Metaphysics without fantasy

Metaphysics without fantasy

Hilary Lawson

What defined much of 20th-century philosophy was an attempt to overcome metaphysics and replace it with science. But those attempts failed. From the Logical Positivists and Wittgenstein to Derrida and Heidegger, metaphysics found its way back into the very theories that were trying to get rid of it. But even if metaphysics is inescapable, we cannot simply return to speculative theorizing about the ultimate nature of reality. Instead, we need to recognize that all theories have limits and are merely attempts to find better ways to navigate our way in the world, not to discover ‘the mind of God,’ argues Hilary Lawson.

What we need instead are metaphysical frameworks that do not adopt a realist account of language. This will, of course, involve giving up the idea that we might have cracked the philosophical puzzle of how to describe ourselves and the world once and for all. But since no such theory in the last few thousand years has been able to plausibly make such a claim, this is less onerous a loss than some might first imagine.

Metaphysics is not to be abandoned or avoided. But we should also recognize that no metaphysics we put forward is capable of overcoming perspective, be it cultural, linguistic, or human. There is no true metaphysics in a realist sense; no correct story of ourselves and the universe. Some may feel this is at first sight a disturbing idea, as if we are lost adrift in an unknowable world. But if so, have we not always been lost? And instead it offers a world of potential, ways to see and intervene in the world enabling outcomes current unavailable to us.