Il concetto di “esistenza necessaria” ne L'unico fondamento possibile per una dimostrazione dell'esistenza di Dio di I. Kant

The concept of necessary existence in The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God by Kant

The paper concerns Kant’s definition of the concept of absolutely necessary existence in his work The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. Differently from other scholars, I will argue for the originality of this definition, which is hard to understand as a simple clue of scholasticism. To explain its peculiarity I will examine Kant’s new explanation of basic ontological principles, such as the concept of existence, the concept of possibility of a thing, the distinction between a formal and a material constitution of possibility. As a result of this analysis I will consider the relationship between Kant’s definition and his statement about the uniqueness of the introduced ground to a demonstration of the existence of God.