36 music, philosophy, and modernity
of metaphysics 1. Merleau-Ponty describes the scientistic illusion which
would explain intentionality in objective terms as follows: ‘Because per-
ception gives us faith in a world, in a system of rigorously connected and
continuous natural facts, we believed that this system could incorporate
everything into itself, including the perception which initiated us into
it’ (Merleau-Ponty 1964 : 46 – 7 ). The denial of this possibility sustains
space for what I am calling metaphysics 2.
Another way of construing metaphysics – metaphysics 2 – is, then, the
attempt to establish ameaningfulplace for humankind, both in the rest
of a nature which we acknowledge to be a threat, and in a potentially
equally threatening second nature. It is vital here to avoid some obvi-
ous traps. In their earlier manifestations such attempts could now be
interpreted as a form of self-deception, having involved, for example,
the teleological idea that nature necessarily develops towards more and
more fully realised states, or the idea that the order of things is justified
by its being grounded in a divinity. The aim of rendering the universe
meaningful is now contradicted by a science which has progressively
undermined the special position of humankind, reducing the earth to
the status of a minor cosmic contingency, and humankind to being
a result of evolutionary mechanisms. As more and more objectifying
descriptions of what we are emerge, ‘our urgent need for and attach-
ment to things outside ourselves that we do not control’ becomes a focus
for the kind of philosophy that is suspicious of the scientism which is
becoming so widespread today, particularly in the wake of the genetic
revolution. What, though, are the resources for integrating ourselves
into the social and natural world that do not entail a spurious rejection
of well-confirmed science, and do not require a surrender of rational
justification in the name of blind faith?
The power of modern scientific descriptions of humankind derives
not least from the way that these descriptions can be integrated into
descriptions of the rest of nature which are also arrived at via exper-
iment and observation. Theological and other attempts to appeal to
‘spirituality’, or whatever, as a way of re-enchanting the human relation-
ship to nature too often rely, in contrast, on mere invocation of certain
kinds of emotions, and this gives little reason to take them seriously.
However, the dimension of emotion is not irrelevant to countering
some increasingly dominant self-images of humankind. The point is to
locate emotion in the appropriate contexts, and the first step here is to
counter the scientistic tendency. A defence of a non-scientistic concep-
tion can build on what Schleiermacher already argued in hisDialectic: