Kant's Theses On Existence

British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16(3) 2008: 559593
ARTICLE
KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE*

Uygar Abaci
Kants alleged refutation of the ontological proof for the existence of God
has long been and still is being discussed by philosophers from various
traditions with various motives. One major circle of debate, especially after
the ourishing of philosophy of language in the rst half of the twentieth
century, has turned around Kants celebrated dictum concerning the
predicative nature of the concept of existence, i.e. that it is not a real
predicate or a determination of a thing, which appears as the basis of Kants
main objection to the ontological proof. Although some proponents of the
ontological proof have raised serious doubts as to whether Kants dictum is
at all relevant to or really refutes the ontological proof, the signicance of
this negative thesis for Kants particular refutation has been widely
acknowledged, and the thesis itself has been extensively scrutinized.
However, its integrity with Kants critical understanding of existence and
modality has not received considerable attention. Two aspects need
attention: rst, it is a general statement on the use of the concept of
existence and its signicance goes far beyond the refutation of a certain form
of proof for the existence of God; second, it is a negative statement, and the
meaning of this negation cannot be properly grasped in isolation from
Kants other, positive theses about what existence is. What I hope my
attempt here to be is a limited contribution to this task, a comprehensive
form of which will exceed the bounds of this paper. Therefore, the reader
should be aware in advance that this is not a paper essentially on the
ontological proof, nor on the alleged refutation of it by Kant. It has no
intention nor claim to take a side in the age-old debate, make original
reconstructions of the proof or the refutation, and produce a conclusion, as
has been done innumerable times. Despite the obvious fact that as the
author of this paper I have my own humble position, the reconstructions I
will suggest both of the proof and the refutation are not specically designed
to defend a certain proponent or opponent position, but to lay out the textual
*This is a developed version of the paper, A Categorical dierence in Kant: Reality and Modes
of Being, which I presented at Bilkent University Kant Symposium in April 2005. I would like
to thank Stephen Voss, Ilhan Inan and Barry Stocker for their very helpful comments on the
earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank the anonymous referee who provided me
with valuable feedback in revising the paper.
British Journal for the History of Philosophy

ISSN 0960-8788 print/ISSN 1469-3526 online 2008 BSHP
http://www.informaworld.com DOI: 10.1080/09608780802200729
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UYGAR ABACI
context and development of Kants negative thesis concerning existence in

order to propose a holistic account of Kants notion of existence.
For that purpose, I will make a detailed review of Kants refutation and
show that the distinction Kant proposes between real and logical predicates
in support of his thesis that existence is not a real predicate or a
determination of a thing is the nal step of a threefold exposition of
confusions with respect to the predicative usages of modal concepts. I will
argue that Kants key aim throughout this threefold eort is to forbid the
introduction of modal categories into the concepts of things as predicates
and thereby classify all modal categories as non-real predicates regardless of
their propositional context. In the second part of the paper, I will go
through Kants theses on existence one by one with a view to understanding
their interrelation, if any. I will rst argue that the gist of the original
negative thesis, as suggested by the claim that modalities are categorically
non-real predicates, lies in the categorial distinction between reality, as a
category of quality, and existence, as a category of modality. Then, I will
suggest that two dierent but related positive theses about what existence is
may be found in Kants main texts. The rst one, which is in fact explicitly
stated together with the original thesis as its positive counterpart, is that
existence is absolute positing; the second one, which can be extracted from
the postulates of empirical thought in the Critique of Pure Reason, is that to
exist is to be connected, either immediately or analogically, with an actual
perception. Finally, relying on the account I will propose of these
two positive theses, I will oer an explanation for Kants claim that
existential propositions are synthetic, which has long been challenged by
many philosophers as contradicting the negative thesis. This will also help us
to see to what extent the refutation itself may be considered as consistent
with the critical features of Kants philosophy.
Kant pursues his thesis that existence is not a real predicate most
extensively in two places. The rst one is a precritical essay with the title The
One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763), and
the other one is On the impossibility of an ontological proof of Gods
existence, a section in the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure
Reason (1781).1 Even this bare contextual background of the thesis should
1
Unless otherwise stated, all references to these two works of Kant will be to the following
English translations: Immanuel Kant, The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the
Existence of GodDer einzig mogliche Beweisgrund (hereafter The One Possible Basis), English
and German, translated by Gordon Treash (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska
Press, 1979); Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (hereafter Critique), translated and edited
by P. Guyer and A. W. Wood (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
As is standard, references to the Critique are to the pages of the rst (A) and second (B) edition.
Kant also presents an almost full repetition of his account of the refutation and the thesis in the
Critique in his Lectures on the Philosophical Doctrine of Religion (17831784), edited within
Religion and Rational Theology, translated and edited by A. W. Wood and G. Di Giovanni
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE
561
already indicate an ontotheological approach that takes the question of

existence in general together with, or even as a part of, the question of the
existence of God.2 In both places, Kants primary intention is to refute the
traditional Cartesian form of the ontological proof which can be traced back
to as early as Anselm of Canterbury (10331109) and can also be
encountered, though with various modications, in Kants more immediate
predecessors such as Leibniz.3 According to Kants own reconstruction of it,
its basic argumentative character is to infer Gods existence from His
essence, that is, from the mere concept of God, to which existence is
presupposed to belong as a predicate. Kants objection in this predominant
form of the ontological proof is to the introduction of existence into the
concept of God, and he formulates his thesis in order to justify this
fundamental objection. For the immediate implication of the claim that
existence is not a real predicate is that existence cannot be included as a
predicate in the concept not only of a supposedly exceptional being such as
God but of anything whatsoever.4 This suggests that the negative thesis
about existence is something more radical than the backbone of a refutation
2
Kant briey repeats his views on existence in some of his other post-Critique lectures as well.
See, for example, the Ontology sections of Metaphysik Mrongovius (17821783) and
Metaphysik L2 (17901791?) in Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Metaphysics, translated and
edited by K. Ameriks and S. Naragon (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,
1997). Hereafter, references to Religion and Rational Theology and Lectures on Metaphysics will
be, as provided by the Cambridge edition, to the Academy edition, Kants gesammelte Schriften,
Vols 28 and 29 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1900). In Lectures on Metaphysics too Kant
tends to make his entry into the issue of existence with reference to the existence of God: This
concept, although it is simple, is still quite dicult, because we apply it to concepts which are
sublime beyond all experience and example. E.g., to the concept of God (28: 554).
3
At the end of his refutation in the Critique, Kant explicitly states that what he demonstrated to
be only so much trouble and labor lost is the Cartesian version of the ontological argument.
There he also mentions Leibnizs name as another representative of the ontological argument
that failed to prove a priori the possibility of God (Critique, A602/B630). We can conclude that
although Kant has in mind Descartess version as the general axis of the argument to assault, he
also considers Leibnizs claim to complete the former with a modal modication. On the other
hand, nowhere in his whole corpus of works does Kant mention Anselms original argument.
Some writers claim that he knew nothing of the latter. See, for instance, Chapter 10 of Charles
Hartshorne, Anselms Discovery: A Re-Examination of the Ontological Proof for Gods Existence
(La Salle: Open Court, 1965). For Descartess argument, Chapter 5 of Rene Descartes,
Meditations on First Philosophy in Selected Philosophical Writings, translated by John
Cottingham, Robert Stootho, Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988); for an extensive discussion of Leibnizs enduring eorts to develop a modal version of the
ontological argument, see also Chapters 4 and 8 of Robert Merrihew Adams, Leibniz:
Determinist, Theist, Idealist (hereafter Leibniz: DTI) (New York and Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998). For Anselms version, see Anselm, Proslogion in The Many-faced Argument, edited
by J. H. Hick and A. C. McGill (New York: Macmillan, 1967) 46.
4
In The One Possible Basis, and also with minor dierences in some of his other precritical
works such as Nova Dilucidatio (1755) and Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Kant oers an
alternative ontological proof that does not rely on the containment of existence as a predicate in
the concept of God and its being a real predicate. For the English translations of Nova
Dilucidatio and Inaugural Dissertation, see Immanuel Kant, Theoretical Philosophy, 17551770.
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of an ontological proof; as I hope to show in the following pages, there is a

whole programme of modality behind Kants refutation and thesis. In this
paper, I will mainly stick to the version of the refutation in the Critique,
which is more developed than that in The One Possible Basis, but I will at
times also make use of the latter, where the thesis itself is presented more
explicitly and straightforwardly than it is in the former.
1. CONFUSIONS AND DISTINCTIONS

Kants overall strategy in On the Impossibility of an Ontological Proof of
Gods Existence is to exhibit step by step the confusions that lead to false
assumptions in the ontological argument and to introduce clear distinctions
concerning the confused issues. Although they can be seen and discussed as
dierent arguments operating separately, I observe a studied unity among
them such that all of these alleged confusions are about the use of the modal
categories of necessity, possibility and existence, and the corresponding
distinctions are complementary parts of a general programme of modality,
which forbids the introduction of modal categories into the concepts of
things. Each of the following three sections will discuss one of the steps in
this threefold eort, the nal one of which will be set forth as the basis of the
thesis that existence is not a real predicate.
1.1 Unconditioned Necessity of Judgements versus Conditioned

Necessity of Things
One interpretation of the ontological proof, in either its Anselmian or
Cartesian form, is that what it aims to prove is not only the simple existence
but the necessary existence of God. There are a signicant number of
modern-day proponents of this so-called modal version of the proof such
as Charles Hartshorne, Norman Malcolm, Alvin Plantinga and Lenn
Briey, Kant argues that for there to be any possibility, its content or what is thought in it must
be previously given by something that actually exists, either in it as a determination of it or
through it as a consequence (see The One Possible Basis, 83). Therefore, there must be an
absolutely necessary being that grounds not only the existence but even the thought or
possibility of things in general. In his categorical denial of the possibility of a theoretical proof
of the existence of God, Kant tacitly dismisses his own precritical proof together with all the
traditional ones. I think the shift in Kants understanding of modality in the critical period
justies this categorical denial to some extent (see also n18); but as his own proofs line of
inference is radically dierent from the other traditional proofs that he claims to refute and his
objections to the latter do not in the least apply to the former, it is still curious that he never
designs a separate refutation for his own proof. For an extensive discussion of what might be a
justication for Kants rejection of his own proof, see Mark Fisher and Eric Watkins, Kant on
the Material Ground of Possibility: From The Only Possible Argument to the Critique of Pure
Reason, The Review of Metaphysics, 52 (1998) No. 2: 36995.
563
Goodman. It is noteworthy that Kant begins his refutation in the Critique

by discussing the emptiness of what he calls the verbal or nominal denition
of God: something whose non-being is impossible.6 It is by no means clear
from Kants own words, however, whether he is targeting there a particular
modalized version of the ontological proof, or whether he simply thinks it is
a good idea to start with a modal critique of the ideal of pure reason, i.e. ens
realissimum, which, he had argued in the previous section,7 is the only
concept compatible with the age-old popular notion of God as an absolutely
necessary being. One thing that is certainly clear is that Kant thinks that
there is something confused in the very concept of absolutely necessary
existence and this confusion has to be done away with before there is any
substantial attack on the classical, non-modal form of the proof itself. First,
as a radical challenge to the alleged unthinkability of the non-existence of
that absolutely necessary being, Kant asks whether we really think anything
at all in the concept of such an absolutely necessary being. His answer is in
fact quite obvious in the introductory paragraph, which reminds us that the
concept in question is the ideal of pure reason, a mere idea whose
legitimate function is to set boundaries to the faculty of thought, the
understanding, rather than providing it with new objects. However, he is
also well cognizant of the instances to which absolute necessity is
meaningfully applied, namely analytic judgements. Kant points out that
all examples of absolute necessity are bound to be taken only from
5
See Charles Hartshorne, Anselms Discovery: A Re-Examination of the Ontological Proof for
Gods Existence and again his Is the Denial of Existence Ever Contradictory, The Journal of
Philosophy, 63 (17 February 1966) No. 4: 8593; Norman Malcolm, Anselms Ontological
Arguments, The Philosophical Review, 69 (January 1960) No. 1: 4162; Alvin Plantinga,
Kants Objection to the Ontological Argument, The Journal of Philosophy, 63 (October 1996)
No. 19: 53746; Lenn E. Goodman, God of Abraham (New York: Oxford University Press,
1996).
6
See Critique, A593/B621.
7
The refutation of the ontological proof in the Critique is the fourth section of a chapter called
The Ideal of Pure Reason, which is one of the most important parts of the whole Critique and
a very dicult one to interpret. In the previous three sections, Kant explains how the idea of
God as an ens realissimum, an individual being that contains the sum total of all possible
predicates of things, is generated by pure reason as a necessary consequence of one of its natural
procedures, and is then speculatively matched with the idea of an absolutely necessary being.
The diculty of interpretation arises from the dubiousness of the mentioned part, which allows
dierent ways of reading, namely as a critique of a natural tendency of pure reason itself, as a
critique of traditional speculative theologies in general and as a critique of a particular, i.e.
Leibnizs, notion of God. I believe that all three readings can be accepted simultaneously. For
reasons of economy, I would like only to point out here that the most signicant
accomplishment of this chapter, which also includes the refutations of the cosmological and
what Kant calls the physico-theological proofs, is reformulating God as a transcendental
presupposition necessary for the function of the faculty of understanding; and yet being a mere
ideal of pure reason, God is, strictly speaking, not an object of possible experience and His
existence cannot be proved whatever theoretical means is used. This is a major step in the whole
critical project to secularize the concept of God and to relocate it in the practical domain as a
regulative principle, away from the need for any ontological argument for His existence.
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judgements, but not from things themselves, and thereby he makes his initial
distinction: The unconditioned necessity of judgments . . . is not an absolute
necessity of things; for the absolute necessity of the judgement is only a
conditioned necessity of the thing, or of the predicate in the judgment.8 For
instance, in the typical analytic proposition, A triangle has three angles, the
necessity of the existence of three angles is conditioned on the existence of a
triangle; that is to say, neither the existence of the object of the subject
concept, nor the existence of the object of the predicate-subject is unconditionally necessary, but only on the condition that the former is given as
existing, the existence of the latter becomes necessary. If the former is
retained, cancelling the latter leads to a logical contradiction, for the latter
belongs to the conceptual content of the former. However, as Kant states, if
I cancel the subject together with the predicate, then no contradiction arises;
for there is no longer anything that could be contradicted.9 In the same
fashion, the proposition God is omnipotent is absolutely necessary
independently of the objective reality10 of the concept of God, that is,
whether or not the concept of God is applicable to a possible object of
experience. Omnipotence is a predicate that necessarily belongs to the
concept of God, but this says no more than that only on condition that a
thing referred to by the concept of God actually exists, must it necessarily be
omnipotent. Once the existence of the thing itself is denied, there will be no
necessity of omnipotence left. In other words, the proposition God is
omnipotent reads as the conditional statement If God exists, He is
omnipotent, whose antecedent can be denied without having to deny the
absolute necessity of the proposition as a whole. We therefore come to the
rst conclusion of Kants refutation of the ontological argument: that
My emphases, Critique, A594/B622.

Critique, A595/B623.
10
In Kants language, the broader sense of the term objective reality (objekive Realitat) refers
to the applicability of a concept to an object of intuition in general, either empirical or pure.
This sense of the term captures Kants precritical notion of the real element of possibility which
denotes, without an empirical modal commitment, the data or material that is represented
through a logically possible concept (see also n18). However, since Kants intention in using the
term here, as will be seen in the next section, is to underline the distinction between the logical
possibility of concepts that can be tested through mere concepts and the real possibility of
things that can be tested only with an appeal to the principles of possible experience, my
impression is that in the present context objective reality has a somewhat more empirical
emphasis and refers to a concepts applicability to possible objects of empirical experience.
Heidegger and Hanna prefer to use even stronger language in their denitions; the former
identies objective reality simply with actuality or existence, the latter takes it to be the
reference or applicability of a representation to actual, real, or existing objects. See
Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology (hereafter Basic Problems), translated by Albert
Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982) 34; and Robert Hanna, Kant and the
Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001) 84. Nevertheless, I believe
that the sense of objective reality I suggest above serves better to keep the spirit of the
distinction between possibility and actuality of objects to which Kant refers in the Postulates.
9
565
the absolute necessity of a judgement does not entail the absolutely necessary
existence of the object of the subject concept of that very judgement.
However, this conclusion evokes serious controversies when Kant claims
that it also holds true of the concept of an absolutely necessary being. When
the proposition God is an absolutely necessary being that is drawn from
the nominal denition of God is treated in the same way as the previous
examples of absolutely necessary propositions and is turned into a
conditional, what we have would be the problematic proposition If God
exists then He necessarily exists. Malcolm thinks that the opponents of the
ontological argument including Kant who rely on this conditional are in a
self-contradictory position, because the possibility of Gods non-existence
that is entailed by the antecedent clause is incompatible with the
impossibility of Gods non-existence that is entailed by the consequent
clause, and one cannot accept both sides simultaneously!11 Although
Malcolm is justied here in pointing out the implications of an apparently
careless claim of Kant, I think his criticism fails to grasp Kants main point
in his whole refutation. First, it is quite signicant that the analytic
propositions through which the subject is ascribed predicates such as having
three angles or omnipotence do not lead to the problem that the ascription
of a modality such as necessary existence leads. This conrms that the
essential claim Kant wants to make in his refutation is that modal categories
cannot in any way be contained analytically in the concepts of things and
thus cannot be introduced a priori into the denition of anything
whatsoever. Malcolm is clearly mistaken when he charges Kant for
maintaining a parallel or symmetry between the propositions A triangle
has three angles and God has necessary existence. For the reason I stated
above, Kants real intention is to attract attention to the asymmetry between
necessary or analytic propositions that have non-modal predicates and the
allegedly analytic modal propositions, which he will later declare to be
categorically contingent and synthetic. Moreover and more importantly, as
Kants particular distinction concerning the use of the modality of necessity
suggests, the proposition God has necessary existence is not even
permissible in the rst place, not to mention its conditional form; for such
a proposition would be a misapplication of the concept of unconditioned
necessity to things themselves rather than to judgements.12 Then, when
Kant says that the possibility of rejecting the subject with all its predicates
without committing any contradiction also holds true of the concept of an
11
See Norman Malcolm, Anselms Ontological Arguments, 58. For Kants claim which forms
the basis of Malcolms objection, see Critique A595/B623.
12
Malcolm suggests that Kants real view cannot be that necessity is properly predicated only of
propositions (judgments) not of things. As for his ground of objection, he refers to Kants
discussion of The Postulates of Empirical Thought in General, where Kant establishes the
criterion of necessary existence. See Malcolms n33, in Anselms Ontological Arguments. I will
try to show how inaccurate Malcolms understanding of the postulate of necessity is in the nal
section.
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UYGAR ABACI
absolutely necessary being, he probably aims to emphasize that no subject is

exempt from the possibility of rejection, as he acknowledges that that the
proponents of the ontological argument rely on the alleged privilege of the
notion of God as an absolutely necessary being.
Therefore, in the rst step of his overall argument, in addition to his
general objection to the introduction of modal categories into the concepts
of things, Kant makes his particular point about necessary existence and
rules out its unconditioned ascription as a predicate to the subject of a
judgement. Some proponents of the modal version of the ontological proof
may still insist on the idea that James Van Cleve formulates: even if simple
existence is not a real, determining predicate, necessary existence may be
one, and thus Kants refutation may be circumvented.13 I believe that this
ideas clash with Kants notion of real predicates will become clearer when
we come to investigate Kants third distinction in the refutation, which is
between real and merely logical predicates, and the full meaning of his
related thesis that existence is not a real predicate. I dare to say that Kants
above step alone makes it impossible to classify necessary existence even as a
merely logical predicate (of things) at all, let alone a real, determining one in
Kants sense.
1.2 Logical Possibility of Concepts versus Real Possibility of Things

Having claimed not only that necessary existence cannot be introduced into
the concept of a thing but also that it cannot be ascribed to things
themselves unconditionally, Kant goes on to consider the simple, non-modal
form of the ontological argument and questions its claim to the existence of
God as an ens realissimum (most real being), this time, with respect to its
very possibility:14
It has, you say, all reality, and you are justied in assuming such a being as
possible (to which I have consented up to this point, even though a noncontradictory concept falls far short of proving the possibility of its object).
13
James Van Cleve, Problems from Kant, (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999) 192.
14
For Kant, the ens realissimum notion of God and the nominal denition of God as that whose
non-being is impossible are generated by two distinct procedures of pure reason, the former
being the consequence of pure reasons drive for the complete or thoroughgoing determination of
things, the latter being the consequence of the drive to reach the unconditioned in the series of
conditions. Kant humourously narrates the story of the speculative match that pure reason
makes between these two originally distinct notions: First it convinces itself of the existence of
some necessary being. In this it recognizes an unconditioned existence. Now it seeks for the
concept of something independent of all conditions, and nds it . . . in that which contains all
reality (ibid., A587/B615). However, although he thinks that the notion of an absolutely
necessary being is fundamentally confused, he holds the view that the notion of a most real
being, as will be seen, is logically possible.
567
Now existence is also comprehended under all reality: thus existence lies in the
concept of something possible. If this thing is cancelled, then the internal
possibility of the thing is cancelled, which is contradictory.15
This is a preliminary passage through which Kant presents his own very
compact reconstruction of the ontological argument and prepares the reader
to follow his essential attack on it. Kants reconstruction can be analysed in
relation to two important points that he wants to emphasize.
(i) The rst point draws attention to the assumption of the argument that
the ens realissimum as an individual object is possible. Kant says in
parentheses that he had hitherto allowed the assumption, but he also makes
it clear that what is thought to justify this assumption is another assumption
that holds a concepts freedom from internal contradiction sucient to
prove the possibility of the object of that concept. In Kants view this
underlying assumption is false, for it rests on a confusion between dierent
notions of possibility that are meant to apply to dierent items, namely, the
logical possibility of concepts and the real possibility of things. Kant species
this distinction in a warning footnote to the parenthesis in the above
quotation:
The concept is always possible if it does not contradict itself. That is the logical
mark of possibility . . . Yet it can nonetheless be an empty concept, if the
objective reality of the synthesis through which the concept is generated has
not been established in particular; but . . . this always rests on principles of
possible experience and not on the principle of contradiction). This is a
warning not to infer immediately from the possibility of the concept (logical
possibility) to the possibility of the thing (real possibility).16
A concept is therefore logically possible if it does not contain two

contradictorily opposed predicates. And the logical possibility of a concept
can be tested in the mere concept itself, in an a-priori manner by virtue of
the law of contradiction. That is the reason why Kant sometimes tends to
call it internal possibility. Such freedom from contradiction is the purely
logical criterion for the conceivability or representability of anything
through a concept. Accordingly, the concept of ens realissimum is logically
possible, because it contains the sum total only of all positive predicates.17
15
Ibid., A597/B625.
17
Kant, in the present context, does not explicitly make a distinction between positive and
negative predicates. He rather seems to take predicates as positive attributes that make up the
real content of things: Logical negation . . . is never properly attached to a concept, but rather
only to its relation to another concept in a judgment, and therefore it is far from sucient to
designate a concept in regard to its content (ibid., A574/B602). In the case of the idea of ens
realissimum, as it contains all reality, it lacks no real content and thus must have only positive
predicates. That the ens realissimum has the sum total only of positive predicates can be further
16
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However, meeting this logical condition does not suce to provide the
concept with objective reality; for objective reality additionally requires the
applicability of the concept in question to possible objects of experience. As
such, the real possibility of things involves an appeal to the conditions of
possible experience, which I will discuss in the nal section on the postulates
of modalities.18 What should now be stated however is that Kants
distinction between the logical possibility of concepts and the real possibility
of things reinforces his main point in the refutation: the mere concept of a
thing cannot in itself contain a modal commitment such as the real
possibility of that thing, which refers to something external to the concept,
namely the conditions of possible experience. Accordingly, although real
possibility can be legitimately ascribed to things themselves, it cannot be
introduced a priori into the concepts of things as a predicate.
(ii) Kants second observation on the ontological argument is that
existence is introduced into the concept of ens realissimum in a way that
makes the rejection of the existence of this ens an internal contradiction. For
him, however, this conceptual manoeuvre is itself a contradiction: You have
already committed a contradiction when you have brought the concept of its
conrmed by resorting to Leibniz, whose notion of God, I believe, Kant considers here.
However, the question about the ens realissimum is whether containing only positive predicates
entails freedom from internal contradiction and thus ensures logical possibility, because there
are positive predicates that are not logically opposite to each other, and yet cannot be contained
in the same subject. For Kants solution to this problem that preoccupied Leibniz for a long
time, see n43. For the moment, as the logical criterion of possibility is only a formal one and
abstracts from all content, it is still not wrong to conclude that the concept of a being that
contains only positive predicates is logically possible.
18
This distinction is a good example of how Kant amended his precritical understanding of
modality in the Critique. In The One Possible Basis, Kant makes an apparently similar distinction
in the concept of possibility, between what he calls the formal or logical element and the real
element. The formal element of possibility, in conformity with the logical possibility of concepts,
refers to the Leibnizian notion of possibility that is constituted by freedom from contradiction
alone. On the other hand, the real element of possibility, which Kant borrowed from
Baumgarten, refers to the givenness of the material or data of possibility through which what is
to be possible is thought or represented. However, this wide eld of possibility which applies to
all that is representable, given in whatever way, is narrowed in the Critique, by imposing not only
conceptual but also sensible conditions, i.e. space and time, on the givenness and consequently
on the real possibility of things. (As possibility itself is one of the modal categories, this further,
critical constraint on the notion of possibility goes along with the requirement that categories
must be applicable to sensible intuition to provide real cognition of things.) As discussed in the
nal section of this essay, what is possible is thus identied with a possible object of experience.
This is how the precritical notion of the real element of possibility is developed into the notion of
real possibility in Kants critical programme of modality. For the precritical distinction, see The
One Possible Basis, 67. For Kants terminological connection with Baumgarten, see also
Heidegger, Basic Problems, 345, and the translators introduction to The One Possible Basis,
1921; and for Kants specic indebtedness to Baumgarten for the form of the ontological
argument that Kant claims to refute, see Charles Hartshorne, Anselms Discovery: A ReExamination of the Ontological Proof for Gods Existence, Part Two, Chapter 10.
569
existence, under whatever disguised name, into the concept of a thing which
you would think merely in terms of its possibility.19
Existence may be introduced into the concept of a thing, as Kant
mentions, under dierent guises. In the AnselmianCartesian form of the
ontological argument, introduction is conducted through the notion of God
as ens perfectissimum. For instance, Anselm denes God as something than
which nothing greater can be conceived. From the premise that something
which exists in reality would be greater than something which only stands in
relation to the understanding, he concludes that it is impossible to conceive
God as not existing.20 In a similar way, Descartes takes the idea of a
supremely perfect being and grants that existence is a perfection that
necessarily belongs to the essence of such a being.21 Thus, the ens
perfectissimum argument takes on the shape of the following syllogism:
God, by his concept, is the most perfect being. Existence belongs to the
concept of perfection, and thus to the concept of the most perfect being.
Therefore, God exists.
Kant rejects the minor premise which carries existence, through the
concept of perfection, into the concept of God, whose very existence is in
question. The most likely reason that Kant takes into account the ens
realissimum version of the argument is that he intends to eliminate the
mediatory concept of perfection, and exhibit the direct connection between
the introduction of existence into the concept of an exceptional being and
the false assumption that existence can be treated as an ingredient of reality
in general, and of the real content of something in particular. Because for
him the crux of any form of the ontological argument lies in the
introduction of existence into the concept of something in one way or
another, the appeal to the concept of the most real being can also be put
aside and the argument can be simplied in the following way: Existence
belongs to the concept of God. Therefore, God exists.
It is now easier to see how the introduction of existence into a concept (of
an object) leads to a serious problem. One can turn the above form of
syllogism into an existence-producing machine in a way that justies Kants
general worry about the illegitimate use of the concept of existence which
may be extended beyond attempts to prove the existence of God.22 If such
19
Critique, A597/B625. This surely is not a contradiction in the strict, logical sense of the term.
What Kant means, I think, is that while through the mere concept of a thing what could only be
tested is the concepts logical possibility which would not even suce to prove the real
possibility of the thing itself, introducing existence as a predicate into the concept of a thing and
thereby making an existential commitment for the thing in question would be falling into a
fundamental confusion concerning the use of modal concepts.
20
See Anselm, Proslogion (Chs 24) in The Many-faced Argument, 46.
21
[I] am not free to think of God without existence (that is, a supremely perfect being without a
supreme perfection) . . . (Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy in Selected Philosophical
Writings, 107).
22
Heidegger emphasizes the radical character of Kants objection: Kants thesis . . . does not
assert merely that existence cannot belong to the concept of the most perfect being . . . It goes
570
UYGAR ABACI
introduction is allowed even for a single case such as the concept of God,
then there is no obstacle in principle that bans existence from being
introduced as a predicate into the logically possible concept of any object,
say the existent-X, which, in turn, makes it possible to infer the existence of
that object from the mere concept of it without an appeal to anything else:
Existence belongs to the concept of the existent-X. Therefore, the existentX exists.23
This structural purication thus makes it evident that the premise of the
argument, regardless of the specic conceptual content of X, is a
fundamentally confused assertion that involves an illegitimate use of the
concept of existence. In the ontological argument, as Kant reconstructs it,
no matter with what supreme quality God is dened in the major premise,
whether as the most perfect or the most real being, the minor premise which
does the whole job by attaching existence to the concept of God as a
predicate is an illegitimate assertion that should not be allowed in the rst
place.
Nevertheless, in order to show that even if this assertion be allowed as
legitimate, the result would in fact be no more than a mere tautology, Kant
asks a crucial question about the type of relation between the predicate and
the subject of the conclusion of the argument: [I]s the proposition, this or
that thing . . . exists . . . an analytic or a synthetic proposition?24 According
to the Critiques introductory account of the analytic/synthetic distinction in
judgements of subjectpredicate form, analytic judgements are those in
which nothing is added through the predicate to the subject. For, in such
judgements, predicates are only constituent concepts that are already
contained in the subjects and can be explicated by mere analysis. On the
other hand, in synthetic judgements, through the predicate something that is
not contained in the subject is added to it.25
further. It says, fundamentally, that something like existence does not belong to the
determinateness of a concept at all (Heidegger, Basic Problems, 32).
23
The problem of the possibility of an existence producing machine is rst pointed out by
Gaunilo, the immediate critic of Anselms argument. He argues that if the minor premise of
Anselms argument that that which exists is more excellent than that which stands in relation to
my understanding only is accepted, then the mere idea of the most excellent lost island, by
virtue of its perfection, would suce to prove that it necessarily exists. See Gaunilo and Anselm,
Criticism and Reply in The Many-faced Argument, 223. There are various modern objections
to Gaunilos argument on the ground that the idea of a greatest possible island is neither
analogous to the concept of God, nor a consistent idea for there is no end to the greatness of an
island. See, for instance, Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom and Evil (New York: Harper & Row,
1977) 91. However, as the purest form of the syllogism in the minor premise of the ontological
argument exhibits, the problem here is the very introduction of existence into the mere concept
of something, not the way in which or, as Kant would say, the disguise under which this
introduction is conducted. Thus, even if he may be said to fail to give a convincing example,
Gaunilos anticipation of Kants objection is still impressive.
24
25
Ibid., A7/B11.
571
From the standpoint of the proponents of the ontological argument, Kant

thinks, the proposition God exists must be analytic, for two related
reasons. First, rejection of the predicate while retaining the subject leads to
internal contradiction only in propositions that are of analytic logical
structure. As mentioned before, however, there is the possibility of rejecting
the subject with all its predicates, which would leave nothing to be
contradicted. Therefore, even if God exists were an analytic proposition, its
absolute necessity would not necessitate the existence of its subject. Second,
in order for the existence of God to follow from the mere concept of it,
existence must already be contained in the concept of God, and thus, as a
predicate, must be adding nothing to it. This, however, would make the
proposition a tautology that says nothing determinate at all about God, but
repeats in its predicate what is assumed to be already contained in its
subject.
At this point Kant makes a decisive claim that some commentators nd
unjustied, or even contradictory: in all fairness you must [concede] that
every existential proposition is synthetic.26 Although the strong emphasis
on the illegitimacy of the introduction of modal categories into the concepts
of things as predicates implies that there is no way for a modal proposition
to be analytic, Kants claim still seems uneasy to digest. The diculty stems
from the apparent incompatibility of his thesis that existence is not a real
predicate that could add to the concept of a thing with the claim that every
existential proposition is synthetic, given the above denition of syntheticity,
i.e. the kind of proposition in which the predicate adds to the subject
something that is not already contained in the latter. With this denition of
syntheticity and without a proper understanding of the thesis, the intuitive
response would be that these two claims diametrically oppose each other;
but as we proceed, we shall see that this is not quite the case.27
26
Ibid., A598/B626.
Although it has never been as popular as his thesis that existence is not a real predicate, Kants
claim to the categorical syntheticity of all existential propositions has received serious criticisms
from the literature on the refutation. One specic criticism that has been frequently repeated by
not only the proponents but also the opponents of the ontological argument is that the latter
thesis is not compatible with the former one. For only three of the typical examples of this sort
of allegation, see Jerome Schaer, Existence, Predication, and the Ontological Argument,
Mind, New Series, 71 (1962) No. 283: 309:
Kant denes [real predicate] as something which is added to the concept of the subject
and enlarges it. This is a most unfortunate denition for Kant to use, however, since it
leads to contradiction with another important doctrine of his, that existential
propositions are synthetic.
Nicholas Everitt, The Non-Existence Of God (London and NewYork: Routledge, 2004) 52:
This appears to commit him to saying that exists does enlarge the subject
concept, and hence that exists passes both tests for being a real predicate. . . Indeed,
it seems that Kants own words commit him to denying the thesis as well as
asserting it;
and Lenn E. Goodman, God of Abraham, 67: His claim that all existential propositions are
synthetic is inconsistent with his thesis that exists is not a real predicate. In the second part, I
27
572
UYGAR ABACI
1.3 Merely Logical Predicate versus Real Predicate

In the proponents of the ontological argument, Kant observes one other
confusion, this time with regard to the predicative character of the concept
of existence, and thus makes a distinction which is again based on the
logical/real or form/content duality:
[T]he illusion [consists] in the confusion of a logical predicate with a real
one (i.e., the determination of a thing) . . . Anything one likes can serve as a
logical predicate, even the subject can be predicated of itself; for logic
abstracts from every content. But the determination is a predicate, which
goes beyond the subject and enlarges it. Thus, it must not be included in it
already.28
The rst thing to note here is that the logicalreal predicate distinction is not
a distinction of mutual exclusion. It should be clear from what Kant says
above that logical predicate is a functional category only, formally dened
in terms of the place of a sentential unit without regard to what and how it
is predicated of. Sebastian Gardner, for instance, reads this passage in this
way and understands logical predicate as a predicate in the sense of
occupying grammatical predicate position.29 Heidegger makes a similar
interpretation, and says that the place of a concept in a sentence may qualify
it only as a logical predicate, but since this formal-logical notion of predicate abstracts from all real content, we cannot yet decide whether the
concept in question is a real predicate.30 Both readings correctly imply that
the concept of logical predicate does not exclude real predicates, and that
the distinction in question should be rather between the predicates that are
will discuss how this way of identifying the syntheticity of propositions with the predicates
enlarging of the subject or its being a real predicate fails to capture the true senses of Kants
notions of syntheticity and existence.
28
Critique, A598/B626. Norman Kemp-Smith translates the original term Bestimmung as
determining predicate; compare the same quotation in Immanuel Kant, Immanuel Kants
Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp-Smith (New York: Palgrave, 1929). The
idea of determination being a real predicate that adds to the subject concept comes from
pure reasons principle of thoroughgoing or complete determination of things: Every thing . . .
as to its possibility . . . stands under the principle . . . according to which, among all possible
predicates of things, in so far as they are compared with their opposites, one must always apply
to it; (Critique, A572/B600). The principle is in fact a manifestation of what is required to know
things completely with their determinate contents. To know something completely, one has to
know the sum total of all possible predicates (the idea which brings about the concept of ens
realissimum, of the individual being that is determined by this idea alone) and determine the
thing through them, either armatively or negatively (see ibid., A573/B60). Real or determining
predicates are therefore ones that contribute to this ideal process of thoroughgoing
determination.
29
Sebastian Gardner, Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason (London: Routledge, 1999) 239.
30
See Heidegger, Basic Problems, 334.
573
merely logical and real predicates; and consequently, that for a logical
predicate to qualify also as a real predicate, a further requirement concerning content must be met: it must not be already contained in the concept
of the subject. However, things become more complicated when we try to
work out this distinctions relation to the analytic/synthetic distinction.
Given the original denition of analyticity (the predicates being already
contained in the subject), the qualifying condition for a real predicate
operates negatively and qualies all predicates of analytic judgements as
merely logical predicates. Henry Allison defends this interpretation by
making use of the analytic/synthetic distinction as a basis for the logical/real
predicate distinction:
[S]ince the judgment [a body is divisible] is analytic, the predicate divisibility
is only a logical predicate; that is to say, it does not add any further
determinations to the subject beyond those already established by the
characterization of it as a body.31
First of all, this approach provides us with one important insight. We

understand that the merely logical/real predicate distinction is not something that can be decided by taking concepts in isolation; instead, it properly
works only in the context of propositions. To take a simpler example: in the
analytic proposition a triangle is three-sided, the predicate three-sided is a
merely logical predicate for the obvious reason that it is already contained in
the concept of the subject triangle. By contrast, in the synthetic proposition
my table is three-sided, the very same concept serves as a real predicate.
The key point is the word further in Allisons explanation. Although threesidedness seems to be a genuine determination of any triangular object, it
does not add anything further to the concept of triangle beyond what is
already and necessarily there. Therefore, the distinction is not dependent
only and ultimately upon the predicate-concept, but also upon the subject
concept, or more precisely upon the relation (of containment/inclusion)
between them.
This way of grounding the merely logical/real predicate distinction upon
the analytic/synthetic distinction is ne in qualifying the predicates of
31
Henry E. Allison, Kants Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense (New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1983) 71; my emphasis. In some of his critical works Kant
prefers to call real predicates synthetic predicates, and thereby applies the analytic/synthetic
distinction to predicates themselves in a way that allows Allisons interpretation. See, for
example, Lectures on Metaphysics, 28: 552: We call determinations not analytic predicates
[praedicata analytica] but rather synthetic predicates [praedicata synthetica]. However, as will be
discussed in the rest of this essay, given the exceptional status of modal propositions, the
syntheticity of propositions does not warrant qualifying their predicates as real, determining or
synthetic predicates. Kant puts this clearly: . . . we have introduced the categories: possibility,
actuality, and necessity, and then we deemed that they are not at all determinations of a thing,
or synthetic predicates (ibid., 29: 822).
574
UYGAR ABACI
analytic propositions as merely logical. However, if the same approach is

applied symmetrically to infer the realness of predicates from the
syntheticity of propositions, it does not work, and, as discussed before,
even invites charges of inconsistency in one exceptional case, namely, that of
existential (or in general modal) propositions. Kant holds the view that all
existential propositions are synthetic, and although we have not yet started
to investigate what it actually means, we know that the high point of Kants
overall account of the concept of existence is the dictum existence is not a
real predicate. Therefore, contrary to what was concluded above, Kant
takes the concept of existence in isolation, and universally claims that all
existential propositions are synthetic and that existence is never a real
predicate, no matter which particular subject is being said to exist. As
Kants fundamental objection in the ontological argument was to the
introduction of existence into the concept of something, existence can never
be already contained as a predicate in the subject concept of a proposition, it
is always outside. This immediately entails that existential propositions are
categorically non-analytic. However, besides the fact that existence cannot
be contained in a subject, as will be explained in the following section, it is
not a real, determining predicate either; that is, it does not add any further
determinations to any subject, and thus does not enlarge it. If no new or
further determination is added to the subject through the predicate exists,
what is, if any, actually added to the subject in existential propositions, or
more generally, what kind of synthesis is conducted in existential
propositions? As it is evident even at this early stage of our inquiry that
existential propositions must be synthetic in a dierent way than one we can
understand with the denitions and the related terminology we have
hitherto used, do we need to revise our original denition of syntheticity and
eliminate some of the binding constraints such as addition, further
determination or enlargement? Neither of these questions can be
satisfactorily answered before discussing why existence is not a real
predicate; but it can be securely concluded by now that the reason why
existence is a merely logical predicate is neither because it can be contained
in the concept of a subject, nor because existential propositions are analytic.
While it is indeed possible to claim that analyticity of a proposition is a
sucient condition for its predicate to be merely logical, given the
exceptional case of existential propositions it is not a necessary condition.
Conversely, given the same exceptional case, not being already contained in
the subject is a necessary but not a sucient condition for a predicate to be
real. As a nal remark I should add that in this section I basically intended
to show what Kants distinction between merely logical and real predicates
amounts to. As Kant introduces the distinction in order to introduce his
thesis that existence is not a real predicate, the relevance of the former to the
ontological argument is intimately connected to the latter. How Kant thinks
his thesis refutes the argument, I will return to aftert inquiring into the full
meaning of the thesis with its positive counterpart.
575
2. THESES ON EXISTENCE
Having reviewed the distinctions that form the essential background of
Kants negative thesis concerning existence, let us now focus on the thesis
itself. Its clearest formulation in the Critique is the following: Being is
obviously not a real predicate, i.e., a concept of something that could add to
the concept of a thing. It is merely the positing of a thing or of certain
determinations in themselves.32 There are two assertions here. The rst
sentence says what being is not, and the second says what it is. Although
these assertions are in fact negative and positive aspects of the same thesis, I
would like to discuss them separately, at least until reaching a better
position for understanding how they supplement each other.
2.1 Existence is Not a Real Predicate

Signicantly, it is not existence (Existenz or Dasein), but being (Sein),
that is declared not to be a real predicate.33 On the other hand, the title of
the rst section of The One Possible Basis makes the same negative
assertion for existence, and it does so even in a more radical fashion:
Existence is not a predicate or determination of any thing.34 One may
wonder whether using being instead of existence makes any dierence
for what is intended by the thesis, or whether the choice of words is
arbitrary. It is certainly not. The reason behind Kants choice in the
Critique may be that he wants to put more emphasis on the relation
between the concepts of existence and being. For in both accounts, he
attempts an entirely original way of reconstructing this relation through
the introduction of the concept of positing.
In the rst, negative assertion, not being a real predicate is explained as
not being a concept which could add (or could be added, as the Kemp-Smith
translation renders it) to the concept of a thing. This incapacity to add to the
concept of a thing has a dual implication. First, it cannot in any way be
contained in the concept of a thing, and consequently it cannot add a further
determination to the conceptual content of a thing. It is actually this second
constraint that makes being a non-real and merely logical predicate in
itself, independently of the proposition in which it occupies grammatically
32
Compare the mentioned quotation in Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft
(Werkausgabe Band IV), (Frankfurt am Main: Shurkamp, 1996): Sein ist oenbar kein reales
Pradikat . . ..
34
The One Possible Basis, 57; my emphasis. Compare ibid., 56: Das Dasein ist gar kein Pradikat
oder Determination von irgend einem Dinge. This shortcut formulation of Kant might have
been thought as the textual source of the widely exemplied misconception of his thesis in the
literature, i.e. that it is not a predicate at all; but then in the same text, Kant goes on to explain
the sense in which existence may be used as a predicate.
33
576
UYGAR ABACI
the predicate position. This reconrms that a clear-cut approach that is

solely based on the analytic/synthetic distinction is not the best instrument
to understand the predicative behaviour of being that the thesis suggests.
The approach that I would like to propose here focuses on the relation
between two terms that Kant uses to refer to the kinds of predicate that
existence is not, namely, real predicate and determination. A real
predicate is a determination, that is, a predicate that contributes to the
thoroughgoing determination of a thing,35 and the reason why such
determining predicates are called real lies in the peculiar sense in which the
term reality (Realitat, Sachheit) is employed by Kant. Unlike the modern
notion that is usually identied with actual existence, the Kantian notion of
reality, at least in the context of our discussion, has an indierent, neutral
sense with regard to the actuality of things; it rather refers to the possible or
conceptual contents of things without making any existential commitment.36
As Kant states in the second section of the Ideal of Pure Reason, the idea
of all reality (omnitudo realitatis) which is the totality of the particular thingcontents functions as the a-priori condition of the thoroughgoing
determination of things; it is the sum total of all possible (positive)
predicates from which the particular conceptual content of each and every
thing is derived. The concept of ens realissimum, as the ideal individual
object that corresponds to this idea of all reality, lacks no possible content.
It follows that the particular conceptual content of a thing is the totality of
the predicates it has. As this account is still at the level of non-contextual
talk of predicates, Kant does not yet dierentiate at this point among
predicates as being merely logical or real. However the very predicates that
35
See n28.
Heidegger grounds his interpretation of Kants thesis on the importance of this sense of
reality, which, he claims, is adopted by Kant from Scholastic terminology:
When Kant talks about the omnitudo realitatis, the totality of all realities, he means
not the whole of all beings actually extant but, just the reverse, the whole of all
possible thing-determinations, the whole of all thing-contents or real-contents,
essences, possible things. Accordingly, realitas is synonymous with Leibnizs term
possibilitas, possibility. Realities are the what-contents of possible things in general
without regard to whether or not they are actual, or real in our modern sense;
(Heidegger, Basic Problems, 34)
For a similar articulation of the distinction between reality and existence in Kants language, see
also Wolfgang Schwarz, Kants Categories of Reality and Existence, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, 48 (December 1987) No. 2: 3436. As Heidegger nds it
synonymous with the Leibnizian notion of possibility, I think this sense of reality is better
captured by Kants precritical notion of real element of possibility that I alluded to in n18. Just
like the real element of possibility, it designates a neutral notion of possibility. It is free of any
modal reference in the critical sense; that is, it does not involve a reference to the agreement of
the object with the conditions of experience in general, but it refers solely to the data or content
that is represented by the concept. Traces of this precritical neutral notion of possibility are still
present in the Critique, and at times it becomes a really taxing business to dierentiate the sense
in which Kant uses the term possibility.
36
577
are talked about here must be, at least potentially, determining predicates,
for they are said to contribute to the thoroughgoing determination of things
and to make up the contents of things. We can therefore defer our
propositional concerns such as the criterion of further determination or
enlargement, and limit our present inquiry to what kinds of concept these
potentially real predicates may be.37
Heidegger situates Kants thesis on existence historically in the tradition
of ancient and medieval ontology.38 Besides its theological character,
Heidegger observes that a dogmatic assumption has dominated this line of
traditional ontology: to each being there belongs a what and a way or mode
of being, essentia and existentia.39 Accordingly, the essence of a thing is
what makes it as it is, what denes or determines a thing with respect to the
particular attributes it has, or in the above-mentioned Kantian use of the
term, it is the particular reality of a thing. As the etymologies of both denitio and de-terminatio would suggest, essence is what sets the limits of a
thing. This also conforms to the spirit of the principle of thoroughgoing
determination; for the particularities of things are determined through
varying degrees of limitations of the unlimited totality of all possible
37
Richard Campbell, in his Real Predicates and Exists, suggests a misleading reading of
Kants discourse of real or determining predicates. Campbells idea is that although the notion
of a determining predicate is to be understood relative to a given judgment, the notion of a real
predicate is not. He obviously assumes a distinction between the meanings of the two terms,
which, I believe, Kant uses interchangeably to refer to the same notion. Without giving a
satisfactory account of the distinction he has in mind, he bases his own, revised denition of
a real predicate upon this alleged distinction: . . . a real predicate is one which is apt to serve as a
determining predicate, or again in the footnote to the former denition, one which could add a
determination in some judgment (96). I have the impression that Campbell takes real
predicate as a broader notion to mean a concept that has a capacity to function as a
determining predicate, whether or not it actually does so. That is probably why he thinks the
notion of a real predicate, in contradistinction with that of a determining predicate, is not
relative to a propositional context. However, besides introducing an unnecessary and
unexplained distinction between real and determining predicates, Campbell understands Kants
negative thesis concerning existence as a positive denition of a real predicate, and thus reads
the could in Being is not . . . a concept of something that could add to the concept of a thing
as a capacity that every real predicate, in isolation from any propositional context, must have. I
suggest, however, that the could in question refers to the context-independent incapacity of
being or existence to add to the concept of a thing as a predicate, and thus classies existence
as a non-real predicate, tout court. On the other hand, a real or determining predicate is one
which actually adds (a further determination) to the concept of a thing in a given proposition.
What Campbell denes as a concept that could or is apt to add a determination to the concept of
a thing, without any mention of a propositional context, may correspond in my account only to
what I classied above as a potentially real or determining predicate. See Richard Campbell,
Real Predicates and Exists, Mind, New Series, 83 (January 1974) No. 329: 959.
38
See Heidegger, Basic Problems, 2934.
39
Heidegger devotes the entire second chapter of his Basic Problems to the history of this
assumption.
578
UYGAR ABACI
predicates. On the other hand, the mode of being of a thing says nothing
whatsoever about the attributes it has, nothing about what it really is, but
only points out the specic sense or way in which it is.40
It should be clear by now that the candidate concepts for determining
predicates are to be sought among the possible attributes or properties of
things that specify, dierentiate and dene their particular characters, their
whatness. Now, within the Kantian territories, the suitable place to trace the
age-old distinction between the what and the mode of being of things is the
table of categories, which is, as Kant himself acknowledges, adopted from
Aristotles list of categories with major structural modications.41 As far as
the distinction between essence and existence is concerned, two classes of
category in the table come to the fore: the categories of quality (reality,
negation and limitation), and the categories of modality (possibility/
impossibility, existence/non-existence, necessity/contingency). It is of
extreme signicance that Kant entitles the positive or armative category
of quality reality.42 Reality was said to be the transcendental totality of all
possible positive predicates of things. In the ideal thoroughgoing
determination of a thing, each and every one of these positive predicates
is either armed or denied of the very thing in question. The possible
content of any individual thing other than God is thus determinately limited
in this or that degree with respect to this unlimited totality.43 All this is to
40
This distinction can be traced back to Aristotle and his early medieval commentators such as
Aquinas. At many places in his Metaphysics, Aristotle distinguishes the categories as the gures
of predication, or more precisely, as the attributes that constitute the essence of an individual
thing, from the other ways in which a thing is said to be, i.e. being accidentally, being as truth,
being potentially or actually. See especially, Aristotle, Metaphysics in The Complete Works of
Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes. (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984) 1026a 33.
Aquinas, in his On Being and Essence, claries that the term essence applies only to the rst
sense of being that is divided into ten categories, and points out that as it is what is signied by
the denition of what the thing is, essence is also called by the name whatness; see St Thomas
Aquinas, Selected Writings, translated and edited by Ralph McInerny (London: Penguin
Books, 1998) 31. In his Lectures on Metaphysics, Kant himself repeatedly draws this categorical
distinction between essentia and existentia, or what and modes of being and calls modes
extraessential properties that do not belong to the essence of a thing; see, for example, ibid.,
28: 553.
41
Critique, A80, B106.
42
[T]ranscendental armation . . . is called reality (thinghood) (ibid., A574/B602).
43
Kant makes a warning about the original function of the ens realissimum in the derivation of
the particular possibilities of things:
The derivation of all other possibility from this original being . . . cannot be regarded
as a limitation of its highest reality and as a division, as it were of it; for then the
original being would be regarded as a mere aggregate of derivative beings . . . Rather,
the highest reality would ground the possibility of all things as a ground and not as a
sum total; the manifoldness of the former rests not on the limitation of the original
being itself, but on its complete consequences.
(ibid., A579/B607)
Kant is aware that his previous discourse of possessing/containing all reality may lead the
reader to a Spinozistic notion of God, which he thinks, as containing all realities within itself,
579
say that a single determination, armative or negative, of a particular thing

is only possible in a judgement with a specic function corresponding to a
specic class of categories, namely, quality.44 Therefore, the notion of
quality as the name of a class of category is quite dierent from its
Aristotelian sense. It does not refer directly to the qualitative attributes of
actual things, but rather to the specic way in which the concepts of
attributes are related to the concept of the subject in a judgement. This
relation is that of ascription by way of armation (in armative
judgements), or denial by way of negation (in negative judgements), either
of which may lead to a certain advance in the determination of the thing
designated by the subject in question.45 As Heidegger nicely puts it: By
quality Kant refers to that character of judgmental positing which indicates
whether a predicate is ascribed to a subject, whether it is armed of the
suers from real internal conicts. Kant addresses this problem of real conicts in the
Amphiboly, where he directly criticizes Leibniz:
the principle that realities (as mere armations) never logically oppose each other . . .
signies nothing at all either in regard to nature nor overall in regard to anything in
itself (of this we have no concept). For real opposition always obtains . . . i.e., where
one reality, if combined in one subject with another, cancels out the eect of the latter
(ibid., A273/B329)
This problem, which Kant has had in mind even in the precritical period, was what required a
revision in the LeibnizianWolan notion of possibility, whose only criterion is freedom from
logical contradiction; hence the Baumgartenian distinction between the logical and real element
of possibility that I explained in n18. However, Kants ground notion of God, together with the
notion of particular possibilities (or realities) as its consequences, avoids such real oppositions.
In The One Possible Basis, Kant proposes a similar solution by dividing possibilities into two
classes with respect to their relation with God, namely the ones that belong to its own
determinations and the ones that belong to its consequences. See, ibid., 835. Here, it is also
useful to keep in mind the distinction between the idea of the sum total (of all reality) and the
ideal of the most real being; for what is limited in deriving particular possibilities is the former
but strictly not the latter.
44
The quality of judgements is not in fact the only function that has to do with the content of a
judgement. See, for example, Critique, B100, where Kant implies that except for the modality of
judgements, all other three functions (quality, quantity and relation) constitute the content of a
judgement. However, our present inquiry is about the determination of particular thingcontents, or of particular subjects in judgements, and as will be seen, about the use of the is of
predication in such determination. In other words, we are dealing with the kinds of judgement
that pertain to the reality of things. Therefore, the direct focus of our account will be
qualitative judgements that are particular with respect to their function of quantity and
categorical with respect to their function of relation.
45
Innite judgements and the corresponding category of limitation have a special place in the
qualitative relation between the subject and the predicate. As they contain a peculiar sort of
armation made by means of a merely negative predicate, innite judgements do not
immediately determine the object of the subject, but placing the subject in a separated class of
beings within the innite domain of all possible beings, they contribute, in a limiting way, to the
content of our cognition in general. This limiting function of innite judgements is also one of
the marks that distinguishes Kants transcendental logic from what he calls general logic; see,
for example, Critique, A723 and A574/B602.
580
UYGAR ABACI
subject or opposed to it, that is denied of it.46 Existence and other

categories of modality have nothing to do with the said determination of
things; they belong to a dierent class of categories. What kind of relation is
asserted in modal judgements, and particularly in existential ones, will be
discussed when we come to the positive thesis concerning existence, but for
the present it is clear that the ascription of existence, or of other modes, to a
subject can by no means contribute to the determination of the content or
whatness of the object of that subject.47 Such determination is conducted in
qualitative judgements, and it is done without any regard to the mode in
which the object of the subject is, that is, without regard to whether it is
merely possible, actual or necessary. That is why existence is not a real
predicate or determination, no matter to what subject it may be ascribed,
but is always a merely logical predicate.
We have thus seen what kinds of concept have the capacity to determine
things in what kinds of judgement. However, they must still satisfy the
contextual constraint of enlargement to qualify as real, determining
predicates. As was shown before, the very same concept may serve both as a
merely logical predicate and as a real predicate in dierent propositional
contexts. Enlargement of the subject is only possible when the predicate is
not already contained in it. One has to be careful about this. The discourse
of enlargement, containment or addition may be quite misleading here,
if such terms give us the wrong impression that only positive predications
contribute to the determination of things. Negations too may well be
regarded as determining. To determine is nothing other than to posit one of
two opposites, that is to say, it is to arm or deny a real (positive) predicate
in its relation to the subject of a proposition.48 Therefore, the crucial
question is whether the proposition, in an armative or negative way, serves
to decrease the indeterminacy of the object of the subject concept with
respect to the sum total of all possible predicates.49 I would suggest that this
point is better captured by Allisons rather neutral term further determination. After this note, we can reformulate our constraint: a proposition
46
Heidegger, Basic Problems, 36.

Kant explains the indierence of modal categories to the reality or determination of things
more clearly in Lectures on Metaphysics:
Everything that exists is, to be sure, thoroughly determined . . . Existence, however, is
not a concept of thoroughgoing determination . . . Existence thus gives no further
predicate to the thing . . . Existence is not a separate reality, although everything that
exists must have a reality. Existence, possibility, actuality, and necessity are special
kinds of categories which do not at all contain predicates of things, but rather only
modes;
(ibid., 28: 554)
48
Lectures on Metaphysics, 28: 552.
49
Van Cleve makes exactly the same point: Note that enlarge may be a misleading term,
insofar as enlarging a concept typically results in narrowing its extension. See Problems From
Kant, 188.
47
581
further determines the object of its subject concept, only if the object of the
subject concept is not already determined with respect to the predicate of
that proposition; in other words, only if the predicate is not already armed
or denied of the subject. Accordingly, if the object of the subject concept is
thus further determined by the proposition, the predicate is not only a
logical but also a real predicate.50
2.2 Existence is Absolute Positing

Having thus settled what existence is not and why, let us turn back to Kants
own formulation of his twin theses about being, and try to elicit what he
says existence is.
Being is obviously not a real predicate, i.e., a concept of something that could
add to the concept of a thing. It is merely the positing of a thing or of certain
determinations in themselves.51
Taking up the positive assertion, we are now faced with the concept of
position or positing, the discussion of which I have deliberately deferred up
to this very point. Although it is possible to obtain some understanding of
the concept of positing through a close reading of the passages in which it is
used, Kant puts the concept into the text of the Critique as if it had an
obvious meaning. However, he gives a clue in The One Possible Basis: The
concept of position or positing [Position oder Setzung] is totally simple and
on the whole identical with the concept of being in general.52 The identity
between the concepts of positing and being in general suggests nothing at
50
In his Lectures on Metaphysics, Kant applies the logical/real duality to the concept of
essence.
A logical essence [he says] is the rst inner ground of all logical predicates of a thing; a
real essence is the rst inner ground of all determinations of an essence . . . Logical
essence is found through principles of analysis: but real essence through principles of
synthesis;
(ibid., 28: 553)
Regarding the problem of further determination, we can thus conclude that the predicates that
we reach through the analysis of a concept are merely logical predicates and the ones that
further determine this complex of logical predicates (logical essence) through synthesis are real
predicates. However, there is still the exception of modes which Kant calls extraessential
properties. Although they can be contained neither in the logical essence (we cannot reach the
mode of a subject through its analysis) nor in the real essence of a thing, they can function as
logical predicates in modal propositions, because as long as it occupies the predicate position
anything one likes can serve as a logical predicate.
51
52
The One Possible Basis, 59. The literal translation of the German word Setzung is setting;
but, as Heidegger says, it is not more helpful than positing: [O]ur German word Setzung is just
as ambiguous as the Latin positio. The latter can mean: (1) Setting, placing, laying as action. (2)
Something set, the theme. (3) Setness, site, constitution (Martin Heidegger, Kants Thesis
582
UYGAR ABACI
this stage, but Kant goes on to extend what he has just said to a further
domain:
Now something can be posited as merely relational; or better, be thought
merely as the relation (respectus logicus) of something as a property of a thing.
Then being, that is the position of this relation, is only the copulative concept
in a judgment. Should not only this relation but the thing in and for itself be
viewed as posited, then this being is the same as existence.53
What this statement means as a whole will become clearer as we proceed,

but for now I would just like to point out that what is described here as
the position of the relation of something as a property of a thing is
nothing dierent than what I have described before as the function of the
category of reality in qualitative judgements, namely, the ascription of a
predicate to the subject by way of armation, regardless of whether or
not the object that is represented through the subject concept actually
exists.54 Therefore, it turns out that we already know at least half of
what seemed at rst so enigmatic, namely, positing in the relative sense.
The account quoted above from The One Possible Basis rst identies
being in general with positing, and then denes it with respect to its purely
logical function: Being is only the copulative concept in a judgment. That is
to say, being is the is in a qualitative judgement. When taken as such, it
becomes obvious that being is not a real predicate. As the is of
predication, being is not even a concept of its own but only the linking word
that posits the relation between the predicate and the subject. Kant makes a
more explicit formulation of the function of the is of predication in the
Critique:
In the logical use it is merely the copula of a judgement. The proposition, God
is omnipotent, contains two concepts that have their objects: God and
omnipotence; the small word is is not a predicate, but only that which posits
the predicate in relation to the subject.55
Therefore, by the is of predication, which is itself not a predicate, the

predicate is posited in relation to the subject. As the locus of a qualitative
judgement, this relation is of the nature of an ascription, that is, what is
expressed by the positing of this relation is that the property thought in the
concept of the predicate belongs to the thing thought in the concept of the
subject. Only this relation of ascription or belonging, or more precisely, only
about Being in Pathmarks, 343). All these senses amount to the idea that to be is to be set in (or
to have) a position.
53
The One Possible Basis, 59.
54
See n44.
55
583
the predicate in this relation as belonging to the subject is posited there, and
nothing more. Nothing whatsoever is posited as to whether the object of the
subject concept actually is or the mode in which it is; for qualitative
judgements operate at the level of reality, which in this specic context is
synonymous with a neutral, agnostic notion of possibility that is devoid of
any existential connotation, or even of any reference to a real possibility.56
Kant warns aptly:
If I say God is omnipotent, only this logical relation between God and
omnipotence is thought since the latter is a property of the former. Nothing
further is posited here. Whether God is . . . is by no means contained in that.
Thus this being [expressed by the copula] is quite properly used even for the
relations that non-entities have to one another.57
It would not be wrong to say that all predicates that have the capacity to
determine the whatness of things are posited as merely relational, as relative
to a subject. How, then, is the mode of being of a thing posited? How is, for
instance, existence, which is categorically a merely logical predicate and thus
lacks the capacity to determine a thing, posited? Or, what is exactly posited
in an existential proposition? A previously quoted sentence gives a solid hint
as to what is posited in an existential proposition: Should . . . the thing in
and for itself be viewed as posited, then this being is the same as existence.
What it means for a thing in and for itself to be posited, we do not know
yet; but as in the case of relative positing we discussed the copulative
function of being as the is of predication, it is obvious that we should now
56
See n18.
The One Possible Basis, 61. This suggestion of Kant, together with his general attitude
concerning the is of predication, that we do not commit ourselves to an ontological position on
the existence or even on the objective reality of the subject by ascribing a predicate to it, may
invite some semantic objections. In modern logical theory, whether the truth of positive
propositions requires or implies the existence of the subject, or whether propositions about nonexistent entities have a truth-value at all are controversial questions. But it will not be wrong to
say that it is a fairly common interpretation that predicates can be ascribed with truth only to
existing things, or in other words, the being that is expressed by the copula is not as indierent
to the existence of the subject as Kant suggests. In relation to the same point, Van Cleve brings
up a quite reasonable doubt that I myself would share: whether Kant is here committing himself
to a Meinongian ontology, or to the so-called Independence Principle. However, he
distinguishes Kant from Meinong by referring to the possibility of reconstructing Kants
qualitative judgements as conditionals:
Not necessarily, for his observation [that God is omnipotent is true even if God does
not exist] can be accommodated by construing the predication as a conditional: if any
being is God, that being is omnipotent. That in turn can be construed as asserting a
link between two concepts rather than a link between a Meinongian object and a
predicate.
(See Van Cleve, Problems From Kant, 304)
For a relevant discussion, see also Adams, Leibniz:DTI, 15960.
57
584
UYGAR ABACI
inquire into being as existence, that is, being as the is of existence. Let us
keep following Kant from the Critique:
Now if I take the subject (God) together with all his predicates (among which
omnipotence belongs), and say God is, or there is a God, then I add no new
predicate to the concept of God, but only posit the subject in itself with all its
predicates, and indeed posit the object in relation to my concept.58
This decisive passage can be read in two steps. First, in an existential

proposition, what is posited is not a particular predicate in relation to the
subject, but rather the whole subject with all its predicates, with its whole
conceptual content. Surely, as nothing is further determined in the concept
of the subject by an existential proposition, all predicates that are posited
with the subject here are the ones which are already (analytically) contained
in it. Second, in the positing of the subject with all its predicates, the object
(of the subject concept) is posited in relation to my concept, which is to say
that what is posited is in fact the actual thing as corresponding to the
concept I have of it. In other words, what I think in the subject concept as
the mere idea of a possible object is posited as an actual object existing
outside of that concept. However, while thus switching from the merely
possible to the actual, nothing is added in terms of content, or as was said
above, nothing is further determined. It is a switch in the mode of being
alone. As for the God in God is omnipotent and the God in God is or
in God exists, Kant says, Both must contain exactly the same, and hence
when I think this object as given absolutely (through the expression, it is),
nothing new is thereby added to the concept, which expresses merely its
possibility. He concludes, The actual contains nothing more than the
merely possible.59 Hence, Kants well-known example of the hundred
dollars: A hundred actual dollars do not contain the least bit more than a
hundred possible ones.60 A hundred possible dollars is what is merely
thought in the concept, a hundred actual dollars is what is also absolutely
posited as the existing object that corresponds to the concept. Neither of
them, however, is more real in the Kantian sense of the term; they have
exactly the same what-content, not more, not less. Otherwise, the actual
money would not correspond to what I think in its concept as merely
58
Ibid., A599/B627. This dictum (and the following example of hundred dollars), Kant seems to
intend as a direct reply to Leibniz who repeatedly states the opposite of what Kant says about
the relation between existence and degrees of reality and sees existence as the complement of
possibility: It is clear . . . that Existence is a perfection, or increases reality; that is, when existing
A is conceived, more reality is conceived than when possible A is conceived; [Y]et if we
consider more accurately, [we shall see] that we conceive something more when we think that a
thing A exists, than when we think it is possible; respectively quoted in Adams, Leibniz: DTI,
120, 165.
60
59
585
possible, and we would be talking instead about two concepts with dierent
contents.
There is, however, an apparent diculty in Kants argument that has
aroused objections by some opponents of Kants refutation. The idea of the
exact congruency between the conceptual contents of the possible and the
actual seems incompatible with the metaphysical principle what exists is
thoroughly determined, which Kant seems to endorse too. Although the
critical Kant situates thorough determination in the faculty of reason as a
mere regulative idea that can never be attained in concreto,61 it can still be
said within the critical framework that an actually existing object is always
more determined or has more determinate content in itself than its mere
concept, through which we only think of the predicates that are analytically
contained in the denition of that object. Alvin Plantinga emphasizes this
point:
of course it will not be true that the concept of an object contains as much
content as the object itself. Consider, for example, the concept horse. Any real
horse will have many properties not contained in that concept; any real horse
will be either more than 16 hands high or else 16 hands or less. But neither of
these properties is in the content of the concept horse.62
Morrris Engel raises a similarly grounded objection to Kant: . . . a person

might still argue that we can never be sure that our concepts are adequate
expressions of things or perfectly conform to their archetypes.63 Although
Kants language seems to leave him vulnerable to these criticisms, the exact
congruency of the actual object with its concept is not relevant to the point
Kant wants to make. First of all, the congruency Kant presupposes is not
between an actual object and the general concept under which we dene that
object with its necessary predicates, but between an object as actually given
and the individual concept of the very same object through which we think it
as merely possible (in the logical sense). Second, the appropriate question
here is not whether my concept is or can be wholly adequate to its actual
object, but whether ascription of actuality or existence to the object of my
concept adds a further determination or a further real predicate to it, or
whether the content of my concept is enlarged in the least by saying that its
object actually exists.64 All Kant strives to underline is that existence has
nothing to do with the contents of things and cannot be contained in or
introduced into their concepts. As he puts it much more clearly just after
61
See ibid., A573/B601.

Alvin Plantinga, Kants Objection to the Ontological Argument, 53940.
63
S. Morris Engel, Kants Refutation of the Ontological Argument, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, 24 (September 1963) No. 1: 30.
64
For Wolfgang Schwarzs apt reply to Engel in relation to this point, see Wolfgang Schwarz,
Professor Engel on Kant, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 25 (March 1965) No. 3:
409.
62
586
UYGAR ABACI
giving the example of hundred dollars, Thus, when I think a thing, through
whichever and however many predicates I like (even in its thoroughgoing
determination), not the least bit gets added to the thing when I posit in
addition that this thing is.65 In this sense, apart from the fact that a hundred
actual dollars would make me better o in actual life than a hundred
possible dollars would do, the actuality or absolute positing of a hundred
dollars does not add anything to the content of a hundred dollars as merely
possible. The only dierence between them is their modes of being. One is
actual, the other is merely possible. This categorial distinction between the
contents and the modes of being of things also explains why the mere
conceivability of the ens realissimum, the most real being with a perfectly
complete content, does not ensure the assertion of its actuality: the question
still remains whether it exists or not.66 Any answer to the question of
existence, as existence (or any mode of being) cannot be contained within
the mere concept of a thing, is to be sought outside the conceptual contents
of things, however much they may contain. Accordingly, any argument that
attempts to extend our knowledge of what exists by speculating from within
mere concepts alone is bound to fail. This is the point where Kants
particular objection to the ontological proof, i.e. that existence is not a real
predicate, meets his general critique of speculative proofs, all of which, he
thinks, rely heavily on the former.67
How Kant understands this outside is also related to the crucial question
of whether and to what extent Kants refutation is consistent with his critical
philosophy, and will be investigated in the proceeding section. But before
leaving our inquiry into the refutation, it will be helpful to sum up the
account of Kants notions of positing and existence that I have presented in
the last two sections.
65
Critique, A601/B628
Ibid., A601/B628.
67
I believe I have already said enough of why Kant thinks that his thesis concerning existence is
a basic ground of attack that might suce to refute the ontological argument as he reconstructs
it. I should add here, however, that the force of the thesis to refute the ontological argument is
not universally accepted, even among those who accept the thesis itself. Van Cleve, for instance,
claims that existence is not a real predicate, even if it is assumed as true, is irrelevant or at least
harmless to Descartess argument. See his Problems from Kant, 189. A much more radical claim
is one made by Nakhnikian and Salmon: The treatment of exists as a real predicate does not
render the ontological argument valid. If anything, it helps to clarify the invalidity of the
argument. See George Nakhnikian, Wesley C. Salmon, Exists as a Predicate, The
Philosophical Review, 66 (October 1957) No. 4: 542. As I declared at the beginning, my concern
in this paper is not to discuss and take a position on the validity or soundness either of the
ontological argument, or of Kants alleged refutation of it, but to understand Kants notion of
existence by the help of his thesis as presented in the context of the refutation. In relation to
these objections, I should be content with just stating my basic approach to them. One may not
be convinced by Kants reconstruction of the ontological argument; and one may have reasons
for rejecting the thesis as well; but challenging that the latter is relevant to the former in the
specic way Kant suggests can only be an indication of an improper understanding of either one
or the other or both.
66
587
Now, the positing of a predicate in relation to the subject, Kant calls

relative positing. On the other hand, the positing of a subject in and for
itself without reference to any relation with a particular predicate, he
entitles absolute positing.68 Therefore, being in an unqualied sense is
positing in general; being as the is of predication is relative positing; and
nally, being as the is of existence, or in Kants own words, being which is
the same as existence is absolute positing. Given the denition of a real
predicate as discussed extensively in this paper, the full meaning of the
original thesis is that being is not a real predicate, either in the sense of
relative positing or in the sense of absolute positing. That is why existence,
independently of any propositional context, is not a real predicate but only a
logical predicate.
2.3 The Syntheticity of Existential Propositions and The Third Thesis on

Existence
Having put forward dierent aspects of why existence is not a real predicate
but only a logical predicate whose function is positing the subject of a
proposition absolutely, let us now turn back to the important question that
was raised in 1.3, and left unanswered: why are existential propositions
synthetic? More specically now, if existential propositions do not posit a
relation between two concepts, namely, predicate and subject, or do not
posit one concept as relative to the other, but only posit one concept (the
subject), absolutely in and for itself, in what sense are they synthetic? As any
synthesis is of at least two entities, what do they synthesize? Or is absolute
positing not really absolute?
That absolute positing too implies a relation in itself is in fact evident
from the discourse Kant prefers to use in the Critique. As repeatedly
reported, absolute positing of a subject is the positing of it in itself with all
its predicates as an object that stands in relation to my concept. Then,
whereas relative positing posits a relation between two concepts, i.e. the
predicate and the subject, absolute positing posits a relation between a
concept and an actual object, i.e. my subject concept and the object of
that concept. In absolute positing, nothing but the actual thing itself is
combined with the subject concept. Thus, Kant concludes By the predicate
existence I add nothing to the thing, but rather add the thing itself to the
concept.69
68
Maybe not in the Critique explicitly, but in the title of the second section of the rst chapter of
The One Possible Basis Kant uses the term absolute position: Das Dasein ist die absolute
Position eines Dinges.
69
Immanuel Kant, Werke, Akademieausgabe, Vol. 18, No. 6276, quoted in Heidegger, Kants
Thesis about Being, Pathmarks, edited by William McNeill (Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1998) 344.
588
UYGAR ABACI
With this formulation, we see that existential propositions are in

conformity with at least one aspect of syntheticity, i.e. through the
predicate-concept something that is not contained in the subject concept
is added to it. Hereby we also obtain the answer to the question of what is
actually added to the subject in existential propositions. When existence
is ascribed to a subject, it is not existence as a real predicate or a
determination of that subject, but the actual thing which is added to that
subject concept. Thus, what Kant in fact means by his claim that existence
cannot be contained analytically in the mere concept of something is that in
an existential proposition the logical predicate exists refers to the actuality
of the object external to my subject concept, and this actuality obviously
cannot be contained in the former analytically: [T]he object in its actuality
is not contained analytically in my concept, but is added synthetically to my
concept.70 This synthetic addition does not, however, increase or enlarge
the content of the concept I have of the object whose actuality is asserted,
for the synthesis in an existential proposition is not an addition of a real
predicate or a further determination to the subject. Instead, an actual
correspondence or match is asserted between the actual object and the
subject concept through which the object is thought as merely possible with
exactly the same content. Hence, the identity of the contents thesis. From
this point, we can conclude that syntheticity of propositions does not
necessarily require the enlargement of the subject of that proposition in the
sense of addition of a real predicate or a new determination, but more
loosely, it requires the addition of something that is not already contained in
the subject.
In the absolute positing of a subject as an actual object, the givenness of
the object from outside of the concept conforms to another more rened
aspect of syntheticity in Kant, that is, its appeal to the givenness and/or the
conditions of givenness of objects to our cognition. In his illuminating
account of Kants notion of syntheticity, Robert Hanna calls this aspect the
determining factor of syntheticity and formulates it as the intuitiondependence of the truth and meaning of synthetic propositions:
A true proposition is synthetic if and only if it is consistently deniable (hence
not logically or conceptually necessary) and its meaning and truth strictly
require a connection with an intuition an empirical intuition in the case of
synthetic a-posteriori propositions, and a pure intuition in the case of synthetic
a-priori propositions.71
The intuition-dependence of syntheticity, and thus of existential propositions, is where Kants account of the notions of existence and
absolute positing is reframed under his critical theory of possible experience.
70
71
Immanuel Kant, Religion and Rational Theology, 28: 1028. See also Critique, A599/B627.
Robert Hanna, Kant and The Foundations of Analytic Philosophy, 1923.
589
For a sensible intuition, either pure or empirical, is the means through which
alone an object can be immediately given or represented to our mode of
cognition. Empirical intuitions are those which represent the objective/
material content of our actual cognition, and pure a priori intuitions are
those which represent the totality of space and time that are, as pure forms
of intuition, the formal conditions of the possibility of empirical intuitions.
Thus, intuitions, as pure and empirical, constitute the sensible conditions of
the givenness of objects of our possible empirical experience.
The intuition-dependence of syntheticity and its appeal to the sensible
conditions of possible experience provide us with a new perspective to see
the fundamental dierence between relative positing in analytic propositions where the predicate that is already contained in the subject is posited
as relative to the subject and absolute positing in synthetic propositions
where the subject is posited with all its predicates as having an actual
object external to and yet corresponding to it. As strongly emphasized
before, in an analytic proposition such as God is omnipotent, the subject
concept, in so far as it is free of internal contradiction, does not involve
more than an agnostic notion of possibility, namely, the mere logical
possibility of what is represented through a concept alone without the least
need for an appeal to the principles or conditions of possible experience.
Not only the question whether God actually exists, but also even the
question whether He is a possible object of experience, remains. On the
other hand, in absolute positing, provided that the proposition is true on
the basis of our empirical intuitions, by positing the subject we qualify it
not only as a possible object of experience, but also as an actual object of
experience, as part of actuality or our actual world as a whole. Thus, in a
true existential proposition, it is not the content of the posited subject
itself, but the content of our entire actual experience which is enlarged.
Kant explains this in one of the richest passages of his account of the
nature of existence within the refutation. As was just repeated above,
within the mere concept of a thing alone, in a completely a-priori manner
and without an appeal to the conditions of experience, the object can be
thought only as logically possible and not as really possible, as a possible
object of experience. Kant goes one step further and says that even in the
case of an object whose real possibility we know a posteriori, the mere
concept of it, although connected with the conditions of possible
experience, does not suce to assert the existence of the object, and thus
he draws the thin line between the real possibility and the actuality of
things:
If the issue were an object of sense, then I could not confuse the existence of
the thing with the mere concept of the thing. For through its concept, the
object would be thought only as in agreement with the universal conditions of a
possible empirical cognition in general, but through its existence it would be
thought as contained in the context of the entirety of experience; thus through
590
UYGAR ABACI
connection with the content of the entire experience the concept of the object is
not in the least increased, but our thinking receives more through it, namely, a
possible perception.72
To understand the depth of this passage and to exhibit more precisely how
Kants twin theses in the refutation are complemented by his critical
programme of modality, we have to resort to a section in the Critique called
The Postulates of Empirical Thought In General, where Kant gives
denitions of modal categories with respect to the conditions of possible
experience, and presents thereby another positive thesis concerning
existence. According to the postulates of possibility, actuality and necessity:
1.
2.
3.
Whatever agrees with the formal conditions of experience (in

accordance with intuition and concepts) is possible.
That which is connected with the material conditions of experience
(sensation) is actual.
That whose connection with the actual is determined in accordance with
general conditions of experience is (exists) necessarily.73
While the negative and positive theses presented in the refutation were about
the predicative function of exists in a proposition, i.e., what it means to
ascribe existence to the subject of a proposition, the postulate of actuality
provides us with a criterion of existence, i.e. to what objects we can
legitimately ascribe existence. First, possibility, actuality and necessity, as
the categories of modality, are limited in their application to the objects of
possible experience. What belongs to this stock of all possible objects is
determined by the criterion that is suggested by the postulate of possibility.
Accordingly, a possible object of experience is one which conforms to the
formal conditions of experience, which is to say that it is one which
conforms to space and time, as the sensible conditions, and to the pure
concepts of the understanding, as the intellectual conditions. However,
being an actual object of experience, the postulate of actuality suggests,
requires also conformity to the material conditions of experience, that is, the
object must be given through an empirical intuition or perception.
There is one point to be attended to here. One should carefully distinguish
an act of cognition from an existential proposition. For an actual cognition to
take place, the material content of experience must be received through an
actual perception. On the other hand, an existential proposition relies on the
empirical knowledge of actual things, and this
does not require] immediate perception of the object itself the existence of
which is to be cognized, but still its connection with some actual perception in
72
73
Critique, A601/629.
Ibid., B266.
591
accordance with the analogies of experience, which exhibit all real connection
in an experience in general.74
Analogies are thus the inferential instruments that give unity to experience,
and by means of them we can legitimately ascribe existence to things that we
do not actually perceive, and include them in the context of our entire
experience. The only question is whether these unperceived things can
be somehow connected with an actual perception of ours. If so, with the
guidance of the analogies we can get from our actual perceptions to the
thing in the series of possible perceptions.75 This possibility of analogical
inference and the broadened scope of actuality is also what essentially
distinguishes Kants notion of existence from Berkeleys infamous esse est
percipi (to exist is to be perceived). We understand here why Kant says that
by the absolute positing of something, our thinking receives an additional
possible perception: to posit something as actual is to posit it either as an
object of actual perception, or as something that can be analogically
connected to an actual perception: in the most general terms, to posit it as
an object of possible perception.76 It follows that according to Kants third
thesis, to exist is to be connected with an actual perception, either
immediately or analogically.
As for the postulate of necessity or necessary existence, one may ask
whether it is compatible with Kants view that unconditioned necessity
cannot be legitimately applied to things, but only to propositions, which
appeared in our account of the refutation as the rst step of Kants overall
argument. Malcolm, for instance, without explaining why, says that the
third postulate rules out the interpretation that Kant holds this view.77
However, the third postulate is wholly compatible with the distinction
between the unconditioned necessity of propositions and the conditioned
necessity of things, primarily because the necessity whose criterion is
characterized in the postulate is a conditioned necessity (of the existence of
something), conditioned by the universal conditions and laws of experience.
The case is not that of the necessity of a single object whose existence can be
known completely a priori, from its mere concept alone and in isolation
from the context of our experience. Instead, the postulate describes a case in
74
Ibid., A225.
Ibid., A226.
76
From here, Heidegger reaches, rather promptly, the conclusion that the specic character of
absolute position, as Kant denes it, reveals itself as perception; Heidegger, Basic Problems, 46.
This conclusion is valid but somehow conceals the fundamental dierence between the
foundations of the two positive theses concerning existence that I mentioned above. It is always
useful to keep in mind that Kants thesis of absolute positing is essentially about what it means
to say in a proposition that a thing exists. On the other hand, the postulate of actuality is about
the empirical conditions of actuality, in other words, it denes the criteria under which a subject
can be posited absolutely. Therefore, the postulate is a supplementary thesis about what exists
rather than what existence is.
77
See Norman Malcolm, Anselms Ontological Arguments, n 33.
75
592
UYGAR ABACI
which the existence of an object is necessitated by and thus is relative to and

conditioned by the previously given existence or actuality of another object.
Kant puts it explicitly that this relationship of necessity between the
actualities of two objects is that of cause and eect, and that the universal
laws of experience by virtue of which we can know that the two actualities
are necessarily related are laws of causality:
Thus it is not the existence of things (substances) but of their state of which
alone we can cognize the necessity, and moreover only from other states,
which are given in perception, in accordance with empirical laws of
causality. . . Hence we cognize only the necessity of eects in nature, the
causes of which are given to us . . . [Necessity] does not hold of the existence of
things, as substances . . . Necessity therefore concerns only the relations of
appearances in accordance with the dynamical law of causality.78
Thus, whereas the necessity of analytic propositions is a logical or formal

relation between the concepts of subject and predicate, the necessity that the
third postulate gives us is a real or material relation between things themselves.
In both cases, the necessary existence of things is a conditioned one.
Having seen the aspects from which existential and other modal
propositions can be said to be synthetic, with the help of the postulates
we can now understand the ascriptions of modalities as dierent ways of
positing the subject in a proposition. In all three cases, the subject is posited
with all its predicates, namely absolutely. However, to say that a thing is
possible is to posit it as agreeing with the formal conditions of experience,
that is, as a possible object of experience. On the other hand, to say that a
thing exists is to posit it as an actual object that is either given through or
analogically connected with an actual perception. Lastly, to say that a thing
exists necessarily is to posit it as an actual object whose existence is
necessitated by its causal relation with another previously given actual
object.79 None of these synthetic propositions enlarges or further determines
the content of the subject by adding a new predicate to it, but they posit it in
dierent ways with all the predicates that are already contained in it. As
none of the modal categories is a real predicate, they cannot be introduced
into or already contained in the denition of a thing.
The gist of what I call the critical programme of modality that forms the
background of Kants threefold argument in his refutation is thus based on
limiting the modal categories to empirical employment with their peculiar
non-determining but positing functions.80 In order for his account of
78
Critique, B 280.
For Kants own reformulation of modalities in terms of positing, see Lectures on Metaphysics,
29: 822 and 28: 5545.
80
Whether Kants refutation works in itself as an argument in isolation from the critical
framework is a question that is worth to ask here. At the nal analysis, the proponent of the
ontological proof may always reject to endorse Kants critical philosophy, if the refutation is
79
593
syntheticity to accommodate this peculiarity that is not captured by

enlargement or addition-based denitions of syntheticity, Allen Wood
proposes a quite secure and helpful distinction between two sorts of
synthetic proposition: (1) Those which determine the subject concept or
add to it, by predicating some reality (or negation) of it, and (2) those
which posit the concept or determinations thought in it.81 Although it is
generally unnoticed, Kant himself makes a parallel distinction among
synthetic propositions. According to him, as modal propositions do not
serve to add a determination to the object of the subject concept, they are
not objective-synthetic. But since they are nevertheless always synthetic,
they are so subjectively only, in the sense that they tell us the way in which
the subject concept is connected with the cognitive faculties of the subject of
possible experience.82 Therefore, in a modal proposition, we do not in fact
make a statement about an object directly, but only indirectly, through the
relation of its concept to our subjectivecognitive make-up.83
University of Pennsylvania
presented as essentially dependent on it. However, as I indicated at the beginning, my concern in

this paper has not been to discuss the validity of neither the proof nor the alleged refutation, but
to investigate Kants notion of existence (and modality in general) as presented in the refutation
and to exhibit its integrity with his critical account of modality as a whole.
81
Allen W. Wood, Kants Critique of the Three Theistic Proofs [partial] (from Kants Rational
Theology) in Kants Critique of Pure Reason: Critical Essays, edited by P. Kitcher, 2734.
82
See Critique, A234:
The principles of modality are not, however, objective-synthetic, since the predicates
of possibility, actuality, and necessity do not in the least augment the concept of which
they are asserted in such a way as to add something to the representation of the object.
But since they are nevertheless always synthetic, they are so subjectively only, i.e., they
add to the concept of a thing (the real), about which they do not otherwise say
anything, the cognitive power whence it arises and has its seat, so that, if it is merely
connected in the understanding with the formal conditions of experience, its object is
called possible; if it is in connection with perception (sensation, as the matter of the
senses), and through this determined by means of the understanding, then the object is
actual; and if it is determined through the connection of perceptions in accordance
with concepts, then the object is called necessary.
This distinction, I believe, may shed further light not only on the peculiar syntheticity of modal
propositions but also on syntheticity in general. However, in this paper I should be content with
leaving the interpretation of this striking distinction as an open question for another study.
83
This idea of Kants that by asserting that a thing exists, we do not say something about the
thing but its concept, when taken together with his dictum that existence is not a real predicate,
anticipates Freges celebrated view that existence is a property not of objects but only of
concepts, and that it is itself a second-level concept. See, for instance, Freges On Concept and
Object, in Translations From the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, edited by Peter Geach
and Max Black (Oxford: Blackwell, 1960).

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British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16(3) 2008: 559593

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE*

British Journal for the History of Philosophy

context and development of Kants negative thesis concerning existence in

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

already indicate an ontotheological approach that takes the question of

of an ontological proof; as I hope to show in the following pages, there is a

1. CONFUSIONS AND DISTINCTIONS

1.1 Unconditioned Necessity of Judgements versus Conditioned

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

Goodman. It is noteworthy that Kant begins his refutation in the Critique

My emphases, Critique, A594/B622.

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

absolutely necessary being, he probably aims to emphasize that no subject is

1.2 Logical Possibility of Concepts versus Real Possibility of Things

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

A concept is therefore logically possible if it does not contain two

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

From the standpoint of the proponents of the ontological argument, Kant

1.3 Merely Logical Predicate versus Real Predicate

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

First of all, this approach provides us with one important insight. We

analytic propositions as merely logical. However, if the same approach is

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

2.1 Existence is Not a Real Predicate

the predicate position. This reconrms that a clear-cut approach that is

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

say that a single determination, armative or negative, of a particular thing

subject or opposed to it, that is denied of it.46 Existence and other

Heidegger, Basic Problems, 36.

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

2.2 Existence is Absolute Positing

What this statement means as a whole will become clearer as we proceed,

Therefore, by the is of predication, which is itself not a predicate, the

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

This decisive passage can be read in two steps. First, in an existential

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

Morrris Engel raises a similarly grounded objection to Kant: . . . a person

See ibid., A573/B601.

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

Now, the positing of a predicate in relation to the subject, Kant calls

2.3 The Syntheticity of Existential Propositions and The Third Thesis on

With this formulation, we see that existential propositions are in

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

Whatever agrees with the formal conditions of experience (in

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

which the existence of an object is necessitated by and thus is relative to and

Thus, whereas the necessity of analytic propositions is a logical or formal

KANTS THESES ON EXISTENCE

syntheticity to accommodate this peculiarity that is not captured by

presented as essentially dependent on it. However, as I indicated at the beginning, my concern in

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