 Because both sides to the cosmological disputes seem to be able to argue successfully against the opposite, Kant finds in the antinomies a dramatic exhibition of the “conflict” into which reason inevitably falls (and in which it will remain) so long as it fails to adopt his own transcendental distinction between appearances and things in themselves. The historical debacle of reason’s conflict with itself provides Kant with a dramatic exhibition of the vacillation of reason between two alternatives, neither of which it can accept (or dismiss) without dissatisfaction. Left unresolved, this conflict leads to the “euthanasia of pure reason” (A407/B434), in the sense of provoking skeptical despair.