One thing that our group noticed about Straight’s article is that the vocabulary is pretty daunting. We found ourselves wondering, for instance, about the nature of the “metaphysical contact zone,” and puzzling over what Straight meant by “shared imaginary.”
So to help de-mystify this article, we thought we would offer a brief introduction to what people generally mean when they talk about metaphysics. Some of you may find this old-hat. But others may find it enlightening. At the very least, you can check out some of the secondary sources that we discuss in this entry to find out for yourself what “metaphysics” is all about.
You might, for instance, check out the original work on metaphysics by Aristotle, which you can access online here:
Interestingly, the name of this work comes from the title given to it by 1st century CE scholars in Alexandria. They were compiling a collection of Aristotle’s works, and when they came to the work we now all call The Metaphysics, they called it simply “The-after-the-physics-things” (ta meta ta physica), or more colloquially, the work that comes after the Physics (the title of another work by Aristotle).
That, at least, is the simplest explanation. Others argue that “ta meta ta physica” is not simply a title designating the place of the work in an anthology. It tells the reader about the content of the work – this is the work that goes beyond the things discussed in The Physics. And here one begins to get an idea of what Straight may be talking about when she uses the word metaphysics in her article. For the things that go beyond the things discussed in The Physics are what Aristotle might call “first causes.” These are the things that are not necessarily open to empirical investigation, but that nevertheless form the foundation of the world we see around us.
You can read more about these things in The Metaphysics itself (or at this post in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/), but for now we will simply point out that Aristotle describes these things that form the fundamental building blocks of the universe in various ways: at times he calls them substances, at times he seems to speak of them as though they were Plato’s forms or ideas, and at other times Aristotle calls the things that make up the world by the names of individual physical things (like this particular horse called Ed, for instance.)
But for all of the vagueness of Aristotle’s descriptions, it is clear that he thinks that these first causes, or substances, or ideas can be investigated through a reliable science. For him, there is a form of inquiry that allows humans to make judgments-of-truth about first causes, substances, and the things that are in themselves. By contrast, most modern thinkers (and it would appear that Bilinda Straight is a modern thinker in this sense) reject this last important step when speaking about metaphysics. Following Nietzsche’s arguments in the Gay Science (specifically section 344 in Essay 5 of that work, which we have included below, with important sections in bold) thinkers like Straight tend to base their arguments on the conviction that science and metaphysics ultimately depend upon groundless “presuppositions,” to use Nietzsche’s language. Judgments-of-truth about the essence or first-causes of a given human institution or any other thing that appears in the world are impossible. All judgments are merely “value judgments,” or, to use Straight’s language, judgments of the imagination, aka “imaginaries.”
So while Straight follows Aristotle (and Nietzsche) in arguing that there is something beyond the physical-world that is important to understand if one is to understand the world as we know it, she makes an important departure from Aristotle when she describes metaphysical convictions as the products of a war between conflicting, and ultimately arbitrary, metaphysical presuppositions or “imaginaries.” This, perhaps, is why Straight is so interested in tracking the conflict that arises between the metaphysical presuppositions of Scudder and the Samburu people. Such conflict, and the new imaginaries that result from it, determines how a given people – on both sides of a given conflict - will see their world, their God, and their social reality. When people “forget” about the conflict that preceded their temporarily static view of things, they can be said to share a religious world-view and way of being in the world. Straight calls such a static state a shared “habitus.” But when people engage in the process of killing one another’s Gods (which, though imagined and unreal, are all that exists for Nietzsche – recall Heidegger’s making explicit what Nietzsche left tacit when he said “God is dead; God is our only hope.”) that is when things really get interesting. When we can actually see people engaged in the strife and will to dominance that eventually sublimate into religious belief systems and “shared imaginaries.”
This, at least, is how some members of our group interpreted Straight’s use of metaphysical language. But what do you think?
Directions and questions for small groups:
As a group, read the first full paragraph in the second column on page 843 ("My suggestion here is that...").
- What is Straight saying here? In light of this paragraph, what is the significance of the incident in which Charles Scudder fired shots into a sacred space of the Samburu? How can this incident be interpreted as "metaphysical violence?"
- Why, according to Straight, is a "shared imaginary" the result of the Scudder incident? What does it mean, and why is it significant, that this incident is "exceptional?"
- What is Straight saying here? In light of this paragraph, what is the significance of the incident in which Charles Scudder fired shots into a sacred space of the Samburu? How can this incident be interpreted as "metaphysical violence?"
- Why, according to Straight, is a "shared imaginary" the result of the Scudder incident? What does it mean, and why is it significant, that this incident is "exceptional?"
The Gay Science, Essay 5, Section 344.
How we, too, are still pious.—In science convictions have no rights of citizenship, as one says with good reason. Only when they decide to descend to the modesty of hypotheses, of a provisional experimental point of view, of a regulative fiction, they may be granted admission and even a certain value in the realm of knowledge—though always with the restriction that they remain under police supervision, under the police of mistrust.—But does this not mean, if you consider it more precisely, that a conviction may obtain admission to science only when it ceases to be a conviction? Would it not be the first step in the discipline of the scientific spirit that one would not permit oneself any more convictions?
Probably this is so; only we still have to ask: To make it possible for this discipline to begin, must there not be some prior conviction—even one that is so commanding and unconditional that it sacrifices all other convictions to itself? We see that science also rests on a faith; there simply is no science "without presuppositions." The question whether truth is needed must not only have been affirmed in advance, but affirmed to such a degree that the principle, the faith, the conviction finds expression: "Nothing is needed more than truth, and in relation to it everything else has only second-rate value."
This unconditional will to truth—what is it? Is it the will not to allow oneself to be deceived? Or is it the will not to deceive? For the will to truth could be interpreted in the second way, too—if only the special case "I do not want to deceive myself" is subsumed under the generalization "I do not want to deceive." But why not deceive? But why not allow oneself to be deceived?
Note that the reasons for the former principle belong to an altogether different realm from those for the second. One does not want to allow oneself to be deceived because one assumes it is harmful, dangerous, calamitous to be deceived. In this sense, science would be a long-range prudence, a caution, a utility; but one could object in all fairness: How is that? Is wanting not to allow oneself to be deceived really less harmful, less langerous, less calamitous? What do you know in advance of the character of existence to be able to decide whether the greater advantage is on the side of the unconditional mistrust or of the unconditionally trusting? But if both should be required, much trust as well as much mistrust, from where would science then be permitted to take its unconditional faith or conviction on which it rests, that truth is more important than any other thing, including every other conviction? Precisely this conviction could never have come into being if both tuth and untruth constantly proved to be useful which is the case. Thus—the faith in science, which after all exists undeniably, cannot owe its origin to such a calculus of utility; it must have originated in spite of the fact that the disutility and dangerousness of "the will to truth," of "truth at any price" is proved to it constantly. "At any price ': how well we understand these words once we have offered and slaughtered one faith after another on this altar!
Consequently, "will to truth" does not mean "I will not allow myself to be deceived" but—there is no alternative—"I will not deceive, not even myself"; and with that we stand on moral ground. For you only have to ask yourself carefully, "Why do you not want to deceive?" especially if it should seem—and it does seem!—as if life aimed at semblance, meaning error, deception, simulation, delusion, self-delusion, and when the great sweep of life has actually always shown itself to be on the side of the most unscrupulous polytropoi [refers to Homer's characterization of Odysseus: much travelled, versatile, wily, and manifold]. Charitably interpreted, such a resolve might perhaps be a quixotism [referring to Don Quixote] a minor slightly mad enthusiasm; but it might also be something more serious, namely, a principle that is hostile to life and destructive.—"Will to truth"—that might be a concealed will to death.
Thus the question "Why science?" leads back to the moral problem: Why have morality at all when life, nature, and history are "not moral"? No doubt, those who are truthful in that audacious and ultimate sense that is presupposed by the faith in science thus affirm another world than the world of life, nature, and history; and insofar as they affirm this "other world"—look, must they not by the same token negate its counterpart, this world, our world?—But you will have gathered what I am driving at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—that even we seekers after knowledge today, we godless anti-metaphysicians still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by a faith that is thousands of years old, that Christian faith which was also the faith of Plato, that God is the truth, that truth is divine.—But what if this should become more and more incredible, if nothing should prove to be divine any more unless it were error, blindness, the lie—if God himself should prove to be our most enduring lie?—
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