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MARTIN MOORS
the “positive” (in Schelling’s meaning of this term) basis which Kant brings to
light as a basis of proof. A second investigation will focus on Kant’s Religion
within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793), in which he treats the issue of
Mysteries [Geheimnisse].
A. Kant’s “positive” thinking on God
in his pre-critical Nova Dilucidatio
In Propositio VII of his Habilitationsschrift, Kant states: “There is a Being,
the existence of which is prior to the very possibility both of Itself and of
all things. This Being is, therefore, said to exist absolutely necessarily. This
Being is called God.” The following elements upon which the proof is based
remind us immediately of what we stated in our presentation of the noematic
matrix by which Schelling designed the true mysteries in esoteric mythology.
This matrix also holds for the early Kant (1755).
1. Facticity. Both the early Kant and the later Schelling take a “positive”—
which means real—factum into account: “that which indubitably exists”
[das unzweifelhaft Existierende],* on the basis of which, as their ontological
condition, all potency or possibility can be proved (erweisen) per posterius to
be the possibility of something real. In Kant’s early work, this reality is called
“the real within the notion of the possible” (das Reale der Möglichkeit; das,
was im Begriff real ist; quicquid est in omni possibili notione reale).* In the
Scholion to the proof, Kant qualifies this reality as documentum maxime
primitivum.*®
2. Priority. “Existence,” which is defined as “absolute Position,” must be
affirmed prior to the very possibility of God and of all things. Kant states:
“Of all beings, God is the only one in which existence is prior to, or, if you
prefer, identical with possibility.”® Positing existence (absolute Position) prior
55 For the English translation of the works of Kant, we use The Cambridge Edition of the Works
of Immanuel Kant (general editors Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood), Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1992-2016. The English translation of Nova Dilucidatio is included in
the volume Theoretical Philosophy, 1755-1770, translated and edited by David Walford,
in collaboration with Ralf Meerbote, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992, 5-45.
The original Latin is to be found in Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, herausgegeben von der
Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, Georg Reimer, 1910-, Vol. 1
(abbreviated Ak 1), 385-416.
16 Grounding, Lecture VIII (SW 11/3, 158).
47 Nova Dilucidatio, Ak 1, 395.
48 Ibid.
% See also (for a more extensive elaboration of existence as “absolute position”): The only
Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. First Reflection:
Of Existence in General, Chapter Two: Existence is the Absolute Positing [absolute Position]
of a thing, in Ak 2, 73-75.
50 Nova Dilucidatio, Prop. VII, Ak 1, 396.
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