Post-Kant WG: Ana-Silvia Munte (Yale/Tübingen)

Title: "Does it matter whether we are monists? Meta-metaphysical reflections on monism in contemporary metaphysics and German idealism"

Abstract: The attention metaphysical monism has received over the past decades from philosophers across the analytic-continental spectrum has become common knowledge. The paper explores this topic from a meta-metaphysical standpoint by asking whether it matters if one endorses monism or pluralism.

After excluding four metaphysical-deflationary interpretations of what it means for a metaphysical position to matter, the paper aims at carving out a fifth, metaphysical-inflationary account of indifference resulting from Jonathan Schaffer's rehabilitation of monism in the form of priority monism. Following his theoretical framework, whether one endorses monism or pluralism does not seem to matter. For Hegel, on the other hand, the opposite is the case. In his Encyclopedia, Hegel excludes the possibility of a choice between monism and pluralism by rendering pluralism coherent only if grounded in monism.

I will conclude by discussing whether endorsing monism should matter, a question I take to be less about monism and more about how we practice metaphysics.