Chapter 1 - Concrete Existence

Summary

Just as the principle of sufficient reason says that whatever is has a ground, or is something posited, something mediated, so there would also have to be a principle of concrete existence saying that whatever is, exists concretely. The truth of being is to be, not an immediate something, but essence that has come forth into immediacy.

But when it was further said that whatever exists concretely has a ground and is conditioned, it also would have had to be said that it has no ground and is unconditioned. For concrete existence is the immediacy that has come forth from the sublating of the mediation that results from the connection of ground and condition, and which, in coming forth, sublates this very coming forth.

Inasmuch as mention may be made here of the proofs of the concrete existence of God, it is first to be noted that besides immediate being that comes first, and concrete existence (or the being that proceeds from essence) that comes second, there is still a third being, one that proceeds from the concept, and this is objectivity. – Proof is, in general, mediated cognition. The various kinds of being require or contain each its own kind of mediation, and so will the nature of the proof also vary accordingly. The ontological proof wants to start from the concept; it lays down as its basis the sum total of all realities, where under reality also concrete existence is subsumed. Its mediation, therefore, is that of the syllogism, and syllogism is not yet under consideration here. We have already commented above (Part 1, Section 1) on Kant's objection to the ontological proof, and have remarked that by concrete existence Kant understands the determinate immediate existence with which something enters into the context of total experience, that is, into the determination of being an other and of being in reference to an other. As an existent concrete in this way, something is thus mediated by an other, and concrete existence is in general the side of its mediation. But in what Kant calls the concept, namely, something taken as only simply self-referring, or in representation as such, this mediation is missing; in abstract self-identity, opposition is left out.