Metamodernism and the Recovery of Metaphysics: Can We Think About Reality Again?
Metaphysics has always asked some of the most fundamental questions human beings can formulate.
What exists?
What is reality?
What does it mean to exist?
Can human beings genuinely know reality?
Does existence have meaning?
For centuries, philosophical traditions attempted to answer these questions through comprehensive systems of thought. However, modern philosophy increasingly examined the limits of human reason, while postmodern philosophy challenged assumptions about universal truth, stable meaning, language, and objective knowledge.
Despite these challenges, metaphysical questions have never disappeared.
Instead, they continue to return in different forms.
The article “Metamodernism and the Recovery of Metaphysics” examines whether metaphysics can be reconsidered within the emerging framework of metamodernism. Rather than attempting to restore traditional metaphysical certainty, the discussion proposes a more cautious and open approach to questions of reality, existence, knowledge, meaning, and human experience.
Understanding Metamodernism
Metamodernism can be understood as an intellectual and cultural orientation that moves between modern and postmodern perspectives.
Modernity emphasized reason, progress, knowledge, ambition, and the possibility of constructing meaningful explanations.
Postmodernism introduced skepticism toward universal explanations and emphasized the influence of language, history, culture, and power.
Metamodernism attempts to engage with both.
Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker describe metamodernism through the concept of oscillation: between hope and melancholy, enthusiasm and irony, unity and plurality, and other apparent opposites.
This oscillation is important because it prevents metamodernism from becoming simply another form of certainty.
It recognizes limitations while retaining the desire for meaning.
Hanzi Freinacht similarly describes metamodernism through a synthesis of modern ambition and postmodern critique, allowing progress and meaning to remain possible while acknowledging skepticism and fallibility.
The Historical Challenge to Metaphysics
It would be inaccurate to say that modern philosophy simply rejected metaphysics.
Early modern philosophers such as René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza constructed extensive metaphysical systems concerned with God, humanity, the soul, and the universe.
Metaphysics was actually central to many modern philosophical projects.
The transformation came gradually.
Kant and the Limits of Reason
Immanuel Kant played an important role in changing the philosophical attitude toward metaphysics.
Rather than simply rejecting metaphysics, Kant asked what human reason could legitimately know.
The focus consequently shifted from questions concerning reality itself toward the conditions and limits of human knowledge.
Scientific Verification
Later developments placed increasing emphasis on empirical experience and scientific methods.
Metaphysical claims that could not be physically verified became increasingly controversial.
Logical positivism took this skepticism further by treating many metaphysical statements as lacking cognitive significance.
Postmodern Critique
Postmodernism introduced a further challenge.
The focus expanded toward language, history, culture, and power.
Reality could no longer be discussed independently of the ways human beings interpret and represent it.
But an important distinction remains:
The fact that our knowledge of reality is limited does not necessarily mean that reality itself does not exist.
This distinction provides an opening for renewed metaphysical inquiry.
What Would a Recovery of Metaphysics Mean?
The recovery of metaphysics proposed in the article is not a return to older dogmatic systems.
Instead, it means reconsidering metaphysics after modern and postmodern criticism.
This approach accepts that humans are limited in what they can know while refusing to abandon fundamental questions about existence.
A metamodern metaphysics therefore seeks to create a balance between certainty and doubt.
It does not claim absolute knowledge.
But it also does not conclude that nothing meaningful can be said about reality.
Three Foundations of Metamodern Metaphysics
The article proposes three central dimensions.
1. Realism Without Absoluteness
This is the epistemological dimension.
It recognizes that a world exists beyond individual human minds, while also acknowledging that human understanding is incomplete.
We can therefore maintain a commitment to reality without claiming that our current interpretation is the final interpretation.
2. Dynamism Without Nihilism
This is the ontological dimension.
Reality is understood as dynamic and continuously changing.
But change does not necessarily destroy meaning.
A world characterized by transformation can still possess structure and significance.
3. Interconnectedness Without Relativism
This is the axiological dimension.
Human beings and values exist within relationships and concrete conditions.
Our existence is relational, but this does not mean that truth becomes nothing more than individual preference.
These three principles provide a framework for reconsidering metaphysics while avoiding both dogmatism and nihilism.
Metaphysics and Human Experience
Metaphysics can easily become an abstract intellectual exercise.
However, the article argues that philosophical questions about existence also have an experiential dimension.
There is a difference between understanding theoretically that everything changes and actually experiencing oneself as a being who is constantly becoming.
Similarly, understanding intellectually that human beings are relational is different from experiencing one's connection with nature, history, society, and other people.
Metaphysics therefore becomes more than an abstract description of reality.
It becomes reflection arising from the experience of existence itself.
Three Eastern Perspectives on Reality
One of the distinctive elements of the article is its engagement with three philosophers from different Eastern traditions:
Nāgārjuna
Guō Xiàng
Mullā Ṣadrā
These thinkers are not presented as identical or as historical metamodernists.
Instead, their philosophies demonstrate different ways of thinking about reality beyond a rigid distinction between static existence and absolute non-existence.
Nāgārjuna and Dependent Origination
Nāgārjuna, a central figure of Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy, challenges the assumption that things possess independent and permanent intrinsic essences.
His concept of śūnyatā, or emptiness, is closely associated with dependent origination.
Things exist through conditions and relationships.
Emptiness therefore should not simply be understood as meaning that nothing exists.
Instead, it challenges the assumption that entities exist independently and permanently.
This provides an important philosophical resource for thinking about interconnectedness.
Guō Xiàng and Continuous Transformation
Guō Xiàng, a major commentator on the Zhuāngzǐ, provides another perspective.
His thought emphasizes zìrán, spontaneous natural processes.
Reality can be understood as a continuous process of transformation occurring from within rather than requiring a rigid external metaphysical center.
Importantly, questioning fixed concepts does not mean that existence becomes meaningless.
Instead, human beings are understood as participants within the processes of change they experience.
Mullā Ṣadrā and the Dynamic Nature of Being
Mullā Ṣadrā provides a third perspective through his emphasis on wujūd, or existence.
His philosophy includes the idea that existence possesses different degrees or intensities, known as tashkīk al-wujūd.
He also develops the concept of substantial motion, according to which change occurs within the nature of substance itself rather than merely in its external properties.
Human beings are therefore not simply completed entities.
They are continually becoming.
Beyond Static Concepts of Reality
The three philosophical perspectives remain distinct.
Nāgārjuna's Buddhist framework should not be confused with Mullā Ṣadrā's Islamic metaphysics.
Guō Xiàng's Daoist framework should not be forced into either of those traditions.
Their significance lies elsewhere.
Together, they demonstrate that philosophical reflection on reality can emphasize relationships, transformation, processes, and becoming rather than treating existence as a collection of isolated and permanently fixed objects.
The article also notes similarities with Alfred North Whitehead's process metaphysics, especially its emphasis on relationships and processes.
Recovery Instead of Return
The distinction between recovery and return is central.
A return to metaphysics would suggest restoring old systems of certainty.
A recovery is different.
It means recovering the willingness to ask fundamental questions while retaining the lessons of modernity and postmodernism.
This means avoiding excessive certainty.
It means recognizing the limitations of human perspectives.
It means refusing to confuse uncertainty with meaninglessness.
And it means keeping metaphysical inquiry open rather than treating it as a completed intellectual project.
The Future of Metaphysical Inquiry
Metamodernism may not yet represent a fully developed philosophical system.
Nevertheless, it creates an interesting space between certainty and doubt.
It allows us to retain the human desire for truth and meaning while acknowledging that our understanding remains limited.
The article ultimately proposes three principles as a compass:
Realism without absoluteness.
Dynamism without nihilism.
Interconnectedness without relativism.
These principles provide a possible foundation for thinking about metaphysics after modernity and postmodernity.
Conclusion
The fundamental metaphysical questions remain.
What does it mean for something to exist?
What is reality?
How can human beings understand existence?
How does change affect the nature of reality?
What gives human existence meaning?
The recovery of metaphysics does not require absolute answers to these questions.
Perhaps its value lies precisely in keeping them open.
Metamodernism offers one possible framework for doing so: a framework that accepts uncertainty without surrendering the search for meaning, accepts change without embracing nihilism, and recognizes interconnectedness without reducing everything to subjective relativism.
In this sense, recovering metaphysics is not about returning to the past.
It is about learning how to ask the oldest philosophical questions with a new awareness of our limitations.
