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Metamodernism and the Recovery of Metaphysics

Metaphysics concerns some of the deepest questions of philosophical thought: What exists? What is reality? What can human beings know? What does it mean to exist? And how should human beings understand meaning and value?

Although metaphysics was central to early modern philosophy, later developments placed increasing pressure on its claims.

Modern philosophy increasingly examined the limits of human reason. Scientific approaches emphasized empirical verification. Logical positivism challenged metaphysical statements that could not be empirically established. Postmodernism then questioned assumptions about universal truth, stable meaning, language, culture, history, and power.

Yet metaphysical questions did not disappear.

They continued to emerge through questions concerning reality, existence, change, humanity, meaning, and experience. The article “Metamodernism and the Recovery of Metaphysics” explores whether these questions can be reopened through the framework of metamodernism.

What Is Metamodernism?

Metamodernism can be understood as an attempt to move beyond the opposition between modernism and postmodernism.

Rather than completely rejecting modern aspirations or postmodern skepticism, metamodernism attempts to hold both in productive tension.

Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker describe metamodernism through an oscillation between apparently opposing positions:

• Modern enthusiasm and postmodern irony
• Hope and melancholy
• Naïveté and knowingness
• Empathy and apathy
• Unity and plurality
• Totality and fragmentation

The important point is that metamodernism does not simply return to modern confidence.

It recognizes human limitations while reopening possibilities for discussing truth, meaning, hope, progress, and reality.

Hanzi Freinacht develops this idea further by describing metamodernism as a synthesis of modern ambition and postmodern critique. This approach attempts to preserve the desire for progress and meaning while maintaining awareness of irony, skepticism, and fallibility.

The Modern Construction of Metaphysics

Modernity did not begin by rejecting metaphysics.

On the contrary, philosophers such as René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza constructed large metaphysical systems dealing with God, humanity, the soul, and the universe.

Metaphysics was therefore deeply connected with the modern philosophical project.

The transformation happened gradually.

Immanuel Kant represented an important turning point. His philosophical project examined the limits of human reason and changed the focus of metaphysics from simply describing reality toward investigating the conditions and boundaries of human knowledge.

The rise of empirical science intensified these questions.

Claims that could not be physically verified became increasingly difficult to defend within certain philosophical traditions. Logical positivism eventually treated metaphysical statements as lacking cognitive significance.

Postmodernism added another layer.

Language, history, culture, and power became central to understanding how human beings interpret reality.

However, there is a crucial philosophical distinction:

The limitation of human knowledge does not necessarily imply the non-existence of reality.

This distinction creates an opportunity for metaphysical recovery.

Why Recover Metaphysics?

Recovering metaphysics does not mean restoring old systems exactly as they were.

The article explicitly distinguishes recovery from return.

A return would mean attempting to restore dogmatic certainty.

A recovery instead means reconsidering metaphysics after modern and postmodern critiques have been taken seriously.

This approach accepts that:

• Human knowledge is limited.
• Interpretations can be historically and culturally influenced.
• Absolute certainty may be unattainable.
• Reality can nevertheless remain a legitimate subject of inquiry.
• Meaning and truth need not be abandoned because certainty is difficult.

The result is a more open conception of metaphysics.

Three Principles for a Metamodern Metaphysics

The proposed framework can be understood through three major dimensions.

1. Realism Without Absoluteness

The epistemological dimension begins with the recognition that reality exists beyond the individual mind.

However, human interpretations of reality are always limited.

This creates a position between absolute certainty and radical skepticism.

We can recognize reality without claiming that our understanding of it is complete.

2. Dynamism Without Nihilism

The ontological dimension understands reality as dynamic.

Things change.

Human beings change.

Relationships change.

The world is not necessarily a collection of permanently fixed objects.

Yet acknowledging change does not require nihilism.

Transformation does not eliminate meaning.

The fact that reality is dynamic can itself become part of our understanding of existence.

3. Interconnectedness Without Relativism

The axiological dimension emphasizes relationships.

Human values and actions emerge within relationships and concrete conditions.

People do not exist as isolated subjects completely detached from their surroundings.

At the same time, recognizing relationality does not require the conclusion that every claim about truth is merely subjective.

This allows interconnectedness to be recognized without collapsing into total relativism.

Metaphysics as an Existential Question

Traditional metaphysics often asks:

What exists?

But a metamodern approach can extend the question:

What does it mean to exist?

And further:

How is existence experienced?

The difference is significant.

A person can intellectually understand that everything changes while experiencing personally what it means to live through change.

Similarly, understanding human relationality theoretically is different from experiencing one’s connection with nature, history, culture, and other people.

Metaphysics therefore becomes connected to lived experience.

It is not merely knowledge about existence; it can become reflection emerging from within existence.

Nāgārjuna: Emptiness and Dependent Origination

Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka philosophy challenges the belief that things possess an independent and permanent intrinsic essence.

His concept of śūnyatā, or emptiness, is closely associated with pratītyasamutpāda, dependent origination.

This does not simply mean that nothing exists.

Instead, things exist through conditions and relationships.

The philosophical significance is considerable.

One can question the idea of rigid, independently existing entities without denying the reality of the world.

This provides a framework for thinking about existence through interconnectedness.

Guō Xiàng: Reality as an Internal Process of Transformation

Guō Xiàng, associated with the interpretation of the Zhuāngzǐ, offers a different perspective.

His thought emphasizes zìrán, understood in the context of spontaneous natural processes.

Reality does not necessarily require a rigid metaphysical center outside the universe.

Instead, reality can be understood as a continuous process of transformation.

This perspective allows us to recognize instability and change without concluding that existence has lost meaning.

Human beings participate in this transformation through their bodies, experiences, relationships, and everyday lives.

Mullā Ṣadrā: Being, Gradation and Substantial Motion

Mullā Ṣadrā provides another distinctive metaphysical framework.

His philosophy emphasizes wujūd, or existence, as foundational to reality.

Existence is not simply static.

The concept of tashkīk al-wujūd, or gradation of being, recognizes different degrees or intensities of existence.

Mullā Ṣadrā also develops the concept of al-ḥarakah al-jawhariyyah, or substantial motion, through which change occurs within the nature of substance itself.

Human existence can therefore be understood as a process of becoming rather than as something completely finished.

Different Traditions, Shared Questions

These philosophical traditions should not be artificially merged.

Nāgārjuna, Guō Xiàng, and Mullā Ṣadrā operate within substantially different intellectual and religious contexts.

Nevertheless, their differences reveal something important.

There is more than one way to think about reality beyond the simple choice between:

permanent static existence

and

complete non-existence.

Relationships, transformation, processes, and becoming provide alternative philosophical categories.

The article connects this approach with aspects of Alfred North Whitehead’s process metaphysics, particularly its rejection of an exclusively static picture of reality.

Metaphysics Without Dogmatism

A recovered metaphysics does not need to claim that it possesses the final answer.

It can instead become an open intellectual practice.

It can ask questions while acknowledging uncertainty.

It can recognize reality without claiming absolute knowledge.

It can accept change without embracing nihilism.

It can recognize interconnectedness without reducing truth to personal preference.

The article describes this as a movement toward metaphysics that is aware of its own limitations.

Why These Questions Still Matter Today

The technological and cultural environment may change, but the fundamental questions of existence remain.

Human beings continue to ask:

• What is reality?
• What does it mean to exist?
• Can reality be known?
• How should change be understood?
• What gives existence meaning?
• How are human beings connected?
• Can truth remain meaningful when certainty is limited?

Metamodernism does not necessarily answer these questions once and for all.

Its contribution may instead be to create a framework in which they can be asked again.

This is particularly important because complete skepticism can be as limiting as complete certainty.

If absolute certainty is impossible, that does not necessarily mean that every philosophical question is meaningless.

There may be a space between dogmatic certainty and radical skepticism.

Metamodernism attempts to explore that space.

Conclusion: Recovering the Courage to Ask

The article concludes that metamodernism offers a fresh space for reflecting on the relationship between certainty and doubt.

It does not require an absolute choice between modern optimism and postmodern skepticism.

Instead, it preserves awareness of human limitations while maintaining the human desire for truth, meaning, direction, and purpose.

For metaphysics, this means that recovery does not require the resurrection of old philosophical systems.

It means reopening questions about reality with greater humility.

Three principles summarize the proposed direction:

Realism without absoluteness.

Dynamism without nihilism.

Interconnectedness without relativism.

Ultimately, the philosophical question returns to its most fundamental form:

What does it mean for something to exist, and what does it mean for human beings to experience that existence?

Perhaps the recovery of metaphysics begins not with a final answer, but with the willingness to ask the question again.

Geochemists and seismologists unite! Both fields contribute to understanding Earth's structure and tectonic movements - now they can publish in an #OpenAccessJournal too! Welcome Advances in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry, now accepting submissions. Support your fellow geochemists!

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CANADIAN FOOD STUDIES

The editorial collective of Canadian Food Studies/La Revue canadienne des études sur l’alimentation is pleased to announce that Laurence Godin has joined the management team as a new co-Editor-in-Chief.

More on page 16 of our Spring 2024 Newsletter!

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Our special issue on the Cascadia Subduction Zone is open and welcoming your research and contributions to this fascinating area.

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We are accepting submissions for our special journal issue focused on the Cascadia Subduction Zone, focused on any aspect of this system in key locations or its entirety.

We are interested in contributions that address these general topics:
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The deadline to submit your manuscripts for the 2023 Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye earthquake special issue is on February 2024.

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Food, an issue of social justice: Food movements, public policy, and inequality

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‘Paki go home’: The story of racism in the Gerrard India Bazaar

Aqeel Ihsan

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Vol. 10 No. 1 (2023): Confronting Anti-Black, Anti-Indigenous, and Anti-Asian Racisms in Food Systems in Canada is a rich collection of #FoodScholarship.

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Deconstructing ‘Canadian Cuisine’: Towards decolonial food futurities on Turtle Island

Hana Mustapha
Sharai Masanganise

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One of the first #peerreviewed articles on the 2023 Kahramanmaras, Türkiye EQs was published in Seismica.

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Abrahams et al. simulate how waves move within and on the surface of the ice shelf and compare it to seismic data.

Their results help interpret seismic data and understand the wave modes most likely contributing to the calving and fracture of ice shelves:

https://doi.org/10.26443/seismica.v2i1.213

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Confronting Anti-Black, Anti-Indigenous, and Anti-Asian Racisms in Food Systems in Canada

Leticia Ama Deawuo
Michael Classens

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The imperative to transform global food systems

Philip Loring @ConserveChange

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Who are the cattails?
Stories of Algonquin Anishinaabe Food Systems

Samantha Kaitlyn Patterson

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Digging through urban agriculture with feminist theoretical implements

Mary Anne Martin

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Forever young? The crisis of generational renewal on Canada's farms

Darrin Qualman
A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi
Annette Aurélie Desmarais
Sharada Srinivasan

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Catherine Parr Traill’s The Female Emigrant's Guide: Cooking with a Canadian Classic by Nathalie Cooke and Fiona Lucas (Eds.)
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Planning for food sovereignty in Canada? A comparative case study of two rural communities

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An unconditional basic income is necessary but insufficient to transition to just food futures

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Transitions Stream: Do trade agreements substantially limit development of local/sustainable food systems in Canada?

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