“Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the early thinkers associated with analytical philosophy of language did not merely delimit an area of work within contemporary thought. They modified the very coordinates that structure the relationship between thought, language, and truth. Their project, anchored in the aspiration for rigor characteristic of the formal sciences, stripped language of all psychological depth, of any expressive or emotional connotation. They reconfigured it as a system governed by rules, subject to logical decomposition, and verifiable through the exact procedures of symbolic mathematics.
This new approach was not a simple methodological refinement. It represented a transformation in the very way of conceiving philosophical discourse. Attention ceased to focus on what the speaker believes they are communicating, on their inner experience or on the existential resonance of the statement. What mattered was the logical form of the propositions, their ability to articulate themselves within a coherent conceptual structure. From this perspective, language ceased to operate as a vehicle of expression and became an instrument of formalization. It was no longer a matter of interpreting meanings, but of examining structures.
In this context, logical analysis was not limited to correcting ambiguities, but imposed normative conditions on meaning. And when this scheme is transferred to the field of metaphysics, the effects are quickly felt. Consider a proposition laden with theological weight and philosophical tradition: “God exists.” Viewed from an analytical perspective, this statement cannot be accepted without a rigorous examination of its elements. What exactly does the term ‘God’ refer to? What is being asserted by the verb “to exist”? And what logical relationship links the two terms?
Scholastic theology, especially in its Thomistic formulation, responds by affirming that in God there is no distinction between essence and existence. It is not a matter of an entity to which being is added as a property; it is a matter of a being whose essence consists in being: esse subsistens. The proposition does not express an external relationship, but an ontological identity. Within it, subject and predicate are confused. However, what was self-evident to medieval metaphysics becomes problematic in the light of modern criticism. Descartes, Hume, and Kant, each from their own perspective, dismantle the claim to uphold ontological statements without first subjecting them to the principles that regulate knowledge. In this new grammar of thinking, it is no longer enough to invoke tradition or appeal to definitions. The proposition “God exists” must prove that it makes sense within a logic that can recognize it as meaningful. Here, a distinction introduced by Frege and articulated more systematically by Bertrand Russell becomes relevant: the difference between first- and second-order predications. In the former, the subject is given as an empirical reality, and the predicate introduces an attributable property. To say “this table is white” presupposes the existence of the object and adds a perceptible quality. In this framework, to assert “this table exists” adds no relevant information. It ratifies what was already assumed. The proposition becomes tautological; its content is exhausted in a reiteration.
Something similar occurs with analytical judgments such as “a triangle has three angles” or “a circle is round.”
In these cases, the predicate is contained in the definition of the subject. No new content is introduced; rather, a truth that is already implicit is made explicit. Their validity is not verified through experience, but through the analysis of concepts. They do not discover or clarify. Second-level predications, on the other hand, disrupt this logic. In these cases, the subject is neither empirically given nor conceptually assured.
To assert “the unicorn exists” is not to attribute a property to the unicorn, but to declare that there is an entity corresponding to that concept. Here, the predicate ‘exists’ is not redundant. It is the point of tension. What is at issue is not the relationship between subject and predicate, but the ontological legitimacy of the subject itself. The proposition “God exists” falls into this zone of ambiguity. It has the form of an assertion, but its subject lacks empirical guarantee and its reference remains uncertain. Defining God as “the necessary being” does not solve the problem. The ontological proof, in any of its formulations, encounters the same objection already raised by Kant. In the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, he denies that existence can be treated as a real predicate. He states this with absolute clarity:
“Existenz ist kein reales Prädikat, d. i. ein Begriff von etwas, was zu dem Begriffe eines Dinges hinzukommen könnte.”
“Existence is not a real predicate, that is, a concept that can be added to the concept of a thing.”
(Critique of Pure Reason, A599/B627)
With this, Kant dismantles the central premise of rationalist theology. Existence does not extend the concept of a thing; it is not added as another property. It is, instead, the act of placing an object in experience. Therefore, “God exists” cannot be presented as an analytical judgment or as an empirical statement. It is found in a liminal region, where the statement has logical form, but its subject does not have a clear ontological status. Hence, according to Kant, its acceptance is not justified theoretically, but ethically. Practical reason—not speculative reason—requires postulating the existence of God as a condition for moral coherence.
It is now appropriate to consider a third mode of predication: that in which there is no addition, but identity. The predicate does not enrich the subject: it reveals it as what it already is. Thomistic metaphysics affirms that God does not possess being as something added: He is being itself. “God is being” is neither an empirical proposition nor a conventional definition. It is an expression of ontological identity. Such a statement does not describe a property: it articulates a unity. But this structure, however solid it may seem conceptually, does not impose itself as evident to finite consciousness. There is no experience that certifies this equivalence, nor any analysis that verifies it. From our perspective, this identity appears as a hypothesis without immediate confirmation. And here the need arises for a fourth category: a form of predication where subject and predicate really coincide, even if this coincidence is not apparent as such to the subject who utters it. Identity is real, but unrecognized.
This figure finds suggestive correspondences in certain non-dualistic doctrines, such as Advaita Vedānta or Mahāyāna Buddhism. There it is affirmed that the separation between the knower and the known is illusory. In this framework, to say “God exists” is not to make a judgment about a distinct entity, but to recognize a unity that is only actualized when the split between subject and object ceases. It is not a logical statement, but a form of knowledge that emerges when consciousness is transformed and recognized as identical to reality.
From a different, though no less demanding, perspective, Martin Heidegger raises a fundamental objection to propositional logic. In Sein und Zeit, being is not a property that can be attributed, nor an object that can be represented. It is the very horizon of manifestation, that which allows something to appear without itself appearing as something. To affirm that “God exists”—from this point of view—is to subject being to the logic of the entity, to treat it as if it were just another object among others. It is, therefore, to fall into the fundamental error of Western metaphysics: to forget the ontological difference.
The notion of ἀλήθεια (aletheia), which Heidegger recovers from Greek, designates not a truth as correspondence, but as un-concealment. Being manifests itself, but does not allow itself to be thematized as content. In this framework, to say “God is being” is not a logical proposition, but an attempt to name that which whose appearance transcends all language. The fourth category of predication, understood here, does not extend logic: it suspends it. It is not a matter of classifying, but of giving space to the unappropriable without reducing it.
The distinction between levels of predication—first level, second level, identity, and limit—should not be understood as a closed system. It functions rather as a philosophical tool for questioning the possible ways of affirming existence. In Kant, it allows us to delimit what can be said meaningfully from theoretical reason. In Heidegger, it points to the very inadequacy of the proposition as a vehicle of being. In both, a shared demand is raised: to think beyond the conditions imposed by language itself.
Perhaps this demand—to say what exceeds saying—encodes the most delicate task of contemporary thought. A philosophy that does not limit itself to repeating inherited formulas, but also does not take refuge in ineffability. A philosophy capable of inhabiting the limit without closing it off.”
Prabhuji
