The return of metaphysics as a subject matter of historical ontology: analytical review (ending)

Olga E. Sto­liaro­va
Insti­tute of Phi­los­o­phy, Russ­ian Acad­e­my of Sci­ences

The return of meta­physics as a sub­ject mat­ter of his­tor­i­cal ontol­ogy: ana­lyt­i­cal review (end­ing)

Abstract. The sec­ond part of the arti­cle con­tin­ues the ana­lyt­i­cal and his­to­ri­o­graph­i­cal overview of the prob­lems that are sub­stan­tive­ly relat­ed to the ques­tion of the role, mean­ing and his­tor­i­cal fate of meta­physics. The author focus­es on the phe­nom­e­non of the return of meta­physics to the phi­los­o­phy of our time. The author traces the grad­ual reha­bil­i­ta­tion of meta­phys­i­cal prob­lems in post-pos­i­tivist stud­ies of sci-ence. An attempt is made to dif­fer­en­ti­ate these stud­ies from the view­point of the oppo­si­tion between inter­nal­ism and exter­nal­ism. The author shows the lim­its of this dif­fer­en­tia-tion and high­lights the mixed type of re-search, which focus­es on the inter­ac­tion of “exter­nal” and “inter­nal” deter­mi­nants of knowl­edge. It is shown that the post­pos­i­tivist idea of the back­ground knowl­edge extends not only to sci­en­tif­ic (empir­i­cal) knowl­edge, but also to its philo­soph­i­cal (the­o­ret­i­cal) jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, which is rec­og­nized by many re-searchers as his­tor­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly con­di­tioned. This opens up the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a his­tor­i­cal cri­tique of the onto­log­i­cal pre­sup­po­si­tions of the epis­te­mo­log­i­cal (tran­scen­den­tal) jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of sci­ence. Such pre­sup­po­si­tions are con­sid­ered in rela­tion to the dis-course of neg­a­tive ontol­ogy, which pro­hibits the cog­ni­tive expe­ri­ence of tran­scen­dent be-ing. The author shows that the crit­i­cism of these assump­tions is car­ried out in the form of a regres­sive tran­scen­den­tal argu­ment, which, com­par­ing them with a new, phi­lo-soph­i­cal­ly revised sci­en­tif­ic ontol­ogy, reveals their his­tor­i­cal­ly lim­it­ed char­ac­ter. Thus, the regres­sive tran­scen­den­tal argu­ment allows us to go beyond the neg­a­tive ontol­ogy of the tran­scen­den­tal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of sci­ence. This leads to the replace­ment of his­tor­i­cal epis­te­mol­o­gy, whose sub­ject mat­ter is lim­it­ed to knowl­edge and its his­tor­i­cal­ly mobile struc­tures, with his­tor­i­cal ontol­ogy, which returns to the descrip­tion and expla­na­tion of real­i­ty. The author con­sid­ers the con­cepts of new re-alism in the con­text of his­tor­i­cal ontol­ogy and traces the con­nec­tion of the new real­ism with the post-meta­phys­i­cal and metameta­phys­i­cal dis­cours­es.

Key­words: meta­physics, cri­tique of meta­physics, tran­scen­den­tal argu­ment, real­ism, his­tor­i­cal epis­te­mol­o­gy, his­tor­i­cal ontol­ogy, post­meta-physics, metameta­physics

DOI: 10.32326/2618–9267–2021–4–2–180–197

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