Mario Schärli

Der Begriff der Metaphysik stellt, wie Adorno bemerkt, das Argernis der Philosophie dar. Metaphysik sei einerseits der Existenzgrund von Philosophie uberhaupt; andererseits sei es kaum moglich, verbindlich anzugeben, was Metaphysik uberhaupt ist. Dieser Spannung will Adorno in den "Meditationen zur Metaphysik", dem letzten Teil seines Hauptwerks Negative Dialektik gerecht werden, indem er das Projekt der Metaphysik im Lichte der politischen und kulturellen Situation der Gegenwart reflektiert. Die Beitrage des vorliegenden Bandes widmen sich den verschiedenen Facetten von Adornos Beschaftigung mit Metaphysik: Sie behandeln nicht allein die im engeren Sinne metaphysischen Reflexionen Adornos, sondern greifen auf andere Gebiete aus, die Adorno in Zusammenhang mit Metaphysik bringt: Begriffskritik, Geschichte, Wahrheit und Materialismus. So erschliessen sie konstellativ ein bisher kaum rezipiertes Thema der Negativen Dialektik und von Adornos Philosophie uberhaupt.

Hegel conceives spirit as historical self-understanding extending retrospectively and prospectively. While his philosophy clearly articulates our relation to the past, the Young Hegelians charged that he neglects the future. I argue that Hegel's conception of eternity as spirit's time-structure necessarily includes futurity. Eternity is the unity of past, present, and future in thought. Spirit is eternal insofar as higher stages are anticipated in lower ones. However, this anticipation fails in objective spirit: world history cannot anticipate its own future because it depends on contingent events. Only in absolute spirit—art, religion, and philosophy—does genuine anticipation emerge, as new forms develop through critical engagement with tradition. Absolute spirit thus represents spirit's true future and the future of world history itself.

Kant holds that all existential judgments are synthetic, yet he denies that existence is a real predicate. This generates a puzzle: if judgments are synthetic by virtue of featuring real predicates, how can existential judgments be synthetic? I argue that Kant's '100 thalers passage' solves this problem by distinguishing two ways judgments relate to objects: analytic inclusion and synthetic addition. Merely possible objects are analytically included in judgments—they depend on acts of judgment for their being. Existent objects are synthetically added—they are independent of our judgments. This independence makes existential judgments synthetic: their truth depends on objects external to thought, not on conceptual relations alone. This reading attributes an ontology of non-existent objects to Kant. I support this interpretation by contrasting Kant's example with its source in Bering (1780), who denies that merely possible objects have being. Kant's invocation of non-existent objects marks his disagreement with Bering and supports a proto-Meinongian reading of Kant's modal metaphysics.

Recent scholarship challenges the once-prevailing view that Kant’s view of existence is incompatible with an ontology of non-existent objects. This raises the question: What does the nature of, and difference between, existent and non-existent objects consist in? In this article, I expound Kant’s first response to this question, formulated in the pre-critical _Only Possible Argument_, in three steps. First, I show that, for Kant, being in general consists in qualitative determinacy. Second, I argue that Kant countenances only one type of non-existent object, merely possible ones, which are clusters of states of affairs that do not obtain and which are tied together by grounding relations. Third, I establish that the nature of existent objects consists in their exemplification of internal predicates.

I maintain that substantive metaphysics makes an ineliminable contribution to our mind’s cognitive relation to objects. To account for the precise nature of this metaphysical contribution, I investigate domains of thought in which our cognitive relation to objects appears problematic. In perception, an experience’s metaphysical dependence upon objects and their essences ground its content and, in part, epistemic worth. Regarding metaphysical modality, viewing modality and actuality as equally fundamental is pivotal to understanding our modal knowledge and thought. Relating to the ontological argument, and necessary existents generally, understanding ontological statuses as differences in the way an object’s properties are grounded contributes to explaining our thoughts’ relation to objects. Systematic and historical research are integrated in developing these philosophical views, drawing on Descartes, Baumgarten, and Kant in particular.

Metaphysics is, as Adorno once notes, the nuisance of philosophy. On the one hand, metaphysics is the reasons of philosophy's existence; on the other hand, it is nearly impossible to characterise metaphysics precisely. This tension is reflected with reference to the contemporary political and cultural situation in Adorno's "Meditations on Metaphysics", the last part of his opus magnum *Negative Dialectics*. The essays in this volume are devoted to different facets of Adorno's examination of metaphysics. They do, however, not only concern themselves with Adorno's metaphysical reflections in a narrow sense, but also extend to other themes Adorno relates to metaphysics: critique of concepts, history, truth, and materialism. Thereby, they render a hardly investigated topic of the *Negative Dialectics* accessible. Contributors: Emil Angehrn, Dirk Braunstein, Peggy H. Breitenstein, Gunnar Hindrichs, Axel Hutter, Philip Hogh, Christian Iber, Julia Jopp, Guido Kreis, Ansgar Martins, Brian O'Connor, Mario Schärli, Marc Nicolas Sommer, Tilo Wesche.

I interpret Adorno's bold claim that all philosophy revolves around the ontological argument. On my reading, Adorno thereby expresses that all philosophy revolves around the question whether all of reality can be captured by thought. I then interpret the significance of this thesis for Adorno's *Negative Dialectics*. I argue that Adorno does not give up the ontological argument's claim—capturing reality in thought—but gives it a Marxist spin: whether reality can be captured in thought depends on its historical development, and is therefore also up to humans and their actions.