western metaphysics

is grounded in a productionist assumption which, since Plato and Aristotle, seemingly projected onto all entities the structure of artifacts.

What then is the feature of Western thought, even two and a half millennia ago, which harbours such latent violence? Michael Zimmerman, glossing Heidegger, coins the invaluable phrase, ‘productionist metaphysics’ (emphasis added):The metaphysical schemes of Plato and Aristotle, Heidegger argued, were based on the view that the structure of all things is akin to the structure of products or artifacts. Aristotle’s metaphysics, for example, is ‘productionist’ insofar as he conceived of all things, including animals, as ‘formed matter’. The most obvious example of such ‘formed matter’ is the work produced by an artisan who gives form to material. Plato and Aristotle seemingly projected onto all entities the structure of artifacts. (Zimmerman 1990: 157)

is grounded in the mistaken notion that western culture can transcend its own historicity, or achieve, except in fantasy, that kind of assured un-worlded ‘truth’.

Heidegger’s is a thinking of the finitude of human life. Thought cannot transcend its own historicity, or achieve, except in fantasy, that kind of assured un-worlded ‘truth’ idealized in Western cultures. Y et W estern life since the Greeks seems determined as a denial of this finitude, in a drive towards theoretical knowledge that is now culminating in the globalization of techno-science and bureaucratically mapped and controlled forms of life. This drive would culminate, or self-destruct, writes Heidegger, when human rationality comes to build up a theoretic representation of its own working so seemingly assured as to enable it to build its apparent duplicate. ‘Sometimes it seems as if modern humanity is rushing headlong toward this goal of producing itself technologically’ (P: 197).

is so deep and all-pervasive that it should not even be called a prejudice if that word implies choice and individual mis-judgement rather than an unavoidable heritage into which people are born and receive their most seemingly immediate sense of themselves.

Imagine that the whole of Western thought, since the time of the first philosophers in ancient Greece, has been in the grip of a prejudice affecting all its aspects and even what seems selfevident. This is something so deep and all-pervasive that it should not even be called a prejudice if that word implies choice and individual mis-judgement rather than an unavoidable heritage into which people are born and receive their most seemingly immediate sense of themselves. This is Heidegger’s massive claim, and his view of ‘Western metaphysics’ as being constituted in terms that call for ‘deconstruction’ has since become amplified in the work of the contemporary French thinker Jacques Derrida (1930– ).

western metaphysics, n.Definitions

western metaphysics