WHAT IS METAPHYSICS?©

by k '

I wish to explain to you what metaphysics is. You might protest: "Who do you think you are to come and explain metaphysics to me!" or: "Who cares!" Then suppose that instead of explaining it to you I will be explaining it to myself, and pretend for a moment that this might be of some interest.

Whenever I ask myself "what is metaphysics?" I think of the tiger. Perhaps that is because few images are more ferocious and concrete, but at the same time simple and elegant, to represent the fierceness of metaphysics. When you engage in metaphysics you face a tiger that eagerly devours yours thoughts. And if as a precaution you crouch down in the bushes to spy her gentle movements, then an even worse fate will await you: you will lose yourself into the contemplation of its stripes and be plunged into insanity.

Here is another image of metaphysics: the hourglass. This association is more platitudinous: one of the most fundamental metaphysical issues is indeed Time.

I never think of a generic tiger and a generic hourglass. The tiger and the hourglass I dream of whenever I wonder the significance of metaphysics are always the very same particular tiger and the very same particular hourglass. Why do I claim that they are the identical tiger and the identical hourglass, and not a legion of different tigers and hourglasses following one another and overcrowding my mind? Because the tiger is the hourglass, and both are metaphysics--there is no other tiger, no other hourglass, no other metaphysics. I once foolishly endeavoured to distinguish among them and begot an uncontrollable multitude: the surface of the hourglass mirrored the tiger’s stripes, and the grains of sand flowing within the hourglass were shining into the tiger’s eyes. Grains and stripes proliferated to infinity, each stripe and each grain comprising within itself a further multitude of tigers and hourglasses. I turned my thoughts away from the boundless perversity of such vicious regress, never to contemplate it again. Since then I have learnt for good that metaphysics is unique and self-contained. There cannot be any other metaphysics. Losing oneself in several metaphysics is to lose oneself into the furtive contemplation of the tiger's stripes and be plunged into insanity.

And yet metaphysical theories are many, infinitely many. Metaphysics stays unique because of its own monolithic nature: of the infinitely many theories only one, at most, is true.

Some examples of metaphysical theories: "the tiger alone exists" or "the hourglass alone exists." A metaphysical theory is above all the conjunction of an existential affirmation with a universal negation: the statement that a certain thing or a complex of things exists, and nothing else does. After which, anyone can tincture his preferred metaphysical theory according to his own poetical taste. For example, a metaphysician not particularly endowed with the gift of poetry might add: "Tiger alone exists, for Tiger is at the beginning of time and pervades space. All else is but a vision of Tiger's dream. Everything was Tiger and everything will come back to Tiger"--or, more succintly: "Truth supervenes on Tiger." Similarly, for the hourglass. Here you are: this is what all metaphysical theories sound like. Try and replace "Tiger" or "Hourglass" with "Humid", "Apeiron" or "the pattern of instantiation of perfectly natural intrinsic properties" and you will obtain something which may sound more familiar, even though not less bizarre.

Two more examples of metaphysical theories: "Nothing exists" and "Everything exists". The former claim denies that you are reading these words, denies that I wrote them, denies you, and I, and everything else: the entire universe is a delusion of grandeur had by nobody. The latter claim, sensibly enough, does not deny that you are where you are, reading these words, and that I wrote them, and that you and I exist. But neither does it deny that right now you are reading something different from what I have actually written--let us say an essay on epistemology, oxen and sundials. In fact, it might be taken to imply that you have read all the essays you might have found in the library of Babel, that I am the author of all the essays that I might have written, and that everything that might have been actually is. One suspects that these seemingly opposite metaphysical claims, the first absurdly parsimonious, the second absurdly abundant, are saying one and the same thing.

Last three examples of metaphysical theories: "all metaphysical theories are true", "all metaphysical theories are false" or "all metaphysical theories are meaningless". Whoever denies or relativises metaphysics is a metaphysician himself. In the Thirties the logical positivists of the Viennese circle repudiated metaphysics: unknowingly, they were turning themselves into metaphysicians. The Argentian writer Jorge Luis Borges, with more self-awareness, did repudiate metaphysics too, but by admitting he was a metaphysician nonetheless, he has never repudiated himself.

I have concluded. Now you might ask: "You have made some examples of metaphysicial theories and said that at most one only, of the infintely many, is true. So which one do you think is the true metaphysical theory?" or: "What do you think is the logical form of a metaphysical theory?" or, once again: "What do you think metaphysics is?" In this case, my answer is this very text, in its entirety.

Copyright© 1999 by k '

The images in the text are : "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranite One Second Before Awakening." (1944) and "The Persistence of the Simpson Family" (?) by Salvador Dali.