Abstract

Against the widely affirmed dictum, “all existential statements can be denied without self-contradiction,” this essay argues for some existential statements being necessarily true semantically and thus for transcendental metaphysics in the strict sense. Having briefly reviewed how Ronald Dworkin, Karl-Otto Apel, and Thomas Nagel each affirm the dictum in question and, thereby, imply the possible truth of the statement, “nothing exists,” the essay seeks to show how the statement, “‘nothing exists’ is possibly true”, is pragmatically self-refuting. Against the implications of subjectivity as such, that statement implies the impossibility of knowing any existential statement; that is, knowing what exists or, indeed, whether anything exists is forever denied to us. The dictum is, therefore, itself impossible, and the essay concludes with the assertion that transcendental metaphysics should be neoclassical.