Metaphysics After Metaphysics And The Realism Of The Constituted World
Abstract
In this paper I undertake to confront two modes of thinking about social reality; one based on metaphysics as pursued by the so-called Lublin school of classical philosophy, and the other which takes as its starting point the critique of metaphysics. In so doing, I venture upon the well-known landscape of the debate about metaphysics after metaphysics. In part one of the paper I discus two solutions to the question of ontology of social beings, one of the classical, the other of the modern provenience. The third kind of social ontology emerges from modern philosophy’s critique of the first two, based on the charge that both of these conceptions are epistemocentric. In part two I argue that despite differences between the discussed conceptions, they are significantly similar in the way they perceive human subjectivity and agency. In part three I consider dispositions of human mind and their implications for the understanding of politics and morality. In part four I develop the ideas of the critique of metaphysics that led to the third ontology of social beings comprehended as constituted by the world of meanings. Part five is devoted to the problem of the limits of this constitution, i.e. to the post-metaphysicalconception of reality.Key words SOCIAL REALITY, ONTOLOGY