WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE “POST-METAPHYSICAL”?: Seyla Benhabib, in her paper for the University of Chicago Political Theory Workshop, makes a distinction between a “metaphysical” and a “post-metaphysical” justification for rights. She herself favors a post-metaphysical justification, which she believes is superior to Kant’s which (she says or at least implies) is objectionably metaphysical. Her brief comments on this matter raise two questions, (1) what does it mean to be post-metaphysical as opposed to metaphysical? (2) Why is being metaphysical bad? I begin with a brief meditation on the latter question.

My worry is that metaphysical too often becomes something like a cuss-word, something we want to avoid; moreover, something that it is obvious that we want to avoid. I am sympathetic to this use in one respect, because sometimes, to use Wittgenstein’s metaphor, positing some metaphysical object or another to solve a problem doesn’t really end up solving the problem, it just acts as a “fifth wheel” which turns along with the vehicle, but itself doesn’t do any work actually propelling it.

But in another use of “metaphysical” as cuss word, I am less than sympathetic. Here, being metaphysical just means “not fitting in with the scientific world view.” But why should we accept the scientific world view just like that, without argument? Here “metaphysical” has sort of a policing function, where we’re encouraged to sniff at those things we don’t like, because they are unfashionable. This is mere prejudice.

Benhabib says that a “post-metaphysical” justification of rights will differ from Kant’s in t hat “instead of asking what each could will without self-contradiction to be a universal law for all, in discourse ethics, we ask: which norms and normative institutional arrangements would be considered valid by all those who would be affected if they were participants in special moral argumentations called discourses.”

Now, I’m at a bit of a loss to see where Kant’s justification is “metaphysical” in a way that the discourse ethics approach isn’t. Here are some contrasts I do see: Kant’s is formalistic, discourse ethics isn’t; Kant’s is subject centered, discourse ethics is “communicative”; Kant’s is abstract, discourse ethics is concrete. Etc., etc. These contrasts may be more or less fair to Kant, but it is a least clear to me what they might mean.

Kant, of course, is committed to their being a noumenal world, and it’s fine to call that metaphysical. But it’s unclear to me, in Benhabib’s brief reconstruction of Kant, why the noumenal has to fit in at all – why Kant can’t be read, in John Rawls’ phrase, “within the canons of a reasonable empiricism.” Kant in this guise, is just proposing a test we put our maxims through, to see if they are valid for all. This seems to be exactly what discourse ethics also proposes – to be sure the test is different, but it isn’t any more or less metaphysical. That’s where I get confused.

Indeed, one might even try to close the gap between Kant and discourse ethics by saying that the test of “validity for all” just is something like testing for what could be willed without contradiction. Indeed, even to suggest that closing this gap might be possible (whether or not it can in fact be done) goes a long way towards removing the hint that there might be a “metaphysical gap” between Kant and the discourse ethicists.

This is a small part of Benhabib’s paper, but I do see it as part of a larger trend, where “metaphysics” no longer describes a category of thought, or a kind of proposal, but is instead employed mainly as a term of abuse. I have no particular love for metaphysical entities, but I wish people would be make it clear what we are “post” when we have gone “postmetaphysical.”

- posted by Chad @ Friday, September 26, 2003