KANT'S THESIS ABOUT BEING
there prevails a kinship with that which we call ground. Positio, ponere, means to set, place, lay, lie, to lie before, to lie at the ground.
In the course of the history of onto theological inquiry the task has arisen not only of showing what the highest being is but of proving that this most supreme of beings is, that God exists. The words Existenz, Dasein, actuality, name a mode of being.
In the year 1763, almost two decades before the appearance of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant published a work under the title The Only Possible Ground of Proof or a Demonstration of the Existence of God. The "First Consideration" in this work deals with the concepts of "Existence [Dasein] in general" and "being in general." Here we already find Kant's thesis about being, and even in the twofold form of the negative and the affirmative assertion. The wording of both assertions agrees in a certain manner with that in the Critique of Pure Reason. The negative assertion goes like this in the precritical work: "Existence is not a predicate or determination of anything whatever." The affirmative assertion goes: "The concept of positing or asserting [Position oder Setzung] is completely simple and identical with that of being in general."
At first it was necessary only to point out that Kant formulates the thesis within the province of the questions of philosophical theology. This dominates the entire question about the being of beings, i.e., metaphysics in its central content. From this it can be seen that the thesis about being is no out-of-the-way, abstract bit of doctrine, as its wording might at first easily persuade us.
In the Critique of Pure Reason the negative-defensive assertion is introduced with an "obviously." That means it is supposed to be immediately evident to everyone: being — [279] "obviously" not a real predicate. For us today the statement is by no means immediately clear. Being — this means, of course, reality. How, then, could being not count as a real predicate? But for Kant the word "real" still has its original meaning. It means that which belongs to a res, to a substance, to the substantive content of a thing. A real predicate, a determination belonging to a substance, is, for example, the predicate "heavy" with respect to the stone, regardless of whether the stone really exists or not. In Kant's thesis "real" means, then, not that which we mean today when we speak of Realpolitik, which deals with facts, with the actual. Reality is for Kant not actuality but rather substantiality. A real predicate is such as belongs to the substantive content of a thing and can he attributed to it. We represent and place before ourselves the substantive content of a thing in its concept. We can place before ourselves what the word "stone" names without its being necessary that the thing in question
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