Analogy and the Disrepute of Metaphysics (original) (raw)
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The Object and Method of Metaphysics
Many critiques against metaphysics have much to do with its method or object. For example, Hume, Kant, and some members of the Vienna Circle all argue against metaphysics as a science from an anthropological or epistemological perspective. Their arguments are primarily against the possibility of metaphysics as a science, as a human endeavor. Is human reason capable of grasping and expressing metaphysical truths? Although it is well beyond the scope of this paper to provide a complete answer to any of these criticisms, I believe that an adequate understanding of the object and method of metaphysics are an important first step. In this paper I will argue that analogy is central to understanding metaphysics--both in providing a unity to its object as well as being integral to the method of metaphysical inquiry.
Why Metaphysics? A Rather Ambitious Introduction
Neoaristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics (Routledge), 2014
This volume re-examines some of the major themes at the intersection of traditional and contemporary metaphysics. The book uses as a point of departure Francisco Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations published in 1597. Minimalist metaphysics in empiricist/pragmatist clothing have today become mainstream in analytic philosophy. Independently of this development, the progress of scholarship in ancient and medieval philosophy makes clear that traditional forms of metaphysics have affinities with some of the streams in contemporary analytic metaphysics. The book brings together leading contemporary metaphysicians to investigate the viability of a neo-Aristotelian metaphysics.
Brief Essay on the Nature and Method of Metaphysics
The Incarnate Word, 2023
This paper is an attempt to clarify, from a Thomistic point of view, the nature and method of metaphysics. I argue that metaphysics' object is created being, not God, even if God enters metaphysics as efficient cause of metaphysic's object. Also, that metaphysics is a science, insofar as a particular kind of coherent reasoning process, going from the many to understand a certain oneness, and then from that oneness to reinterpret the many. Moreover, that, in this particular process of reasoning, doctrinal topics must follow a certain order. Thus, in particular, I argue that the distinction between essence and act of being in every creature cannot be argued before arguing the existence of God. I touch upon the notion of separation in metaphysics and I compare Aquinas' notion of resolution with Fabro's notion.
There Might be a Special Problem with Metaphysics!
In “There is no Special Problem with Metaphysics,” Karen Bennett argues that there is no special problem with metaphysics: That is, there is no distinctive feature (or features) of metaphysics that is (or are) problematic. In doing so, Bennett also comes to a disjunctive definition of metaphysics: Metaphysics is a discipline that maintains the tools employed by other disciplines and—for accidental reasons—covers various other topics (e.g. free will, consciousness, mereology). In this paper, I argue that there might be a special problem with metaphysics, after all. To that end, I present and analyze Bennett’s argument, clarify the definition of metaphysics, provide an objection to Bennett’s argument, and outline some potential special problems with metaphysics.
2008
ABSTRACT The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that metaphysics is a necessary discipline–necessary in the sense that all areas of philosophy, all areas of science, and in fact any type of rational activity at all would be impossible without a metaphysical background or metaphysical presuppositions. Because of the extremely strong nature of this claim, it is not possible to put forward a very simple argument, although I will attempt to construct one.
2014
What is the desire for metaphysics? Is it like all desires, possessing the typical intentional structure of a subject directing at an object and thus exceeding his own boundaries? A positive answer to this question would lead to a tautology, since both the desire and the metaphysics denote the person’s going beyond himself. This collection is founded upon the argument that the desire for metaphysics is greater than any other human desire, due to the nature of metaphysics itself, thanks to which it cannot simply be considered as an object like all other objects. Metaphysics is not just a worldview regarding the things that exist in the world, human nature, the essence of human consciousness, and so on. The metaphysics to which human desire is directed denotes the evident and all-embracing consciousness regarding the existence of an abstract and profound level in the world of existing things that is simultaneously responsible for their formation and for the fact that they can never be exhausted by their manifestations. The described desire for metaphysics, as the ultimate impetus of philosophical engagement, is present in the depth of each of the articles in this collection. Yet the variance apparent in the articles of this collection reveals a fundamental point regarding metaphysics: due to its holistic nature, it can never be exhausted in particular contents, and is still always revealed in the commitment to the particular experience in which it appears.
Metaphysics after the Critique of Metaphysics
Religion and the Arts, 2023
In his monumental and informative work, Incomprehensible Certainty, Thomas Pfau starts with a question taken from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot: “Can something that has no image come as an image?” This important question also applies well to Giorgio Agamben’s and Niklaus Largier’s works, since all three works share a common interest in the challenges of metaphysics: the unspeakable in Largier, Being (to on), or “The One” in Pfau, and the relation between being and language, or being and thinking in Agamben. Full article here: https://brill.com/view/journals/rart/27/1-2/rart.27.issue-1-2.xml
A Critique of 'The Criticisms against Metaphysics' (Perspective essay)
2020
This essay examines selected sentiments against Metaphysics by tracing different criticisms against metaphysics, and subsequently presents rebuttals against each antimetaphysics argument. Auguste Compte(1798-1857AD) is herein viewed as among the first philosophers to systematically critique metaphysics with an extrapolation towards positive epistemology or empirical Science. The essay further observes that systematic critique of metaphysics by Comte led to a vehement affirmation of Science by a group of thinkers known as Positivists and logical positivist. They constricted epistemology by classifying knowledge into analytic and synthetic. Any proposition outside the dichotomy of Analytics and Synthetic such as metaphysics is consequently labeled by them as 'meaningless' chatter. The essay also presents en passant the internal strife of a section of Metaphysicians who oppose traditional metaphysics by appealing to a more empirical metaphysics. The peak of antimetaphysics is d...
Unjustified Criticism of Metaphysics
Lato Sensu, vol.2, No 1, 2015
At the same time as a purported renewal of metaphysics is taking place in analytical philosophy, criticism of metaphysics has also increased. Criticism of metaphysics is usually made by naturalistic metaphysicians and is aimed at non-naturalistic metaphysics. Without endorsing any of the above schools, in this essay I undertake, not a criticism of metaphysics, but a criticism of the current criticism of metaphysics. I therefore review some of the most important issues at stake in this criticism, which merely recycles centuries-old criticism of metaphysics in general: the alleged sterility and futility of metaphysics, its vagueness, the propensity for fantasy, the lack of imagination and foresight, its alleged dependence on intuition and, above all, its independence from experience. I conclude that all these criticisms supply an inaccurate image of metaphysics and a concomitant inaccurate image of science rooted in a refusal to recognize that a strict separation between a priori and a posteriori cannot be achieved.