Abstract

The article deals with the dissatisfaction we can fall into in reflecting on some of our indispensable ways of thinking. This dissatisfaction brings out where consistent thought reaches its limits: in trying to investigate some of our ways of thinking, we seem to have to step beyond them in order to properly assess them, and still find ourselves making use of those very ways of thinking in order to attain any understanding of them at all. Drawing from Kant, the article emphasizes the inevitability of this problem that metaphysical reflection poses for us and the need to recognize our necessarily engaged perspective upon it. Drawing from Wittgenstein, it abstains from a straightforward answer in favour of a deeper understanding of the very stakes of the problem: it leaves the reader with the question of how to make sense of the peculiar metaphysical undertaking we are drawn into in thinking about the conditions of consistent thought.