Kant´s distinction between reality and existence and its sublation in post-Kantian idealism

FERREIRO, HÉCTOR

Jerusalén

Jornada; 20th Conference of the International Transcendental Philosophy / German Idealism Network; 2023

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

According to Kant, existence (Dasein, Wirklichkeit) does not add any determination to the content of a concept, i.e. to its reality (Realität), but posits (setzt) it in relation to the act of perception by which the subject knows that it is an actually existing thing. Existential judgments are thus synthetic judgments, but only subjectively synthetic, since they do not affirm anything about the object itself, but only adds to it the cognitive faculty of the subject (KrV, A 219/B 266; A 233/B 286; A 594/B 622; A 599/B 627). In other words: existence is never added to the determinations that define an object as a further determination, but is rather the position of the entire set of those determinations as a real thing. Kant makes this claim already in his pre-critical period, notably in The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (AA II, 72–73).Kant considers that what explains the determinacy of an actually existing thing does not ex-plain the fact that that thing exists. Determinacy does not account for existence, precisely because the knowing subject can, according to Kant, mentally represent exactly the same thing that exists and, nevertheless, cannot know whether it actually exists or not. Therefore, the knowledge that something exists must have a different cognitive source: determinacy is known through a gradual, complex set of cognitive acts; existence instead is known by an intuitive act: perception. Indeed, in this paradigm perception leads the knowing subject to synthesize her merely possible, mental contents with the realm of the actually existing things.A key feature of Kant´s theory of existence is the way he conceives the content of our concepts, namely as a thoroughgo¬ing determined content independently of whether it exists as a thing of the real world or not. Kant´s thesis on existence is, in the final analysis, a consequence of his conception of determinacy as something as such merely possible. Hegel reacts against Kant´s claim that being and determinacy are radically different, so that their unity is a synthetic unity given to the mind through perception conceived as having the peculiar property of bringing together the mind, as such formal or “empty”, and the world. A possible, merely mental content is for Hegel a content that has been abstracted from the exis-ting thing; precisely for that reason it dissociates from the actual being of that being. It is the very definition of “mental representation” (Vorstellung) that its content is dissociated from being. Internally represented contents are the result of a precisive consideration of the contents that are integrated in the whole set of things of the world. That is why Hegel contends that the comparison with the actually existing thing should not be made taking the internally represented content as if it were a true concept, that is to say, as a content that is interrelated with all other contents of the world. To consider the mental representation of hundred dollars to be identical to hundred real dollars, that is, in other words, to take their representation as if it were a proper concept –says Hegel– is an “atrocity (Barbarei)” (Enz §51 Anm.). The internally represented hundred dollars should not be reified and then compared with the real ones: if that mistake is made, the result is being as entirely indeterminate, as pure indeterminacy. The existence of hundred real dollars, however, is their existence; it is thus not being as such, but determinate, “contentful” being, as well as their inexistence is not non-being as such, but determinate, “contentful” non-being (bestimmte, inhaltige Nichts) (GW 21, 89/ TWA 5, 108). Along this line, Hegel claims that when the knowing subject thoroughly determines the content of her mental representations, that content becomes itself the actually existing thing. The content of a merely mental representation is the result of the subjec¬tive process of isolating a bundle of determinations from their original context in which they are related to all determinations of the world. The set of determinations that has been isolated from the world becomes for that very reason a content that is now a determination of the singular knowing subject that has perfomed the abstraction. This ultimately artificial state of abstractedness and resulting unilateral subjectivity does not belong, however, to the content, but is rather a form of it, that the mind provides the content with by actively isolating it from the context of the world (es ist eine ihm vom subjektiven Verstande angethane und geliehene Form) (GW 21, 75/ TWA 5, 90). Such form consists, more precisely, in the relation of the content only with itself (einfache Beziehung auf sich). As such, the content, however, does not relate exclusively with itself. The isolation and subsequent reification of a particular bundle of determinations in their subjective abstractedness produces the notion of the pure positivity of the real world from which that bundle has been separated, that is, it produces the notion of being as radically different from determinacy. Reified in their respective pure relation to themselves, determinacy and being-integrated in the whole context of the world –i.e., existence– seem to be incommensurably different from each other, so that being part of the world may seem irrelevant to the determinacy of the object. From such premises Kant can claim that, as far as their determinacy is concerned, it is completely irrelevant whether hundred dollars exist or not, but that it does make a big different for a real person if she has hundred dollars on her bank account or not. For Hegel, on the contrary, a determinate content is always, qua determinate, in a necessary relation with all other determinate contents of the world. Thus, the instantiation of a concept as a thing of the real world where it relates to all other existing things does not take place, according to Hegel, “on account of being” conceived as the absolute position of that concept, but by means of the re-integration of its content into the whole of determinations that builds its very determinacy. By integrating the isolated, therefore subdetermined content of a mental representation into the system of relations of constitution of determinacy in general, the mind re-determines that content, which thus become itself –that is to say, at the own level of its being-deter¬minate– an actually existing thing.