Successiveness and Sufficient Reason

Kant's conceiving of Time as Successiveness may have less to do with the structure of Temporality itself, and more to do with the ambitions of his Moral theory. The centerpiece of that theory is the sequence: consciousness of the Moral Law, followed by performance in obedience to the Moral Law. Now, on a model of Time as cumulative, an earlier phase of the process is not a sufficient condition of a later one. So, since, according to Kant's Moral theory, the consciousness of the Moral Law is a sufficient condition of a subsequent performance, the cumulative model is inadequate to it. In contrast, a mere succession of moments is amenable to the structuring of Kant's category Causality, which establishes the earlier moment as a sufficient reason of the later. Commentators have sometimes seemed puzzled about how concrete examples of causal relations distinguish Kant's concept from Hume's, and have more frequently seemed to overlook the irrelevance of that distinction to the Third Antinomy. But, the significance of that distinction eventually emerges clearly in his Moral theory, in which the Consciousness of the Moral law cannot be merely constantly conjoined with performance in obedience to it, nor as argued above, a means to the latter. The concept of Time as Successiveness alone seems to facilitate his ambitions for it.