Positing or Predicating? Existence after Kant

许多核心的哲学问题都与某种事物的存在有关。换句话说，我们试图弄清楚数字是否存在，属性是否存在，等等。同时，存在是一个令人困惑的属性：它似乎不能进一步限定或决定事物，例如，红色的属性可以。一方面，考虑到它的根本重要性，另一方面，考虑到它令人费解的特点，哲学家们自古以来就把存在理论化，这并不奇怪。康德对存在的看法通常被视为对这一概念的思考历史上的范式变革。到目前为止，关于康德创新的讨论几乎完全集中在弗雷格、罗素、奎因和他们的追随者身上，而忽略了19世纪的贡献，这些贡献以完全不同的、富有成效的方式阐发了康德的思想。我们的项目旨在改变这种状况。我们将探索19世纪对康德存在观最重要的建设性回应，从而更好地理解康德的范式变化，并获得对存在的新见解。我们会说，19世纪对康德的研究为当代关于存在的研究增添了一些新东西，可以用富有成效的方式与之进行比较和对比。

Many central philosophical issues concern the existence of things of certain kinds. In other words, we try to get clear whether numbers exist or not, whether properties exist or not and so one. At the same time existence is a puzzling property: it seems not to qualify or determine things further like, for instance, the property of being red does. Given, on the one hand, its fundamental importance and, on the other, its puzzling character it is unsurprising that philosophers have theorized about existence since antiquity. Kant's take on existence is generally seen as a paradigm change in the history of thinking about this concept. The discussion of Kant's innovation focused so far almost exclusively on Frege, Russell, Quine and their followers and ignored 19th century contributions that worked out Kant's thought in radically different and fruitful ways. Our project intends to change this situation. We will explore the most important 19th century constructive responses to Kant's view of existence and thereby provide a better understanding of the Kantian paradigm change as well as gain new insights into existence. We will argue that the 19th century engagement with Kant adds something new to contemporary work on existence and can be compared and contrasted in fruitful ways with it.