A Structuralist Perspective on the Problem of Objecthood: Herbart’s Realism Without Object

The aim of this paper is to show that a structuralist approach to the problem of objecthood can be found already in Herbart’s metaphysics. His kind of realism, baptized by Pettoello as a ‘realism without objects’a is grounded in a Kantian framework where the object is an unknown and unknowable x about which we can only predicate relations. Indeed, the philosophical tool necessary to investigate reality is for Herbart the so called method of relations (Methode der Beziehungen), which alone can explain the nature of the inherence of properties in objects. I will claim that in this respect it is possible to detect some analogies between Herbart’s view and contemporary epistemic structural realism (ESR), according to which we an know only the structures obtaining in this world. However, I will also point out some important differences due to the fact that Herbart committed himself to the existence of things in themselves, while ESR can be interpreted as agnostic with respect to the ontology of the world (Morganti 2004).