Category: Why Metaphysics Did Not Disappear

by Brenton L. Delp Artificial intelligence is often discussed either in the language of technological optimism or catastrophic fear. Some see it as the next stage of human progress, capable of solving problems previously beyond human reach. Others imagine civilizational collapse, machine domination, mass unemployment, or even extinction. Yet both responses frequently remain superficial because…

by Brenton L. Delp Neurosis: Mental or Metaphysical Illness? Modern discussions of mental illness are overwhelmingly governed by medical and biological assumptions. Anxiety, depression, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and various forms of psychic suffering are generally interpreted as dysfunctions of the brain, disturbances of neurochemistry, maladaptive cognitive patterns, or evolutionary inheritances from earlier stages of human…

by Brenton L. Delp Modernity likes to tell a simple story about itself. The old world believed in God, cosmic hierarchy, fixed essences, and final causes. The modern world, by contrast, is supposed to have outgrown these things. It is empirical, technical, secular, and sober. On this telling, metaphysics has been left behind. What remains…

by Brenton L. Delp When people hear the word unity, they usually imagine peace, harmony, and the absence of conflict. When they hear difference, they imagine division, tension, and the threat of breakup. On that ordinary view, unity and difference are opposites: the more one increases, the more the other must decrease. Hegel changes that…

by Brenton L. Delp After Hegel, reflexivity can no longer mean merely that a subject turns inward and observes itself. That older meaning remains, but it is no longer decisive. Hegel transforms reflexivity from a psychological act into a logical and ontological structure. What matters is not simply that consciousness reflects upon itself, but that…

by Brenton L. Delp Addiction is most commonly interpreted within two explanatory frameworks: the medical and the moral. Contemporary neuroscience describes addiction in terms of dopaminergic reinforcement, neural plasticity, and behavioral conditioning. Moral or spiritual traditions, by contrast, have historically interpreted addiction as a disorder of the will, a failure of character, or a form…

by Brenton L. Delp When the history of Western thought is examined from a sufficiently reflective standpoint, a remarkable pattern becomes visible. Concepts that earlier thinkers regarded as timeless metaphysical truths begin to reveal themselves as historically situated forms through which the Absolute appeared to consciousness at different moments. What once seemed permanent discloses itself…

4 To ask whether Frank Zappa speaks to modernity is to ask what modernity demands from an artist. Does it demand ecstasy? Does it demand rebellion? Or does it demand consciousness that knows it is living inside systems that have already absorbed rebellion as style? The comparison with Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix clarifies the…

4 To ask whether Jimi Hendrix is the soul of rock ’n’ roll is not to rank guitarists. It is to define rock itself. “Soul” implies condensation rather than origin. It asks not who began the genre, nor who sold the most records, nor even who wrote the finest songs, but who most purely embodied…

4 To call any song the greatest pop song ever is to risk absurdity. Pop music resists coronation. It multiplies rather than culminates. It thrives on immediacy, fashion, mood. Yet every so often a composition emerges that does not merely succeed within the form but stretches it to structural extremity without breaking it. If one…