No 2 (2013)

The article deals with the world outlook and methodological status of metaphysics in contemporary philosophy and culture in general. Adhering to the distinction between Modern (modernity) and Postmodern (contemporaneity), the author refers mainly to the resources of postmodernism. Metaphysics as such satisfies the eternal human desire for perfection and completeness, that is, for comprehending the meaning of the whole. Today, however, this whole is neither linear nor hard — rather soft, hence soft or weak metaphysics. The ultimate reality in this case is represented by differences, not some single substance. The metaphysical whole also consists of the differences. Since difference is a unit of information, contemporary metaphysics, or postmetaphysics, has an implicit information bias.

The article considers the main concepts, ideas and assumptions of the postcontinental largely non-Western philosophy as a philosophy after continentality — the main divisive principle of rationality, thinking and subjectivity in modernity. This philosophy overcoming the continental (European) thinking is regarded vis-à-vis the postmetaphysical trend in contemporary humanities as a whole and the tendencies of metaphysical revival in relatively new forms. The author dwells at such elements and methodological features of postcontinental philosophy as decolonial phenomenology, a shift in the geography of reason, an accent on spatial histories and rehabilitation of space instead of the previous totality of time, rethinking of the correlation between human being, existence and thinking through the concepts of geopolitics and body-politics of knowledge and a distinction between reason and rationality.

The metaphysics is understood as a natural predisposition of the person. The author criticizes Heidegger's fundamental ontology and speaks, why it is impossible to destroy the Kantian quadrangle. Philosophy rejects being in favor of subjectivity, replacing experience with imagination, the idea of human finiteness with the idea of man’s impossibility.

Metaphysical discourse nowadays seems to many people to be more retrospective than prospective. It claims to have the true knowledge obtained through so called “intellectual intuition” that makes it empirically neither verifiable nor falsifiable. Besides that it demonstrates principal dissolution with dominant paradigm which is if not materialistic than at least positivistic or pragmatic. Nevertheless metaphysical discourse can possibly obtain its prospectiveness for us. Any model of practices of Eros is obviously a social construct but social constructs differs in fields they are pointing at. There are social constructs that being themselves products of social construction could still guide the project of self-fulfillment as a subject of Eros into the area beyond the boundaries of any constructing and any arbitrariness. In this case we come to the need of unconditional of which metaphysical discourse has something to say. However we could face the reproach with intellectual escapism or preferring “the easy way of dreaming of transcendence”. Anticipating this reproach we should realize that reevaluation of the metaphysical discourse of Eros is solely the first step and the main work starts with the following implementation of self as exactly a metaphysical subject.

The article analyzes the transformation of metaphysics in the works by Merab. K. Mamardashvili. It is noted that he presented philosophy as philosophizing — spiritual knowledge. The author clarifies how Mamardashvili understands Kant’s transcendental philosophy, Husserl’s phenomenology, and Heidegger’s fundamental-existential ontology. In Mamardashvili’s works, metaphysics is revealed not as an explanation of the world but as a creative transcending action that shapes man as a moral creature.

The article is dedicated to the analysis of the problems related to the communicative and information media space. The author suggests that in the postmodern society the information being created by mass-media tends to be a tool to measure the social reality substituting sometimes the reality and its objective perception. The author also reviews the relationship of an individual with the postmodern society that can be defined via endless torrents of information, media images, symbols and simulacra. Basing on the works by acclaimed postmodernists and researchers of the information field Jean Baudrillard and Jean-François Lyotard postmodern communicative space is viewed as dialoguing subject and object involved in production and distribution of the information.

The author makes an attempt to understand the genesis and structure of the concept of «tolerance» based on cultural-historical and lexical-semantic studies.