Metaphysics

Definition

Metaphysics, in the Western philosophical tradition, is the inquiry into the most general features of reality — being, substance, essence, cause. In the critical discourse of this wiki, "metaphysics" carries a pejorative charge: for Derrida, Western metaphysics is "the metaphysics of presence" — the assumption that meaning, truth, and being are fully present to consciousness — and architecture is "the last fortress of metaphysics" because it appeals to foundations, essences, origins, and eternal principles. For Heidegger, the "forgetting of Being" is the metaphysical tradition's original sin: metaphysics asks about beings in general (ontotheology) while forgetting the question of Being itself. For architecture, the critique of metaphysics challenges appeals to timeless essences (genius loci, beauty, truth) and opens the discipline to contingency, historicity, and difference.

Key Thinkers

• Jacques Derrida — "architecture as the last fortress of metaphysics"; the critique of presence.
• Martin Heidegger — the destruction of the history of ontology; the forgetting of Being.
• Richard Coyne — the architectural consequences of Derrida's metaphysical critique.

Related Concepts

• Being — the question metaphysics forgot.
• Presence — the foundational value of metaphysics that deconstruction destabilizes.
• Deconstruction — the practice of undoing metaphysical hierarchies.
• Différance — the non-concept that exceeds metaphysics.
• Architectural Autonomy — architecture's metaphysical self-grounding.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Derrida for Architects — architecture as the last fortress of metaphysics.