Before beginning the interpretation of this thesis, it will be worthwhile to characterize briefly the pertinent context in which it appears. This context strikes the eye on reading the title of the work first mentioned as well as the heading of the relevant section of the Critique of Pure Reason. It deals with the proof of the existence, actuality, and--in our terms--the extantness of God. We are confronted by the striking fact that Kant discusses the most general of all concepts of being where he is dealing with the knowability of a wholly determinate, distinctive being, namely, God. But, to anyone who knows the history of philosophy (ontology), this fact is so little surprising that it rather just makes clear how directly Kant stands in the great tradition of ancient and Scholastic ontology. God is the supreme being, summum ens, the most perfect being, ens perfectissimum. What most perfectly is, is obviously most suited to be the exemplary being, from which the idea of being can be read off. God is not merely the basic ontological example of the being of a being; he is at the same time the primal ground of all beings. The being of the non-divine, created entity must be understood by way of the being of the supreme being. Therefore it is no accident that the science of being is oriented in a distinctive sense toward the being which is God. This goes so far that Aristotle already called *prote philosophia*, first philosophy, by the name of *theologia*. We should take note here that this concept of theology has nothing to do with the present-day concept of Christian theology as a positive science. They have only the name in common. This orientation of ontology toward the idea of God came to have a decisive significance for the subsequent history of ontology and for ontology’s destiny. It is not our present concern to deal here with the legitimacy of this orientation. It is enough that there is nothing surprising about the fact that Kant discussed the concept of being or existence in the context of the possibility of our knowledge of God. More precisely, what Kant was occupied with was the possibility of that proof of the existence of God which he was the first to call the ontological proof. There comes to light here a remarkable phenomenon which we shall repeatedly encounter in philosophy before Kant and also in post-Kantian philosophy, and in its most extreme form in Hegel, namely, that the problem of being in general is most closely bound up with the problem of God, the problem of defining his essence and demonstrating his existence. We cannot here discuss the reason for this remarkable connection, which nevertheless is in the first instance not at all a mere matter of course, for that would require us to discuss the foundations of ancient philosophy and metaphysics. The fact persists even in Kant and it proves, quite externally to begin with, that Kants mode of inquiry still proceeds wholly within the channel of traditional metaphysics. In the places mentioned Kant deals with the possibility of the ontological proof. A peculiar feature of this proof is that it tries to infer Gods existence from his concept. The philosophical science which in Kants opinion starts purely from concepts and tries to dogmatically settle something about that which is, is ontology or, in traditional language, metaphysics. That is why Kant calls this proof from the concept of God the ontological proof, where ontological is equivalent in signification to dogmatical, metaphysical. Kant does not deny the possibility of metaphysics but is in search precisely of a scientific metaphysics, a scientific ontology, the idea of which he defines as a system of transcendental philosophy. --Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, p. 29-30
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 12:14:04 +0000
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