The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (140 page)

That there is no sharp distinction between metaphysics and meta-metaphysics is related to the first principal point that I want to make in this section: neither is there any sharp distinction between either of them and either of their histories. This is because, in Bernard Williams’ useful contrast to which I drew attention in the Preface, these two histories are part of the history of philosophy rather than the history of ideas. They are philosophy before they are history.

That philosophy in general and metaphysics or meta-metaphysics in particular should admit of any such history, that is to say a history that is in the first instance a contribution to the discipline rather than a contribution to history, is one of the most significant respects in which all three of them differ from the natural sciences. The natural sciences have no history that is not in the first instance history. Thus the history of physics, whatever interest it may hold for a physicist, has little claim on his or her attention
qua physicist
. And the little claim it does have is to indicate pitfalls into which physicists have fallen in the past and which they must now try to avoid. The history of physics is a history of discovery. It is a partial vindication of what physicists think and say and do today, as opposed to what they thought and said and did before.

The history of metaphysics is nothing like that. True, there has been progress. And certainly there has been evolution. Some ideas have developed in ways that have made them better equipped to survive the ravages of hostile cross-examination; others have died out because they were not equipped to survive these ravages. (In the first case, think of Frege’s sharpening of Kant’s idea of an analytic truth.
⁴
In the second case, think of Descartes’ idea of an uncreated substance having dominion over one created extended substance and a multitude of created thinking substances.) Indeed there is very little in what we have observed whose historical positioning does nothing to account for it; very little that might just as easily have preceded what it in fact succeeded. Nevertheless, it would be preposterous to think either that there has been progress of the same sort as there has been in physics or, insofar as there has not, that this is to the detriment of metaphysics.
We still have a great deal to learn from Spinoza
– to pick just one notable example. And while we may also have a great deal to learn from Derrida – to pick another – we certainly have no more to learn from him just because he wrote some three hundred years later. The historian of metaphysics engages philosophically with past metaphysical ideas in a way in which only a crackpot historian of physics could think it appropriate to engage scientifically with past physical ideas. The historian of metaphysics is involved in an attempt to derive positive lessons from past ideas and thereby to be assisted in making his or her own maximally general sense of things.

So is metaphysics in this respect more like an art form than like a natural science? Is the historian of metaphysics who engages with some great metaphysical idea of the past like an artist who engages with some great work of art of the past, as it may be a contemporary pianist playing Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’? Well, there are some important similarities here. But there are important differences too. Let us not lurch from one infelicitous analogy to another. In particular, let us not think that the relation between metaphysics and its own history is any more like the relation between an art form and its own history than it is like the relation between a natural science and its own history – something which we are in any case given no encouragement to think by the similarities to which I have just adverted. For even if great metaphysical ideas of the past have an enduring value that great works of art of the past have and that great scientific theories of the past, for all their greatness, lack, that is obviously not what makes a contemporary metaphysician’s engagement with them a
historical
exercise. Playing Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ is not a historical exercise, at least not in anything like the way in which writing a commentary on Spinoza’s
Ethics
is. (We must not lose sight of the fact that the history of metaphysics, though it is metaphysics
before it is history, is still history.) What makes the contemporary metaphysician’s engagement with past metaphysical ideas a historical exercise is that it is the very thing that Collingwood took all history to be: an attempt to reenact a former way of making sense of things by attending to its questions, assimilating its propositions, and suchlike. It has a crucial transchronological aspect.
⁵

This in turn gives the lie to yet another enticing and prevalent misconception about the history of metaphysics: that its principal value lies in its indicating voices of yore that can be heard as participating in contemporary metaphysical discussions. On the contrary, its principal value lies in its indicating voices of yore that
cannot
be heard as participating in contemporary metaphysical discussions. It indicates voices that challenge whatever presuppositions make contemporary metaphysical discussions possible. The impetus that it provides for the project of making one’s own maximally general sense of things is to signal alternatives to what, if one remains rooted in the present, one will unthinkingly take for granted (even if it ultimately reinforces one’s confidence in what one takes for granted).

There are several paradigms, then, that are inappropriate for thinking about the history of metaphysics, and specifically for thinking about its relation to metaphysics itself. That relation is unlike the relation between the history of physics and physics. It is unlike the relation between the history of music and music. It is unlike the relation between reading the latest issues of the journals to see what sense other people make of something and trying to make sense of it oneself. Nor, unless we are committed Hegelians, shall we think of the history of metaphysics as the telling of some grand dialectically necessary story that is destined to end with the hero’s arriving at a kind of self-knowledge. But there is another important paradigm that we still need to consider. There is the Deleuzian view that the history of metaphysics indicates virtual tendencies which we can actualize in various more or less creative ways, or themes on which we can play out more or less innovative variations, by establishing connections between singularities. How does
that
relate to what I have been arguing?

I think it can be readily grafted on to what I have been arguing, or rather that what I have been arguing can be readily grafted on to it. When the historian of metaphysics hears voices of yore that challenge the presuppositions of contemporary metaphysical discussions, and is thereby spurred into participating in alternative metaphysical discussions, those alternative discussions are not simply the discussions in which metaphysicians used to
participate. There is no reliving the past. And even if there were, there would be no clear motive for doing so. No; what those voices do is to disrupt our living of the present, and thereby to help us find better ways of living the future. The right response to them is not to try to join in with them, any more than it is to turn a deaf ear to them. The right response is to connect what they are saying with what is being said now, and to search for ways of saying something that makes creative use of both. This is just the kind of thing that Deleuze has in mind. It is part of what he means when he suggests, as we saw him suggest in
Chapter 21
, §6, that the metaphysician should be working in a way that is ‘untimely’, attempting to create concepts for a time to come.

A final brief observation for this section. In view of what I have just been arguing, it is surely no accident that Wittgenstein, whose conservatism I have several times emphasized and several times bemoaned (see esp. Ch. 10, §6), showed relatively little interest in the history of philosophy.
⁶
For Wittgenstein, the aim of philosophy was to protect extant forms of sense-making. This certainly did not preclude engaging with alternatives (if only imaginary alternatives: cf. Wittgenstein (
1978
), Pt I, §§143–153). But it did, trivially, preclude engaging with alternatives in a deliberate attempt to upset the
status quo
.
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3. The Wittgenstein Question

(a) Consent

The brief addendum to the previous section was an example of something that has characterized this book ever since
Chapters 9
and 10. Wherever
possible, I have tried to situate Wittgenstein with respect to developments in my narrative and to situate them with respect to him. None of the rest of my protagonists has served as a touchstone in the same way. Why is this? Why have I been so concerned to keep drawing the discussion back to him in particular?

In the case of the later Wittgenstein the reason is very simple. Despite this crucial reservation that I have concerning his conservatism, there is no one else with whom I find myself in such deep agreement. Certainly, I would be happy to label my approach to any of the familiar metaphysical conundrums by which students of analytic philosophy are typically introduced to the discipline as a Wittgensteinian approach. (I shall illustrate this point shortly.) But even with respect to meta-metaphysics I am largely in agreement with Wittgenstein. I have broadly Wittgensteinian reasons for answering two of the three questions from §6 of the Introduction in the way in which I do. Thus concerning the Transcendence Question I agree that, for the metaphysician, ‘everything lies open to view’ (Wittgenstein (
1967a
), Pt I, §126).
^8
,
9
And concerning the Creativity Question I accept the Wittgensteinian reasons canvassed in
Chapter 10
, §3, for thinking that our making maximally general sense of things, insofar as it is a matter of our acknowledging necessities, is a matter of our reckoning with the grammar of our own language and not with anything that is in any remotely robust sense independent of us. The later Wittgenstein seems to me to have a more compelling account of our grasp of necessary truths than anyone else in this enquiry.

What then of the early Wittgenstein? My reason for constantly bringing the discussion back to him is somewhat different. It is that he provides the model for the bipartite idea, which I have been intermittently trying to motivate since
Chapter 9
, and which I trumpeted most recently in §1, that:

• included in the maximally general non-propositional sense that can be made of things there is some that finds pseudo-expression in pseudo-propositions

and

• providing such pseudo-expression may serve to convey the sense in question.

One of the most signal features of this idea, a feature for which again Wittgenstein provides the model, is its relation to one of the recurring themes of this book: transcendental idealism. For precisely what transcendental idealism is, I would contend, is the pseudo-expression of certain non-propositional sense that can be made of things at the highest level of generality. This too is a view that I have tried to motivate at various points in the enquiry, ever since I first introduced it in §§7 and 8 of
Chapter 9
(see
Ch. 14
, §4;
Ch. 17
, §§6 and 7; and
Ch. 18
, §7).
¹⁰

An Interlude on Vagueness

I want to use this interlude as it were to illustrate my Wittgensteinian credentials. I shall briefly address a very familiar metaphysical puzzle, and try to show how a broadly Wittgensteinian approach can help to solve it. I have deliberately chosen a puzzle about which Wittgenstein himself said next to nothing, to give an indication of how he left us with something that might fairly be described as, if not a method for solving such puzzles (cf. Wittgenstein (
1967a
), Pt I, §133, final sentence), then a way of approaching them.

The puzzle I am going to address concerns vagueness.
¹¹
It is the sorites paradox. The sorites paradox takes its name from the Greek adjective ‘
sorites
’, which in turn corresponds to the Greek noun ‘
soros
’, meaning ‘heap’. It is illustrated in the following argument.

(P1) One grain of sand is not enough to make a heap.

(P2) For any number
n
, if
n
grains of sand are not enough to make a heap, then
n
+ 1 grains of sand are not enough to make a heap.

Therefore:

(C) There is no number of grains of sand that are enough to make a heap.

This is a paradox because the argument appears valid, both its premises appear true, yet its conclusion appears false. And an analogous argument can be constructed for any other similarly vague concept. Thus consider the number of seconds that someone needs to live to survive childhood. But I shall focus on the argument above, which can serve as a representative case.

Now, why does (P2) appear true? What makes us think we should accept a principle such as that? I suggest that the reason why we think we should accept (P2) is that we do accept the following, which looks equivalent to it:

(P2*) There is no number
n
such that
n
+ 1 is the least number of grains of sand that are enough to make a heap.

And we accept (P2*) because we want to rule out any sharp cut-off points here. This in turn is because part of the point of a vague concept such as that of a heap is that there should be enough latitude in its application for that application to rest on relatively casual observation.
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