Possibility and Actuality / / Nicolai Hartmann.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DGBA Backlist Complete English Language 2000-2014 PART1
• VerfasserIn: Hartmann, Nicolai,
• TeilnehmendeR: Adair, Stephanie.; Poli, Roberto.; Scott, Alex.
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2013]; ©2013
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (524 p.)

Nicolai Hartmann's Possibility and Actuality is the second volume of a four-part investigation of ontology. It deals with such questions as: How do we know that something is really possible? Is the possible only the actual? Is the actual only the possible? What is the difference between ideal and real possibility? This groundbreaking work of modal analysis describes the logical relations between possibility, actuality, and necessity, and it provides insight into the relations between modes of knowledge and modes of being. Hartmann reviews the history of philosophical concepts of possibility and necessity, from ancient Megarian philosophy to Aristotle, to Medieval Scholasticism, to Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel. He explains the importance of modal analysis as a basic investigative tool, and he proposes an approach to understanding the nature of human existence that unifies the fields of ontology, modal logic, metaphysics, and epistemology. This brilliant and fascinating work is relevant to many topics of debate in contemporary philosophy, including the ontology of possible worlds, the metaphysics of modality, the logic of counterfactual conditionals, and modal epistemology. It illuminates the nature of real, ideal, logical, and epistemic possibility.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Translators' Preface / Scott, Alex / Adair, Stephanie -- Introduction / Poli, Roberto -- Contents -- Foreword -- Introduction -- Part One: The Problem of the Levels of Modality -- I Aporias and Equivocations of Modal Concepts -- II The Basic Modal Law -- III General Arrangement of the Modes -- Part Two: The Modality of Real Being -- I The Real Modes and Their Intermodal Laws -- II Formal Proof of the Intermodal Laws of the Real -- III Material Proof of the Intermodal Laws of the Real -- IV The Ontological Law of Determination -- V The Modal Construction of Becoming -- VI Fields of Incomplete Reality -- Part Three: The Modality of the Unreal -- I The Modal Construction of the Logical Sphere -- II The Modality of Ideal Being -- III The Modal Problem of Knowledge -- IV The Modes of Knowledge and their Laws -- Part Four: Second-Order Intermodal Relations -- I The Modal Relation of the Two Spheres of Being -- II The Real Sphere and Knowledge -- III The Position of Ideal Being and of the Logical