Title: Being, Determination, and Dialectic: On the Sources of Metaphysical Thinking
Abstract: I Dialectic is tied to entire range of ways of thinking about being that we find in tradition of metaphysics. I will not review that range of ways, as I have done so elsewhere.(1) Metaphysics now, of course, often meets with outright rejection as purportedly dealing with what lies beyond our ken, or as a conceptual projection onto an illusory transcendence of our own powers and impotences, or as cunning conceit of an intellectual will to power. The intimacy of connection between dialectic and thinking of being also defines part of problematic of so-called philosophy. The claim is that we are now to think beyond all that, beyond dialectic, beyond beyond being. None of these claims are themselves immune from question. Hence, I want to consider this contested place of and complex, indeed ambiguous, role dialectical thinking has played in defining that place. Often we attribute sources of this contested place to Hume, and in a more qualified way to Kant. By contrast, Hegel is frequently presented as embodying a post-critical resurgence of a recrudescence of what seemed to have been safely stowed in its grave. True, one finds interpretations in which Hegel as metaphysician is subordinated to Hegel true heir of Kantian project. Nevertheless, Hegel's continuity with prior tradition is so massively evident, and not least in his respect for Greeks, especially Aristotle, that this interpretation has much to do with commentators own embarrassments with metaphysics. Yet Hegel has been a contributer, sometimes witting, sometimes not, to metaphysics' contested place. The view that Hegel represents a kind of summation of major strands in Western tradition is not without some truth. This being so, if we wish to follow in his footsteps, we must strive for as comprehensive and nuanced an understanding of possibilities of philosophical tradition as he had. Obviously, this is extraordinarily difficult; it is Hegel's greatness that has made things more difficult for rather than easier. To be a great metaphysician is not only to release essential possibilities of thinking, it is to cast a shadow over descendent thinkers under which they must struggle for light. Excess of light blinds eyes unused to surplus of greatness. If Hegel is summation of essential possibilities in metaphysical tradition, there seems something unsurpassable about him. And yet just alleged consummation leaves us strangely disquieted and hungry. If Hegel is a completion, very completion shows forth starkly that something was missing in quest, perhaps from outset. The completion suggests full richness of and yet richness seems also to show (in Marx's phrase) poverty of philosophy. Thus if we are to this alleged end of we must do so from beyond alleged poverty of philosophy. It goes without saying that this language of the end of is not only fashionable rhetoric of post-Heideggerian thought. It names a task that a plethora of thinkers set themselves in Hegel's wake, for instance, Marx in his will to realize, complete, and surpass philosophy in revolutionary praxis, Kierkegaard in his desire to be post-philosophical in religious faith, and Nietzsche in his eros to be a new philosopher celebrating aesthetic theodicy of Dionysus. As much as, indeed more than more positivistic or scientistic heirs of Kant or Hume, Continental heirs of completed idealism have been surpassers of metaphysics, be they rhapsodic descendants of Nietzsche, or deconstructive heirs of Heidegger. I do not invoke this throng of post-metaphysical despisers of metaphysics to enlist in their company. I think that much of this contestation of is bound up with crucial ambiguities in dialectical thinking. I will explain what I mean in what follows. …
Publication Year: 1995
Publication Date: 1995-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 6
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