Metaphysics in the situation of Modernity: Analysis of the philosophical ideas of positivism, structuralism, poststructuralism

The question of the crisis of metaphysics continues to excite philosophical thought, responding to Heidegger’s message of the first half of the 20th century which was supported by Habermas at the end of the 20th century. The origins of metaphysics go back to the theme of foundation, declared by Greco-Roman, Christian culture, where thought and being merge. Crisis is associated with the transition to modernism, which discovered the principle of alienation and positivist intentions. Positivism introduced the subject-synthesis - a kind of a concept that is built not through foundation, but through gathering, accumulating experience of different connections. Communication ties, gradually displacing all the others, began to determine a new order of understanding the world order, shifting the emphasis from semantic, epistemological foundations, to the horizon of sign-symbolic relations. The event of deconstruction, not as a method or a new paradigm, but as a special metaphysics, became a new starting point for the subject, unlocking the possibility of presence of experience within its boundaries that escapes the thought, hidden in linguistic substitutions, metonymy. This is how the zone of the Other was designated; it allowed the unclear, the unconscious, the previously ignored and repressed by meaning and breaking through the language to penetrate into the thought. The subject-synthesis in the situation of the 20th century also revealed itself in an effort to regain its physical, “alienated” side. These aspirations became associated with positivist claims to raise physical science to the level of “all sciences”, to overthrow metaphysics, on the one hand and with immersion in the event of “work” as a way of establishing in being, associated with the mobilization means of technology, design, production, typification, digitalization (Ernst Junger), on the other. The meaningful message of metaphysics is consistent as long as there are “meeting places” in the culture, where there will be no synthetic effort to impose semantic landmarks, but the need for their acquisition. This is what various projects of modern philosophy demonstrate. It remains only to understand that it becomes possible to break through to them by following only new paths. Some of them are: deconstruction, “work”, “production of meanings”, technology, etc. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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