Chrysalis
18th February 2006, 01:54
The most basic philosophical inquiry, the subject of being qua being, essentially marks metaphysics as the highly theoretical and highly abstract human undertaking. We have only to invoke the word "ontology" and our daily conceptual practice could suffer a cardiac arrest from the radical shift it must undergo if it is to accommodate this oddity. Is metaphysics really that off the mark of our ordinary, common sense utterances?
Consider the staple debate between the realist and the nominalist about what categories there are under which things in the world can be classed. Are there kinds, properties, relations? Are there universals and concrete things, or just concrete (particular) things? Can you imagine William of Ockham---a staunch nominalist---calling out to Spinoza to respond to his post (!) and explain how, if abstraction must necessarily rely on our experiencing the world, could philosophers posit the existence of universals independent of, and prior to, the existence of the very objects that exhibit them?
What seems puzzling is, to even think of postulating these universals and particulars, we must necessarily have a good grasp of the perceptible, sensible everyday things and ordinary concepts: these sensible, everyday things and concepts are prior even to the most revered philosophical inquiry. And yet, there it is, the philosophical conclusion that the nature of things can be best understood within the theory of the most general, the most abstract names. In fact, this conclusion claims that the essence of things lies not within the things themselves as observed, but rather in another realm that is beyond the natural, everyday, human conception of reality. The true essence is apart from the objects themselves.
They call this description the two-worlds structure of reality: the existence of the universals and the particulars.
So, what is so appealing about the philosophically fundamental? Why is there a need for an absolutely simple picture of a thing? The philosophical presupposition is, reduction brings us closer to understanding. Understanding brings us closer to the truth. Truth gives us knowledge. But, is it truth for truth's sake? The naïve, and fortunate answer is, yes, we must seek truth for truth’s sake. Who is Plato? A philosopher. But also a thinking being, a biped, a mammal, a social animal. So, which one is it? What kind of a thing is Plato? A human being existing in spatiotemporal world. An apple, a chair, a horse are all spatiotemporal things. They are all bodies, matter, substance. So, Plato is, finally and fundamentally, a substance.
The outstripping and reducing of things to the basic! The most general kind, the most abstract description, the universal: this is what metaphysical existence is made of.
Now, to the problem: knowledge isn't had, nor maintained in a vacuum. The specialized fields of philosophy, physics, politics, economics, sociology, anthropology infect each other. Truth becomes an instrument to wield---no longer sought purely for its own sake but for the sake of political ideologies, for the sake of scientific advancement, for the sake of domination, for the sake of oppression. And metaphysics is, first and foremost, the source where the stockpile of conceptual battles begins. The "individual" is not to be observed in his most natural, material existence, but to be stripped off of his identity and desires and history, and then, categorized under "mankind". He is not to be viewed as autonomous, social being, capable of directing his own actions, but to be relegated, according to the functionalist view, as part of a whole hierarchical system. He is to be further reduced to a mere cog in a machine because his essence is not to be found in him, in his own material existence, but somewhere else in a different realm, in the upper tier of this two-worlds structure independent of any ordinary human's cognition.
The metaphysical outstripping of the Individual has become the structure, and the weight, he must bear. The metaphysical burden is now part of his identity that he takes for granted. He doesn't understand his essence except as part of a structure where he must necessarily occupy the contingent space: the expendable, replaceable part. The reducible. He is among the industrial army, the guinea pigs, the control group, the reserves. To bring back the individuals, begin by understanding metaphysics and listening to the discourse. There is only so much philosophers can outstrip before the human experience is reduced to unintelligibility.
Consider the staple debate between the realist and the nominalist about what categories there are under which things in the world can be classed. Are there kinds, properties, relations? Are there universals and concrete things, or just concrete (particular) things? Can you imagine William of Ockham---a staunch nominalist---calling out to Spinoza to respond to his post (!) and explain how, if abstraction must necessarily rely on our experiencing the world, could philosophers posit the existence of universals independent of, and prior to, the existence of the very objects that exhibit them?
What seems puzzling is, to even think of postulating these universals and particulars, we must necessarily have a good grasp of the perceptible, sensible everyday things and ordinary concepts: these sensible, everyday things and concepts are prior even to the most revered philosophical inquiry. And yet, there it is, the philosophical conclusion that the nature of things can be best understood within the theory of the most general, the most abstract names. In fact, this conclusion claims that the essence of things lies not within the things themselves as observed, but rather in another realm that is beyond the natural, everyday, human conception of reality. The true essence is apart from the objects themselves.
They call this description the two-worlds structure of reality: the existence of the universals and the particulars.
So, what is so appealing about the philosophically fundamental? Why is there a need for an absolutely simple picture of a thing? The philosophical presupposition is, reduction brings us closer to understanding. Understanding brings us closer to the truth. Truth gives us knowledge. But, is it truth for truth's sake? The naïve, and fortunate answer is, yes, we must seek truth for truth’s sake. Who is Plato? A philosopher. But also a thinking being, a biped, a mammal, a social animal. So, which one is it? What kind of a thing is Plato? A human being existing in spatiotemporal world. An apple, a chair, a horse are all spatiotemporal things. They are all bodies, matter, substance. So, Plato is, finally and fundamentally, a substance.
The outstripping and reducing of things to the basic! The most general kind, the most abstract description, the universal: this is what metaphysical existence is made of.
Now, to the problem: knowledge isn't had, nor maintained in a vacuum. The specialized fields of philosophy, physics, politics, economics, sociology, anthropology infect each other. Truth becomes an instrument to wield---no longer sought purely for its own sake but for the sake of political ideologies, for the sake of scientific advancement, for the sake of domination, for the sake of oppression. And metaphysics is, first and foremost, the source where the stockpile of conceptual battles begins. The "individual" is not to be observed in his most natural, material existence, but to be stripped off of his identity and desires and history, and then, categorized under "mankind". He is not to be viewed as autonomous, social being, capable of directing his own actions, but to be relegated, according to the functionalist view, as part of a whole hierarchical system. He is to be further reduced to a mere cog in a machine because his essence is not to be found in him, in his own material existence, but somewhere else in a different realm, in the upper tier of this two-worlds structure independent of any ordinary human's cognition.
The metaphysical outstripping of the Individual has become the structure, and the weight, he must bear. The metaphysical burden is now part of his identity that he takes for granted. He doesn't understand his essence except as part of a structure where he must necessarily occupy the contingent space: the expendable, replaceable part. The reducible. He is among the industrial army, the guinea pigs, the control group, the reserves. To bring back the individuals, begin by understanding metaphysics and listening to the discourse. There is only so much philosophers can outstrip before the human experience is reduced to unintelligibility.