Metaphysics

Role of personal or social factors

Some writers on the philosophy of philosophy, such as Dilthey, have suggested that the persistence of a plurality of metaphysical systems is to be explained in terms of personal or social factors. Certain kinds of metaphysical outlook appeal to certain types of human being, or gain currency in social circumstances of this kind or that; to understand why they are accepted, recourse must be had to psychology or sociology or both. In the above account, stress has been laid on the historical background against which a number of famous metaphysical theories got their classical formulations; it is idle to deny that each was originally designed to solve a problem deemed to be urgent at the time. Nevertheless, the problem was, of course, an intellectual problem, and the solution offered claimed to be true, not simply comforting. No doubt wishful thinking is as rife in the field of metaphysics as anywhere; it is all too easy here to confuse what men ought to believe with what they want to believe. Philosophies reveal something about their authors and even about their historical age, as works of literature do; they constitute historical evidence as ... (200 of 37,078 words)