music, language, and origins 47would not capture what is revealed by metaphysics 2. What is intended
with the idea of metaphysics 2 ,incontrast, only emerges because of the
way in which key dimensions of modernity come to be seen in terms of
metaphysics 1. Some version of this tension is inherent in any attempt to
understand the nature of modernity. The objectification of subjective
opinions, and the rendering sayable of the unsayable by explaining what
was previously inexplicable are fundamental to modernity’s culture of
public legitimation. However, the aim of objective explanation is itself
susceptible to normative scrutiny like any other human motivation: as
Putnam ( 2004 ) argues, fact and value are inextricably entangled. The
resistance of central aspects of communication in the life-world to objec-
tifying modes of description underlines the importance of normative
perspectives which, while accepting the findings of well-justified scien-
tific theories, do not rely on scientistic assumptions. What is intended
by the heuristic idea of the two forms of metaphysics is illustrated by the
case of metaphor. Metaphor can be understood as belonging to both
forms, when, for example, what was a metaphor becomes literalised, or
when a piece of literal usage becomes a metaphor. The significance of
metaphor lies precisely in its relationship to norms which go beyond
what can be discursively articulated. If metaphors matter because of
what they make us notice, their success can often lie in how they change
our relationship to an aspect of our world in ways which may not be
captured by what we can say about the change. We saw a related case in
the example of communicating by gesture how a piece of music should
go. Metaphorical and gestural communication can be more in touch
with ways of playing music than literal instruction.
It is important here to avoid the attempt just to answer the ‘philo-
sophical problem’ which metaphor, gesture, and music may be seen as
entailing. This attempt is likely to exclude precisely what is intended
by the experiment of reversing the roles of the philosophical and the
musical that I derived from Schlegel. One way of construing this rever-
sal is, of course, in relation to the concern with the limits and dangers of
natural science during the second half of the eighteenth century. Too
often such concern has, though, either been, or has been construed as
being, ‘anti-science’, natural science being regarded as a threat either
to the divine order, or to authentic human existence, or as undermining
humankind’s relationship to non-human nature. Many of the critical
responses to the Enlightenment are, however, much more complex and
interesting than this, and they cannot be regarded as being hostile to
natural science, or indeed to many of the goals of the Enlightenment.