Metaphysical criticism
The term metaphysical criticism is used to summarize philosophical views that criticize metaphysical explanations or systems of explanation or question whether and how these are possible. The theses and concepts, but also the methods of classical approaches in the philosophical discipline of metaphysics, are examined.
Subject of metaphysics
The philosophical discipline of metaphysics describes, on the one hand, the basic structures of reality that cannot be the subject of individual empirical knowledge or scientific explanations, but go beyond or underlie them. In addition, up to the emergence of specific cultural and human sciences, metaphysics included natural philosophy as well as the rational discussion about objects that do not belong to nature in the sense of the Greek φύσις, physis . (For the history of ideas and concepts, see also the articles Metaphysics , Natural Science , Physics and the History of Physics .) Classical objects of metaphysics are u. a. Questions of essence , ideal objects (e.g. universals ), but also philosophical conceptions of the soul , spirit or divinity . Ethics , mathematics and logic have been delimited from this since ancient times , although there are certainly connections: For example, certain systems of ethical commandments presuppose a metaphysical model for actions. In modern cultural discourse, the expression “metaphysics” is used in a softening way for the one harmonious world view that explains the world as a whole and relates to a final meaning.
Kant's critique of metaphysics
In the last quarter of the 18th century Immanuel Kant developed a fundamental critique of traditional metaphysical contents and procedures. Some of these came from scholasticism , but they were historically available to Kant in rationalist reconstructions , most recently from Leibniz and Wolff . His epistemological program formulated Kant v. a. in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Prolegomena .
Against the classical methods of conceptualization and indirect proof, Kant argues that the former does not enable any expansion of knowledge, whereas the latter can lead to necessary contradictions, as described by Kant in the antinomies of pure reason .
According to Kant, important questions of classical metaphysics must necessarily remain unanswered, since in principle there is no possibility of knowing anything about the properties of objects that are traditionally assumed as a basis in metaphysical systems. These are supposed to be supernatural, independent substances - Kant speaks of "things in themselves". According to Kant, however, this supernatural nature does not make it possible to experience its essential properties, because knowledge and knowledge are dependent on the indirect conveyance of content through the structures of sensuality and thought. With Kant, therefore, it is only recognizable what effects objects have on consciousness, and these again only to the extent that they can be mentally understood. The own share, the sensuality and understanding in the experience and in the content of the consciousness cannot be delimited in the concrete case.
Transcendental Philosophical Program
Kant proposes a new program for metaphysics: Instead of striving for a knowledge of things in themselves, metaphysics should examine the general structures of cognitive faculties (sensuality and understanding) that enable the knowledge of individual facts, i.e. judgments. These general prerequisites (“conditions of possibility”) of every knowledge are called transcendental principles in Kant's terminology . This includes:
- the pure basic concepts of our mind, the categories (for example causality ),
- the forms of our sensual perception: the linear-continuous, directed time as the inner form of perception and the Euclidean space as the outer. Objects of nature are in time and space, mental states only in time.
- the ideas of our reason
Kant's central thesis is that the first two groups of transcendental principles can be used to substantiate knowledge that has the special status of pure synthetic judgments a priori . These principles are no longer statements about the world "in itself", but necessary rules for the world as it appears to us. According to Kant, synthetic judgments are those whose truth is recognized not through the breakdown of concepts, but through their meaning for the general structures of sensuality. In contrast, in analytical judgments, the propositional content is recognized as a relationship between the intensions of the concepts involved and is therefore true thanks to semantic implication . Kant's distinction between judgments “ a posteriori ” and “ a priori ” concerns their relationship to sensory experience: if the facts that are recognized in the judgment are conveyed through sensory impressions, the judgment is called “a posteriori”, otherwise “a priori”. Judgments are called “purely a priori” if they do not even use empirical terms that come from experience, but only the terms of understanding and terms that relate to the pure forms of intuition. According to Kant, many traditional metaphysical theses that also incorporate the ideas of reason have the status of possible pure synthetic judgments a priori, that is, we cannot be sure of their truth. To the extent that this also applies to their negation , they can neither be confirmed nor refuted.
Kant's program of a "critique of reason" is different (the etymological original meaning of the word criticism ) so the potential insights that move in the structures of perception and thinking, but traditionally claimed by impossible that exceed these limits.
Historical development since the 19th century
The philosophy of German idealism , which set the tone in the 19th century, partly adopted Kant's critique of traditional metaphysics. The undecidability of transcendent synthetic judgments a priori, however, made new system designs possible, which determined them through “setting”. Since the existence of the knowledge subject as an independent substance also falls under these judgments, Kant's epistemological program could seemingly easily integrated into new “metaphysics”. It was only with the rise of positivism and the rejection of German and British idealism by the British philosophers GE Moore , Bertrand Russell or, for example, the sensualism of Ernst Mach , that metaphysics was criticized again. The linguistic turn not only questioned the recognizability or truth, but even the meaning of traditional as well as idealistic metaphysical judgments, insofar as these had the transcendent as their subject. With the early Ludwig Wittgenstein these doubts resulted in the dictum:
"Whereof one can not speak, thereof one must be silent."
At least Wittgenstein approved the area of individual “mystical” experience as a reservation in this phase of metaphysics, but in his opinion this was in principle impossible to communicate.
Metaphysical criticism of logical empiricism
The Vienna Circle - a discussion group around Moritz Schlick , Rudolf Carnap , Kurt Gödel , Friedrich Waismann , Otto Neurath and others that came into being around 1922 - represented a so-called logical empiricism . Thus a methodological restriction of epistemology to the analysis of logical relationships on the one hand and to scientifically reliable empirical modes of knowledge on the other. Anything beyond that was not a subject of possible knowledge according to this program; it was strongly opposed to the research programs of Neo-Kantianism and British idealism . Any attempt to identify truths that could not be reduced to scientific observations and their expression, observational sentences, was rejected as "metaphysical" by the Vienna Circle. The starting point was a verificationist criterion of meaning : the meaning of a linguistic expression was equated with the method of verifying it , i.e. H. with the scientifically proven procedures by means of which we can determine the existence of the relevant facts.
Rudolf Carnap's essay Overcoming Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language (1931) already shows the metaphysics-critical orientation in the title. According to his thesis, metaphysical sentences are only false sentences . What is meant is: although they have the grammatical form of a meaningful sentence, they do not express any possible (existing or non-existing) facts - they cannot be true or false at all. According to Carnap, false sentences arise in two ways: On the one hand, when words are used in a sentence which have no meaning , since the sentences formed in this way cannot be empirically verified. On the other hand, a false sentence arises when words are linked with one another that come from fundamentally different semantic categories . For example, in the sentence “Caesar is a prime number”, the word “prime number”, which is only applicable to numbers, is related to a word that does not designate a number: “Caesar”. This sentence is therefore neither true nor false, but meaningless. The meaninglessness of metaphysical propositions is due to their characteristics determined by Kant: Since they are supposed to be synthetic judgments a priori that generally elude empirical knowledge, they are per se meaningless. According to Carnap, the raison d'être of metaphysics consists only in expressing an attitude towards life like art .
Analytical criticism of logical empiricism
The dichotomy of analytic and synthetic as Carnap took account has, Willard Van Orman Quine denied and supporters of Carnap's position, the uncritical representation of two dogmas of empiricism accused: According to Quine, the analytic-synthetic distinction is required by this simple, although it is only there are vague criteria for them. In this respect, however, the demarcation of metaphysics from the area of possible knowledge can no longer be maintained. Rather, according to Quine, all sentences and beliefs that are recognized as true within a theory of the world are in a holistic context, insofar as they support one another. Carnap's definition of "analytical" is a misunderstanding of the fact that some beliefs play a more important role in this network, insofar as they support many sentences without being supported by them. They therefore appear necessary and self-evident. Other sentences only have a peripheral function. If they are refuted through experience, this does not threaten the overall structure, insofar as the negation can also assume a function in the network. These rates therefore appear to be more contingent and synthetic. A criticism or even rejection of metaphysics can therefore no longer be made on the basis of the question of the empirical content of metaphysical propositions, but can be made by examining their function for our systems of belief.
The representatives of the philosophy of normal language rejected the semantic substructure of logical empiricism and were able to assign a linguistic function to metaphysical expressions and assertions again through semantic analyzes ( Gilbert Ryle ). However, this does not lead to a rehabilitation of traditional metaphysics. In its place, Peter Strawson uses his program of “descriptive metaphysics”, which no longer wants to explore the structures of the world, but the logical structure of thought on which everyday language is based.
The critical rationalism of Karl Popper also rejects the criterion of meaning of logical empiricism and instead introduces falsifiability as a criterion for distinguishing sentences of empirical science from metaphysical sentences. According to Popper, propositions of empirical science must be characterized primarily by the fact that they have an empirical content such that experiences can be imagined that refute them. This falsificationism excludes many theses of traditional or idealistic metaphysics from the field of empirical science.
Continental philosophical metaphysical criticism
(For more information, see the relevant main articles.)
In the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, the methodological basis of traditional metaphysical explanations was criticized from various sides. At the end of the 19th century, for example by Friedrich Nietzsche and at the beginning of the 20th century by representatives of the philosophy of life , existential philosophy and existentialism . The rejection of metaphysics shows a parallel between Carnap and Martin Heidegger . But early and late critical theory also turned against traditional metaphysics, suspecting it of being the expression of an ideology of the ruling classes.
In the late modern era, there was criticism primarily from authors who are usually assigned to structuralism , poststructuralism or so-called postmodernism , including, for example, Michel Foucault , Emmanuel Levinas or Jacques Derrida , but also the American Richard Rorty .
Individual evidence
- ^ Robert Hanna: Kant's Theory of Judgment. In: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . , 2.2.2.
- ^ Robert Hanna: Kant's Theory of Judgment. In: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . , lc, 2.2.1
- ↑ Ludwig Wittgenstein: Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung , W. Ostwald (Ed.), Annalen der Naturphilosophie , Volume 14, 1921, pp. 185-262
literature
classic
- Auguste Comte : Cours de philosophie positive , Paris 1839.
- Rudolf Carnap : Overcoming metaphysics through logical analysis of language. In: Knowledge 2. 1931, 219–241.
- Immanuel Kant : Critique of Pure Reason , Riga 1781
- Willard Van Orman Quine : Two Dogmas of Empiricism , synopsis of the original publication (1951) and the version in the second edition in From a logical point of view (1961).
Secondary literature
- Myung Hee Guderian: Perspektiven der Metaphysikkritik: Typology and analysis of metaphysics-critical arguments . Mentis-Verlag, 2009, ISBN 3-897-85695-6 .
- Panajotis Kondylis : The modern metaphysics criticism . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1990. Review by Christoph Menke
- Ursula Wolf : Why the metaphysical questions cannot be answered, but also cannot be overcome. In: German Journal for Philosophy 48. 2000, pp. 499–504.
- Rüdiger Safranski : How much truth do people need . Carl Hanser 1990 ISBN 3-596-10977-9
- Adrian Pabst : Metaphysics: the creation of hierarchy . WB Eerdmans, 2012
Web links
- Lorenz B. Puntel : Criticism of metaphysics in Carnap and Heidegger , Munich 1997.