‘But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise’
– F. Nietzsche
In my first year of undergraduate studies I appeased my restless interest in philosophy by taking several courses on the subject, which had an unfortunate (though perhaps necessary) effect on me: my raw enthusiasm was quantified into new form, made structured and coherent and utterly common. Gradually I became accustomed to the acclimatization of scholastic thought and gorged myself on like-minded texts published by reputable universities which were to be the nutrients of my new body. One of these texts was the blandly titled ‘Contemporary Metaphysics: an Introduction’ by Michael Jubien. The physical record of my yellow highlighter suggests that I had only made it beyond a couple of chapters before moving my attention elsewhere. One of the reasons for this incomplete reading seems to do with the novelty of the terms and concepts of the subject which at the time greatly intimidated me, leaving my marginalia pining for further explanation.
Last week I read portions of this text with new eyes. I have been recently undergoing a fairly intense discussion on various subjects of metaphysics including most prominently the property of ‘truth’ so I had returned to this book in the hopes that it would provide a base of knowledge on this issue. Since it is a primer on metaphysics I had assumed that the author would supply a balanced array of viewpoints, but a cursory glance of the introduction proved my assumption wrong. Unabashedly, Michael Jubien’s book promotes a positivist agenda in it’s presentation of the arguments on metaphysics that resists the ‘pessimistic’ views of post-modernism. He equates the demonstrative abilities of thought experiments of philosophy with the physical experimentations of science, and champions an optimistic view of this ‘objective’ potential for metaphysical investigations.
Of course everyone has the right to their own opinions and I do not fault Michael Jubien because he was honest with his views, rather I fault him because an introduction primer (especially one on metaphysics of all things!) is not the appropriate place to platform intense bias, especially bias of this nature when the very subject matter pertains to the topic of values. Had I actually read this text prior to my ability to sufficiently discern for myself the significance of metaphysical concepts I would have been drawn into an absolute-laden conceptualization of the world through which even the most esoteric of our ideas are quantified in accordance with some higher logic – and herein lies my concern for the ‘educated’ man. Jubein’s appeal to the scientific in philosophy, especially in such a soft topic as metaphysics, suggests an overt conviction born of a consequence of academic politics, where the competition between fields and within fields create polemical agendas that often overshadow the issues of the content. Metaphysics is not necessarily scientific, but if it were it would satisfy writing a book about it, and it would satisfy the need of funding a course on it, and it would satisfy the wantonness of integrity to all facets of humanist learning and contingent scholarship.
But this entry is not about the fissures of all scholarship, rather it is about a select kind of scholarship: those which implicitly endorse a ‘divine reason’ through their central arguments. Not much has changed fundamentally since the Ancients first conceived of a ‘divine reason’ managing the cosmos, except perhaps the secular flavor of modern rhetoric which whether consciously or unconsciously conceals this impetus through a network of self-sustaining truisms. It is analogous to the curious way American politics is analyzed as pundits systematically disregard the philosophical pertinence of the speeches in favor of discussion as to their pragmatic ends; so too is much of modern academic rhetoric, which diverts attention away from genuine philosophical inquiry and towards self-sustaining chains of logic that console each other with appearances. Every so often, particularly in the annals of philosophy, a figure comes along to break free from this chain and start afresh some novel aspect that may in its incubated form be significantly philosophical. But often habits die hard. even post-modern texts are susceptible to the allure of academic logocentrism, it is inevitably how the system functions.
It almost goes without saying that for the academic community to thrive there needs to be some systemization of concepts and terms to galvanize scholarly debate; there is in this an ingrained bias in favor of socially verifiable arguments, and additionally, those which encourage extension of discussion. Reason therefore becomes the ideal tool for this purpose. Before any topic is even investigated there is the expectation of fulfilling these certain ends as a result of the bureaucratic nature of academia.
Thus, a radical skepticism which endorses individualistic readings challenge these ends despite the potentially logical integrity of its arguments (those who have had the misfortune of a post-secondary education in the humanities will perhaps recall this fact about essay writing: even in an aesthetic analysis for my fine art courses I had to base my writings on external sources, so lowly valued was the individualistic reading!). One of the predominant tactics of silencing the radical skeptic is by claiming the self-indicting irrationalism of its arguments (i.e. how can its claims be true if it denies universals?); such tactics are sophist tricks, nothing more. For the response is obvious: skepticism is not itself a dogma-laden position, for it is dependent on something to be skeptical of, and rather than being an isolated argument claiming absolute truth, it is a tool that uses another’s argument against itself, taking in full possession the laws inherent of the position and examining it’s claims of absolute truth.
I believe that at the root of much of this neutered philosophizing is the persistence of ‘divine reason’ as a default condition for ‘analysis’. The ancients were more forthright with the nature of their adoration of reason denoting its divine nature. You will find little mention of divinity in the modern persistence of this ideal, as it has a more terrestrial appeal via the humanistic reversal of God’s power to Mankind. Yet it is still the same fundamentally ardent ideal, one which modern scholarship seeks to conform to without much complaint. This persistence of ‘divine reason’ as a ‘world in its own image’ as Nietzsche spoke of has nothing fundamentally to do with reality, its merely a meta-belief whose conditioning bias goes largely unnoticed in the canons of belief generated through scholarship. How can I say that? Simply because there is no rational argument that legitimizes the hierarchal authority of reason over any of the other human virtues man is capable of engendering, and of which has stimulated his imagination since time immemorial. Stoicism and its many permutations exalting reason as an absolute quality of the cosmos through which we in our clouded consciousness must seek conformity with, overextends its ambition to know that which it is incapable of rationally proving, thus resigning ultimately its ‘truth’ to personal faith. Its easy to challenge a personal faith, and I do.
Michael Jubien’s ‘Contemporary Metaphysics’ is just one example of this meta-belief informing the direction of scholarship. In a stroke of blind devotion to reason – perhaps dazzled by its distillation in scientific discoveries – Jubien spends a chapter championing the rational integrity of absolute truth through a ritual debasement of ‘relativism’. His choice of definition of relativism is from a passage of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, which is, as I mentioned before, part of the self-sustaining web of logic imposed by academia, one which references its own kind of agenda without hesistation. The two arguments he uses against relativism have nothing to do fundamentally with the latent meaning of the concept and are as relevant as a Christian indictment of Buddhist doctrine is to the Buddhist faith. Added injury is made by classifying a marginal subcategory of relativism: the doctrine of free-belief (or DFB as he affectionately calls it); in essence, free-belief is central to relativism, but here it is systematically divorced from the debate as a category of its own worth a couple of concessionary paragraphs.
Jubien’s case is an academic-endorsed logocentrism filtering out all aspects which do not conform to his default orthodox, which in the realm of philosophy is ultimately a perversion of the interests of the subject. Metaphysics is arguably the least rational of the philosophical disciplines, and in Jubein’s attempt to quantify its content the Nietzschean adage rings true: this text, along with much of modern scholarship in the humanities, regulate value according to a logocentrism that perverts the goal of knowledge for the sake of consoling the meta-belief’s wantonness for appearances. Thus, the content need not be philosophically sound, just appear so.
I say all of this as an opinion, proudly relativistic. It is up to the logocentric to explain away his/her misuse of reason.