Abstract

If logical positivism had any success, it was undoubtedly in rejecting traditional metaphysics as based on an erroneous philosophy of language. The very goal of the metaphysical enterprise itself, namely to say something about „being qua being”, was stigmatized as senseless, considering the fact that being isn't a predicate or property of things, and can therefore not be described. In the eyes of the logical positivists, the fact that being isn't a predicate was clearly shown in modern logic. Indeed G. Frege was one of the first making a consequent effort to eliminate from his system a predicate of existence. Recent study of the matter, in circles familiar to J. Hintikka, focuses its attention to Frege's arguments in his „Dialogue with Pünjer on Existence”, where Frege shows that acceptance of being as a property of things leads to contradictions. In Frege's view, a property cannot be shared by everthing, as it serves to distinguish things one from another. But are there things who are not ? Whereas Frege thus rejects being as a property of things — as a first-order predicate — he accepts it as a property of the concepts by which we grasp them : as a second-order predicate it discriminates instantiated from non-instantiated concepts. Because the focus of interest of this paper is the meaning of „being qua being”, the possible-worlds-getaway is not used, since it leaves existence as such unanalyzed. Whilst examining Frege's argument and the theory in which it is embedded, this paper tries to dig up the presuppositions of Frege's view. First, it is shown that Frege in his interpreted language presupposes flatly the existence of individual objects. In a second move, the epistemological background of this presupposition is scrutinized. In Frege's theory only properties are intelligible, as only senses can be a part of thought. At the other hand, Frege cannot identify objects with clusters of properties, without damaging his whole theory of the straightforward opposition between the complete and saturated objects versus the incomplete properties, a theory which is at the very core of Fregean logic. This leaves us with a kind of misunderstood Kantian notion of a „Ding an Sich”, supposed to be there beyond of reach of our knowledge, but nevertheless having enough determination to be an individual. Finally, an attempt has been made to fill this gap, by pointing out that besides the properties also the existence of objects is part of our knowledge. Metaphysical endeavour purports to take this part of knowledge as its subject. Analysis of conceptual knowledge of the world by means of an interpreted predicate calculus presupposes this knowledge and therefore the study of the subject of traditional metaphysics