Literary notes about antecedently (AI summary)
The word "antecedently" is used to indicate that something exists, occurs, or is assumed before another event or state is realized. Authors employ it to establish a temporal, logical, or causal priority—an occurrence or condition is affirmed as preceding and often influencing what follows. For example, it clarifies that certain moral judgments or actions hinge on factors that must be recognized as preexisting [1, 2], while in philosophical debates it marks the necessity of understanding foundational conditions that are assumed prior to further experience or reasoning [3, 4]. In literary narratives, the term can also underscore the improbability or predetermined nature of events, demonstrating that what is later revealed was once considered unlikely or predetermined from an earlier state [5, 6].
- A moral situation is one in which judgment and choice are required antecedently to overt action.
— from Reconstruction in Philosophy by John Dewey - er we reason, we must antecedently be possest of clear ideas, which may be the objects of our reasoning.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume - That is to say, the parts of the progression exist only in time, and by means of the synthesis thereof, and are not given antecedently to it.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant - Leibniz views thought as capable of prescribing, antecedently to all experience, the fundamental conditions to which reality must conform.
— from A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' by Norman Kemp Smith - Perhaps—for I am in the mood when all adversities seem antecedently probable—he will never come back.
— from Nancy: A Novel by Rhoda Broughton - Whatever definition be given of miracles, such exceptional phenomena must at least be antecedently incredible.
— from Supernatural Religion, Vol. 3 (of 3) An Inquiry into the Reality of Divine Revelation by Walter Richard Cassels
