Kant and Hegel on the Ontological Argument

This paper reconstructs Hegel’s objection to Kant’s critique of the ontological argument (OA) without defending the traditional OA. First, in agreement with Kant, I argue that the traditional OA illicitly presupposes as a real predicate. Second, following Hegel, I contend that Kant does not establish the stronger thesis that cannot in principle function as a real predicate. I develop a charitable reading of the “hundred-dollar” passage, locating its force in the realm of finite, empirical concepts whose intensions cannot entail existence, and sketch Hegel’s claim that certain logical concepts are necessarily self-instantiating, thereby including among their marks. I then examine Kant’s “triangle argument", which appears to support a form of existential nihilism by permitting cancellation of both subject and predicate. The upshot is that while Kant’s critique defeats traditional OAs, it does not foreclose non-traditional, Hegelian routes from concept to existence.