antinomy of endless advance and of completion is resolved in well-ordered transfinite numbers [Zermelo] |
| 21691 | Antinomies contradict accepted ways of reasoning, and demand revisions [Quine] |
| 9125 | Denying problems, or being romantically defeated by them, won't make them go away [Sorensen] |