With Halloween upon us, it is appropriate that I should present to my esteemed readers for their delectation if not horror the scariest passage in Kant's magnum opus:
Unconditioned necessity, which we so indispensably require as the last bearer of all things, is for human reason the veritable abyss . . . . We cannot put aside, and yet also cannot endure the thought, that a being, which we represent to ourselves as supreme among all possible beings, should, as it were, say to itself: 'I am from eternity to eternity, and outside of me there is nothing save what is through my will, but whence then am I? All support here fails us; and the greatest perfection, no less than the least perfection, floats insubstantially before the merely speculative reason, which incurs no cost in allowing either the one or the other to vanish entirely. (A613 B641, Norman Kemp Smith tr. corrected by BV)
God thinks to himself: I am a necessary being: I cannot not exist. What's more, I am unconditionally necessary: I do not derive my necessity from another like numbers and other abstracta; they derive their necessity from me, but I have my necessity from myself. And yet, while my nonexistence is impossible, I can conceive of my nonexistence: the question Whence then am I? makes sense. My nonexistence is thinkable without logical contradiction even if it is impossible. This is troubling. I do not exist of merely logical necessity, but of metaphysical necessity, which is a species of real necessity, and the latter suggests some hidden contingency, some hidden dependence.
God thinks further to himself: Am I truly unconditioned? I am who am: my nature is to be, to exist. (Exodus, 3:14) I do not have existence like my creatures; I am existence itself in its primary instance. As such, I cannot not exist, and I cannot cease to exist. I cannot commit suicide. I have no power over my own existence. I am bound to exist. It is my nature to exist, and I have no power over my nature. How then am I absolutely sovereign? I am bound by a condition over which I have no control.
How then am I absolutely unconditioned? I am not that than which no greater can be conceived. For I can conceive a greater, a being that is not bound by existence but is free to enter nonexistence. If I were absolutely unconditioned, then I would be beyond existence and nonexistence. I would be master of that distinction, and not subject to it. I would be beyond all duality.
As subject to the distinction between existence and nonexistence, I am not the Absolute, the Ultimate, the Unconditioned. I am merely the highest being. I am at the apex of the samsaric pyramid -- but still samsaric. The truly Unconditioned is beyond Being and Nonbeing.
With this, his final thought, God entered nibbana.
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