ATTACKS ON TRADITIONAL METAPHYSICS

Philosophy Synthesis I

Prepared byArchie R. Magarao

Is metaphysics genuinely possible?

Phase ITurn to

the Subject

Phase IITurn to

Historicism

Phase IIITurn to

Language

Phase IKey

Figures

Descartes

Kant,

Locke

Hume

Key Thoughts

Emphasis on epistemology over

metaphysics

Since the time of Locke, metaphysics has been challenged as extending beyond the capacities of human reason

Locke maintains that in books of metaphysics we find an infinite number of propositions that nevertheless tells us nothing of the nature or reality of things existing without us so that metaphysical propositions are not

tautological, they are merely trifling.

For Hume, metaphysics is not properly a science but arises either from fruitless efforts of human vanity which would penetrate into subjects

PHASE II: TURN TO HISTORICISMKey Figures•Post-Hegelians

•Marx, Engels, etc.

Key Thought(s)•The attack is on what it

is that metaphysics claimed to know.

•the primacy or the possibility of metaphysics is under criticism

•All human knowledge was socially constructed or context-bound, or that there were no natures or ultimate reality to be known.

•All human knowledge was socially constructed or context-bound, or that there were no natures or ultimate reality to be known.

•What a thing is cannot be separated from its historical context.

PHASE III: TURN TO LANGUAGEKey Figures•Wittengenstein,

de Saussure, Frege, Cassirier, Levi-Strauss, Heidegger

Key Thoughts•Insistence of the

importance of language in relation to thought

•Thought requires language to be even possible.

•If something cannot be coherently expressed or articulated in language, it makes no sense to affirm or deny anything about it.

•In the 20th century, the “linguistic turn” called into question any attempt to talk of metaphysical truth—particularly whether metaphysical propositions could be true.

OTHER SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT THAT CONTRIBUTED TO THE QUESTIONING OF

METAPHYSICS

Everything or the reality

of things need no

explanation or

accounting for

PRAGMATISM

EXISTENTIA-LISM

NATURALISM,

POSITIVISM, MARXISM

SOME THOUGHTS AGAINST TRADITIONAL METAPHYSICS

• We have no reason to claim that there is a cross-cultural standard of rationality or a single, universal model of reason.

• Reason is a tool that without warrant marginalizes certain aspects of experience and certain groups and thus hegemonic and oppressive.

Mistrust in reason and rationality (Feminism, Marxism, Deconstructionism etc.)

• One of Karl Popper’s concern about metaphysics from Plato to Hegel is that comprehensive metaphysical accounts have tended to bring with them political systems that allegedly leave no room for human (political) freedom and autonomy.

• If there is no stable core of philosophical problems, if reality is in large part, or wholly socially constructed and if knowledge and categories of knowing are ultimately historical , a systematic metaphysics would be not only beside the point but impossible.

• If there can be a metaphysics, what method or methods might one use?

Suspicion of any systematic metaphysics

What is your assessment to the contemporary challenges on

metaphysics?