Abstract
How is one to react to the fact that, since immemorial times, persons have been engaged in disputes in metaphysics? It is argued that one is to adopt a conflictual craft, a synthesis of the skeptic craft and of the dogmatic one that serves to formulate the metametaphysical system of disputes. In making cases for the claims that characterize this system and in seeking to spell out its pertinence to contemporary analytic and continental philosophy, the dissertation starts by articulating an interpretation of two projects that have not been carefully discussed in relation to one another: Friedrich Nietzsche’s libertarian project of overcoming metaphysics and Rudolf Carnap’s egalitarian project of overcoming metaphysics. Then, a synthesis of these two projects is promoted, and dogmatists are criticized on the basis that they have resorted to “subtle” violence, a kind of violence that is not as upfront as corporeal ones, such as that of shooting someone. The dissertation proceeds by addressing the works of Willard van Orman Quine, Saul Kripke and Kit Fine in seeking to show that disputes are micro-political conflicts, that is, they are micro-wars that may be approached from a right-wing allegedly apolitical stance, or from a left-wing stance that seeks to show the political character of disputes. In proposing a heterodox reading of Gilles Deleuze, the dissertation defends the left-wing approach. Moreover, it is argued that micro-wars have an incommensurable greatness because it seems impossible to measure persons’ overall “amount” of emotions and/or time spent in dealing with disputes.