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Why did Kant deny that existence is a property of objects?

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Marble bust of Aristotle with a beard and draped robe, showing detailed facial features and wavy hair, set against a dark background. — metaphysics Detail of a Roman copy (2nd century bce) of a Greek alabaster portrait bust of Aristotle (c. 325 bce); in the collection of the Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome.

Immanuel Kant denied that existence is a property (or predicate) of objects because he believed that existence does not add to the content of a concept or describe the nature of a thing in the way that attributes like color or shape do.123

In his critique of the ontological argument, Kant argued that treating existence as a property is a fallacy. While proponents of the ontological argument—such as St. Anselm and René Descartes—suggested that existence is a perfection that makes a being greater, Kant maintained that "existence" statements are not truly attributing a property to a subject.1423

Instead, as later clarified by thinkers like Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, saying that something exists is an assertion that a concept is instantiated—meaning there are actual instances of that concept in reality. Because existence is a matter of whether a concept has instances rather than a descriptive quality of the object itself, it cannot be determined a priori through definition alone.13