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3 1 S Being, Determination, and Dialectic On the Sources of Metaphysical Thinking Hegel and the Completion of Metaphysics Dialectic is tied to the entire range of ways of thinking about being that we find in the tradition of metaphysics.1 I will return to that range in diverse ways throughout this work, but now I am concerned with the connection of dialectic and metaphysics. Metaphysics, of course, often now 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 the cunning conceit of an intellectual will to power. The intimacy of connection between dialectic and the thinking of being also defines part of the problematic situation of so-called postmetaphysical philosophy. It has been a recurrent catch-cry for some time that we are now to think beyond all that, beyond dialectic, beyond metaphysics, beyond being. None of these more recent claims is immune from question. I want to consider this contested place of metaphysics , and the complex, indeed ambiguous, role dialectical thinking has played in defining that place. Often we attribute the sources of this contested place to Hume, and in a more qualified way to Kant. By contrast, Hegel is frequently presented as embodying a postcritical resurgence of metaphysics, 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 the true heir of the Kantian project. Nevertheless, Hegel’s continuity with the prior tradition is so massively evident, and not least in his respect for the Greeks, especially Aristotle, that this interpretation has much to do with 1. A version of these reflections was given as the Presidential Address at the annual meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, held at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland, March 11, 1995. 4  Metaphysics and Equivocities of Dialectic the commentators’ own embarrassments with metaphysics. Even granting that, yet Hegel has been a contributor, sometimes witting, sometimes not, to the contested place of metaphysics. The view that Hegel represents a kind of summation of major strands in the 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 the possibilities of the philosophical tradition as he had. This is extraordinarily difficult. One might say that it is something of Hegel’s stature that has made things more difficult for metaphysics rather than easier. To be a philosopher of such stature 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 can illuminate but it can also blind. If Hegel offers a kind of summation of the essential possibilities in the metaphysical tradition, more accurately, the modern rationalist tradition, there can seem something unsurpassable about him. And yet just the alleged consummation leaves us strangely disquieted and hungry. The completion attributed to Hegel shows forth starkly that something was missing in the quest, perhaps from the outset. If any such completion suggests the full richness of metaphysics, yet the richness seems also to show (in Marx’s phrase) the poverty of philosophy. If we are to “surpass” the alleged end of metaphysics, we must do so beyond the alleged poverty of philosophy. It goes without saying that such language about “the end of metaphysics” is not only the fashionable rhetoric of post-Heideggerian thought. It names a task that a plethora of thinkers set themselves in Hegel’s wake: Marx, for instance, in his will to realize, complete, and surpass philosophy in revolutionary praxis; Kierkegaard in his desire to be “postphilosophical” in religious faith; Nietzsche in his eros to be a “philosopher of the future,” celebrating the aesthetic theodicy of Dionysus. As much as, indeed more than, the more positivistic or scientistic heirs of Kant or Hume, the continental heirs of completed idealism have been the “surpassers of metaphysics,” be they rhapsodic descendants of Nietzsche or deconstructive heirs of Heidegger . I do not invoke this throng of “postmetaphysical” overcomers of “metaphysics” to enlist in their company. I think that much of the contestation of metaphysics is bound up with crucial ambiguities in dialectical thinking. I will explain what I mean in due course. But in advance I want [52.14.130.13] Project MUSE (2024-04-18 01:35...

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