Kant's antinomies

The antinomies, from the Critique of Pure Reason, are contradictions which Immanuel Kant argued follow necessarily from our attempts to cognize the nature of transcendent reality by means of pure reason.

Kant thought that some certain antinomies of his (God and Freedom) could be resolved as "Postulates of Practical Reason". He used them to describe the equally rational-but-contradictory results of applying the universe of pure thought to the categories or criteria, i.e. applying reason proper to the universe of sensible perception or experience (phenomena). Empirical reason cannot here play the role of establishing rational truths because it goes beyond possible experience and is applied to the sphere of that which transcends it.