Abstract

In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant formulates the principle of causality both nomologically and non-nomologically. One formulation says that everything happens in accordance with laws, the other that everything that happens has a cause. Geert Keil has claimed that Kant actually holds the nomological version, but that he omits or neglects to justify it. I will argue that Keil is right with his claim, but that he wrongly accuses Kant of a lack of justification. For Kant holds something that he can only hold at the price of self-contradiction: the nomological version of the causal principle, as I will show, contradicts Kant’s own thinking and therefore cannot be justified by him at all.