Metafizyka dziś
Metaphysics Today

Summary/Abstract: According to the large number of mutually confirming diagnoses that began to appear in the second half of the twentieth century, we live today in a “society of the spectacle” in which the spectacle determines the dominant model of social life. The development of digital media has radicalised this situation to a far-reaching extent, without fundamentally changing its truth. Today we are only participants in a virtual show. This self-characterisation of the latest era in world history invokes, and radicalises too, the metaphor of the theatrum mundi. The central question of the article is whether, if the world is all game and untruth, metaphysics – which is supposed to be the domain of truth – is possible (and how). Today’s metaphysics can be variously understood, including ultimately as a metaphysics of the spectacle, in other words, as a metaphysics of the day. This could be a metaphysics of appearing and showing, a metaphysics of phenomenality, of the word, or phenomenological metaphysics. The reason I have highlighted the phenomenological approach is, first, the fact that the main theme in phenomenology is the appearance of that which appears and, second, the increasingly recurrent conviction that this appearance should be examined not purely “theoretically” but through specific, fully attentive and involved action that prevents the knower from assuming merely the passive position of a spectator (as was the case before). Knowing is a question of doing. This is why I see phenomenology, understood in this context as specific performative action, as best suited for addressing the metaphysical challenge of the spectacle-based nature of contemporary reality.

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