| Title | The Meaning of "Existence" and the Contingency of Sense |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Markus Gabriel (author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0032.1.13 |
| Landing page | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/speculations-4-speculative-realism/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ |
| Copyright | Gabriel, Markus |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2013-06-05 |
| Long abstract | In Western philosophy, the last century was dom-inated by the view that metaphysics and ontology were hopelessly doomed to failure. Many reasons have been given for different versions of this claim, most of them inspired by broadly Kantian epistemo-logical considerations. Kant famously claimed, “the proud name of ontology, which presumes to offer synthetic a priori cognitions of things in general [...] must give way to the more modest title of a transcendental analytic.”2 However, in my view his criticism is only directed against a particular form of ontology and not against ontology as such. What he attacks is the idea of ontology as a synthetic a priori insight into how things generally are, that is, in all possible ways of accessing them. According to his analysis, the range of our judgments is always limited according to certain contingent forms of understanding and sensibility and this finitude cannot be transcended. |
| Page range | pp. 74–83 |
| Print length | 10 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |