Kant and the `antinomy´ of the actually existing thing

FERREIRO, HÉCTOR

Oslo

Congreso; 13th International Kant Congress; 2019

University of Oslo

Hegel criticizes Kant for having reduced the antinomies to only four particular conflicts, and affirms, further, that a deeper analysis of the nature of the cosmological antinomies would have led Kant to become aware that every concept is a unity of multiple determinations, so that two determinations of one and the same concept can eventually be conceived as opposed to each other and provoke in that way what could be characterized in broad terms as an ?antinomy?. Thus, according to Hegel antinomies are not reduced to rational cosmology, but are the expression of a conflict that looms in every concept, conflict that relies in the mutal confrontation of determinations inside a concept when they are conceived by our mind in an isolated and abstract way. In the context of his discussion of Kant´s antinomies Hegel expressly mentions ?existence? (Dasein) as the possible source of an antinomy. Hegel does not develop his theory of existence in the form of a debate with the antinomies; it is sufficiently clear though that, according to him, one of the main problems of any theory of existence is precisely the problem of the difference-unity of existence and determinacy. When the determined content of our mental representations is identified with the actually existing thing, the determinacy of that content is radically dissociated from the existence of the existing thing -in the vocabulary of classical or dogmatic metaphysics: essence is dissociated from being as if each were an aliud with respect to the other. Once determinacy and existence are distinguished from each other and their ultimately artificial difference ?for what exists is in fact always one determinate existing thing- is considered as an incommensurable difference, the determinacy of the actually existing thing and its own actual existence can only be re-united in an extrinsic way. In this theoretical framework the actually existing thing needs, indeed, to be construed as the result of some kind of ?composition? or ?synthesis? between intrinsically heterogeneous aspects -namely, determinacy and existence-, aspects which despite being intrinsically heterogeneous are in fact, as it is obvious, united in each actually existing thing. According to this approach, the existence of the existing thing must be thus simultaneously separated from and united with its determinacy. The problem posed by a simultaneous dissociation and reunification of determinacy and existence in the actually existing things relies, however, on a set of debatable logical operations, namely: (i) on the identification of the determinate content of our mental concepts with the determinacy of the actually existing things; (ii) on the correlative interpretation of determinacy in general as merely possible, and (iii) on the consequent consideration of the distinction between the reciprocally isolated determinacy and existence as an absolute distinction. The criticism of this set of logical operations leads to reject the radical distinction between the determinacy of the actually existing things and the fact that they exist, and ultimately to reject the radical distinction between rationality as a one-sided property of the knowing subject and the world as a transcendent realm that is unknowable to a merely subjective reason. Such criticism, which is one the main objectives of post-Kantian idealism, leads to abandon not only the duality of dogmatic metaphysics between God as a Necessary Being and the world as the totality of the contingent (possible) contents actualized (posited) by that Being, but also -and for the same reason- the duality between the human mind as the realm of only possible determinacy and the real world as the realm of the absolute position of determinacy. Post-Kantian idealism embraces, indeed, Kant´s philosophical insights on how we know the determinate things of the real world, but aims to solve with different theoretical tools the still open problems posed by his transcendental approach.