Metaphysics in analytic philosophy

pp. 112-152

in: Nicholas Capaldi, The enlightenment project in the analytic conversation, Berlin, Springer, 1998

Abstract

In Chapter One, we identified the metaphysics of the Enlightenment Project as a modern truncated form of Aristotelianism. The purpose of this chapter is (1) to elaborate upon our identification of that metaphysics as a modern and truncated form of Aristotelianism, (2) to show how much of analytic philosophy is informed by the metaphysics of the Enlightenment Project, (3) to argue that the only coherent form of "modern" Aristotelian metaphysics is Hegel's,¹ and (4) to show that although analytic philosophy is by virtue of its embrace of the Enlightenment Project opposed to Hegelianism, analytic metaphysics is often and inevitably driven in its pursuit of coherence and comprehensiveness in the direction of Hegelianism. What emerges in the metaphysics of analytic philosophy is a constant and unresolved tension between what it wishes to say and what its pursuit of coherence forces it to say.²