A Being is Not Necessarily an Existent
January 23rd, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: A Being is Not Necessarily an Existent :: A Being is Not Necessarily an Existent :: A Being is Not Necessarily an Existent :: About Being Necessary
Kant: A Being is Not Necessarily an Existent
Michael Eldred wrote:
>Joseph Polanik schrieb
>>JP: a while back you made a concerted effort to claim that ‘x is’
>>prepredicated ‘being’ so that ‘x is’ -> ‘x is a being’. now you appear
>>to be claiming that ‘x is’ -> ‘x is an existent’.
>>doesn’t that conflict with your acceptance of Heidegger’s claim that
>>existence is the name of a characteristically human mode of being?
>ME: In everyday language, ‘to be’ in its so-called “absolute
>signification” is synonymous with ‘to exist’, and ‘a being’ is an
>’existent’ or an ‘entity’. Philosophical usage usually draws
>distinctions between everyday usages.
are you claiming that Kant was *not* a philosopher drawing a distinction
between ‘is’ and ‘exists’ and between ‘existent’ and ‘being’; or, are
you claiming to be an everyday language user who denies all such
distinctions?
>That need not cause confusion, nor should Heidegger’s ontological term
>’Existenz,’ which (as an ontological structure of human being) means
>something entirely different from the traditional ‘existentia’. In
>fact, Heideggerian Existenz falls on the side the traditional
>’essentia’. The term in SuZ for existentia would be ‘ontische
>Faktizität’.
as I recall, I’ve already mentioned on more than one occasion that
Heidegger has reversed the usual meanings of existent and being. by
itself, that reversal would not be a problem; after all, not everyone
chooses the same root predicate. Heidegger’s absurdity comes from
dwelling on the category that we share with chairs, toe fungus and
reptiles rather than on the category that is characteristically human
— irregardless of what those categories are called.
>Heideggerian ‘Existenz’, of course, is not an “existential predicate”.
you are only misleading yourself by using this phrase as if to indicate
that Kant named a certain subclass of predicates ‘existential
predicates’. he didn’t speak of existential predicates. he spoke about
the predicate of existence.
and, on my reading anyway, Kant would reject your claim that being is
“the ‘existential predicate’ as distinct from ‘real predicates’ which
say WHAT something is in its CONCEPT”.
Kant writes “If, then, I try to conceive a being, as the highest reality
(without any defect), the question still remains, whether it exists or
not.” [Kant Immanuel. 1966/1781. Critique of Pure Reason. translated by
F. Max Muller. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books. 402. A:599-602.
B:627-630]
here Kant is *contrasting* being and existent. he is saying that I might
conceive a being that fits the traditional concept of a deity and still,
I would not know whether it existed or not.
indeed, if you claim that ‘being’ is the predicate of existence — the
predicate that asserted existence — then you will have reconstructed
the entire ontological argument singlehandedly.
Kant describes the ontological argument this way: “[you form] the
concept of the most real Being (ens realissimum). you say that it
possesses all reality … now reality comprehends existence, and
therefore existence is contained in the concept of a thing possible.”
[ibid 400. A:599-602. B:627-630]
Joe
–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda
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