The Politics of Metaphysics

Abstract This chapter spells out the political implications of the comparative analyses. It argues that any systematic divorce of ethics from metaphysics produces far-reaching political dangers. First, the classical texts, when disentangled from their metaphysical fabric, become more amenable to ideological abuse without the critical apparatus of commentaries. Second, detached from encompassing debates in metaphysics, the classical texts lose their full person-shaping potential and end up creating openings for a more damaging metaphysics to enter, including totalitarianism and consumer capitalism. Restoring the texts to their full cosmological basis enables morally powerful temporal consciousness: gathered time, ritual time, and kairotic time as alternatives to instrumental time or idealization of a pristine past.