On the Existence of the Most Metaphysical Reality

Abstract

In this paper, reality-in-itself and the absolute whole (of everything) —two of the most radically metaphysical ideas—are critically examined from a contemporary philosophical viewpoint. The legitimacy of both ideas has long been doubted, particularly since the criticisms of Kant's thing-in-itself (by Fichte and others), and since some paradoxes of set theory (such as Cantor's paradox), respectively. In section 1 of this paper, the truth/justification conditions of the existence of something real-in-itself are presented, and examined to confirm (more explicitly than ever before) that the idea of reality-in-itself cannot be easily maintained. Likewise, in section 2, the truth/justification conditions of the existence of the absolute whole (of everything) are presented, and examined to confirm that this idea cannot easily be maintained either. In section 3, however, the concept of an absolute whole of reality-in-itself (hereafter, |R|) is introduced by combining the above two ideas. Because this concept is formulated by combining two of the most radically metaphysical ideas, |R| can/could be called the “most metaphysical” reality. In view of the results presented in sections 1 and 2, the existence of |R| might be expected to be doubly doubtful. However, the results presented in section 3 are quite the opposite. It is argued that both the truth/ justification conditions are exceptionally satisfied in |R| (hence |R| exists), and thus, both ideas can be exceptionally maintained in |R|.