The term “instinct” is used only to emphasize the reflex-like, mechanical, and prereflective way in which the melodramatic dialectic emerges in human behavior. Shifting from biological to philosophical terminology, the elemental nature of this seemingly instinctive dialectic may be usefully termed “metaphysical”—since metaphysics deals with the deepest layers of philosophical presupposition. But metaphysics may hope to differ from instinct in that its "prereflections," however elemental, may not be fixed or innate. Over the last three centuries, especially the 20th century, an apparent alternative to this dialectic has begun to gain faltering but slow cultural traction—but not without considerable warranted and unwarranted suspicion. More specifically this transition has occurred as a metaphysical shift from the premodern to modern/postmodern—where “modern” is understood as the initial wave of the postmodern.

        To date, the postmodern shift has found reception primarily in the realm of imagination and theory, especially in science. As will be argued more fully, the modern and postmodern begin with Descartes and Newton and gain momentum and more thorough expression with later theorists, most notably in the work of Einstein. That Einstein was chosen as the “Man of the Century” by the editors of Time Magazine speaks volumes for the breadth of influence of the postmodern paradigm shift in science that has led to the technological transformation of the world. This transformation has brought many grand achievements. But these achievements are matched by even greater failures—failures that are the direct result of changes the culture of the 20th century proved thoroughly inadequate to absorb.

        The notoriety for the most indelible symbolic impression of the power of technological revolution, and the question mark hovering over it, surely belongs to the atomic bomb and its mushroom cloud signature—the bomb Einstein’s physics helped make possible. But images of the bomb’s detonation pale beside images of the aftermath of its deployment at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. These images also now symbolize something very untechnological and evoke even larger and darker clouds and question marks.

        As the most potent image of the dawning postmodern era, the bomb also symbolizes the potency of the metaphysical shift that underlies its creation—a shift that places unparalleled postmodern power in the hands of still largely, by metaphysical practice, premodern 20th century cultures. The dangerous disparity of this intra-cultural metaphysical collision resembles, on a smaller scale, the disturbing dissonance produced by the image of a child holding a gun. The atomic bomb along with other technologies—biochemical, genetic, and cybernetic—have, through exponential increase in technological control, heightened the stakes of social and political dramas to a degree necessitating unprecedented intensive and sober reflection on the wisdom of a continued melodramatic unfolding of global social and political culture.

        As might be anticipated, effective response to the current crisis must be in kind. Relative health may be restored to the human drama only by changing the drama. Although contributions from the following areas may help, significant change will not be accomplished by technological refinements, improved communication, more equitable distribution of wealth, or broader access to political power. Changing the drama necessarily depends upon changing the underlying metaphysics. This study attempts to describe in detail the crux of difference in the confrontation between premodern and postmodern metaphysics and the difference that crux makes with respect to quality of human relations and quality of life. What is argued to be at stake in this confrontation may be brought into better focus by a preliminary account of these metaphysical alternatives and the particular way in which the term “metaphysics” is used in this text.

        For purposes herein metaphysics is closely allied with dialectic. The possibility for dialectic begins at the moment when what may be called an “alternative” emerges. Strict or linear causality may be understood as a process whereby movement or change can take only one course—thereby admitting no alternative. Where movement and change remain receptive or open to the possibility of more than one course, then linear causality yields to variable causality. When such is the case, movement and change may be understood as driven by chance. The effects of dialectic may be distinguished from the effects of chance when and where it becomes possible to foresee the way in which alternatives constitute differences by leading to different outcomes. The ability to foresee outcomes has been traditionally a talent, among others, attributed to subjectivity. Consequently, dialectic and subjectivity become inseparably linked. Furthermore, the effects of dialectic may be distinguished from the effects of chance only when it also becomes possible, having sorted one “alternative” from another on the basis of foreseen outcomes, to select one alternative over another.

        Dialectic is not itself sealed off from the effects of its origin. Whatever may be understood to give rise to the possibility of an “alternative” may also be judged to account for and open up alternative modes of dialectic. Dialectic becomes multiple as soon as dialectic becomes possible. Reduced to its most elemental structure, every mode of dialectic presents a tension or difference between two alternatives—the structure of oppositional relation. The possibility of alternative dialectics, then, gives rise to alternative ways of understanding oppositional relation.

        Emerging as the dialectic within dialectic, these alternative structures of oppositional relation will be called, for purposes herein, alternative metaphysics. The term “dialectic” will be used, then, to refer to the dualistic operations that follow from a particular metaphysical alternative. As a designation of the mode of dialectic, metaphysics corresponds to the most elemental component of belief—of which three will be identified and discussed: premodern, modern, and postmodern. It should be acknowledged, however, that these three alternatives, while very comprehensive, ought not to be regarded as exhausting all possible alternatives.

        The term “premodern” refers to belief dominated by the structure of oppositional relation exemplified in the classical metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle (as they have been traditionally interpreted). This premodern structure organizes the most fundamental conflicts between alternatives in such a way that one side functions as a whole in relation to an opposite held to be alien, invasive, and thereby inessential to the whole. An essential difference between each side of the opposition results in an inessential relation where “essential difference” indicates that the one can never be reduced to the other and where “inessential relation” indicates that one may occur without the other. In addition, the essential difference of the premodern opposition posits a quality of discreteness of essence such that essential features do not in any way overlap or intersect. In this sense each side of the opposition, when confronted by its opposite, is a “pure” essence or a “pure” unity invaded by the contamination of a purely “other.” This structure is exemplified in the traditional understanding of the opposition between the pure and the impure.

        Associated with a departure from tradition, the term “modern” in this case signals a break with the traditionally favored structure of oppositional relation. The modern relation posits a duality whereby one side is held to be integral to, while also perpetually subordinate to, the other. Here the essential difference between opposites enters into essential but fixed hierarchical relation where “essential relation” indicates that one never occurs without the other. This structure appears in standard versions of the Cartesian subject/object duality where, in unidirectional determination, the object becomes object in relation to a subject. The essential relation posited by this structure remains problematic, however, insofar as fixed hierarchy may ultimately imply inessential rather than essential relation. In other words, the modern oppositional relation may be an unstable hybrid structure. As will be seen in the chapters that follow, especially Chapter Three, the difficulties posed by Cartesian metaphysics provide motivation for the postmodern metaphysical alternative.

        The term “postmodern” identifies that shift in the structure of oppositional relation whereby each side participates in a “whole” never reducible to one or the other nor reducible to a fixed ratio of one and the other. Here the irreducibility of essential difference coordinates with the inseparability of essential relation yielding a participation of essences not predicated upon nor necessitated by a more originary essence. This participation corresponds to an either/or alternation that is also a both/and alternation; each side of the opposition may be seen in terms of the other but the two never coalesce into a transcendent unity. Like the modern, the postmodern essential relation is always hierarchical—in that one side or the other dominants—but the potential for alternation in this relation insures a fluctuating rather than fixed hierarchy. Since oppositions that might be chosen to exemplify this relation may be readily misunderstood as examples of either premodern or modern structures, no example will be offered at this point. More will be said about this structure in the chapters that follow where, in greater context, the examples may be more clearly illustrative.

        The essays comprising the following five chapters are closely related and sequentially explicate the tensions between premodern and postmodern metaphysics and the consequences attending the influence of one and the other. Shorter versions of three of the five essays have been previously published. The three appendices expand upon issues raised in the essays.

        Chapter One compares the work of Kenneth Burke and Friedrich Nietzsche, arguing that the works of each find common ground in a similar understanding of the hortatory nature of language-using. This parcel of common ground, however, gives way to a broader and more consequential dissimilarity when measured against radically differing conceptions of the negative. Burke’s dramatism highlights a sacrificial negative derived from a premodern metaphysics—or what in the context of this chapter is called a cathartic metaphysics. Nietzsche’s perspectivism, on the other hand, places emphasis on a discriminative negative which, it is argued, is compatible with key aspects of postmodern views exemplified in, for example, the works of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida. The contrast Burke and Nietzsche present in understanding the operations of the negative suggests an important distinction between two possible genres of dramatism. These two possible genres correspond to two metaphysical alternatives that open upon the question of the differences between the premodern and the postmodern.

        Chapter Two takes up the discussion of metaphysical alternatives by contrasting the subtle but significant difference between the views of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida in the context of language theory and the problem of textual interpretation. Derrida’s deconstructive inquiries expose the sense in which Heidegger’s hermeneutic strategies fall prey to “a decision concerning metaphysics” or what Derrida describes more emphatically as “the metaphysical exigency”—the most urgent, fundamental, and pervasive concealed decision or unargued assumption in a philosophical position. Concerning this metaphysical exigency, Derrida has in mind the implicit and protracted favoring in oppositional relation of one side over the other. This protracted favoring is consistent with the characterization of oppositional relation peculiar to traditional or premodern metaphysics as well as modern metaphysics—although Derrida simply ascribes it to the tradition of metaphysics in general. The differences between Heidegger and Derrida center upon four themes crucial to theory relating to language, communication, and rhetoric: intersubjectivity and disclosure of being (Heideggerian terminology for “truth”). The confrontation between deconstruction and hermeneutics brings into question not only the possibility of communication but also the value of communication. In so doing, the confrontation raises the possibility of a thoroughly rhetorical understanding of language-using while also raising the question of what might be the characteristics and potential benefits of such an understanding.

        The examination of theory in relation to interpretation, rhetoric, and communication alongside Derrida’s discussion of the metaphysical exigency serves also to illustrate an often unnoticed consequence: any theory of meaning, interpretation, rhetoric, or communication is necessarily already a metaphysical choice. The way in which the workings of language are fundamentally understood is symptomatic of an attachment to a metaphysical alternative. In this sense a theory of meaning in language may condition or reflect a theory of meaning in general and thereby a theory of the meaning of life—insofar as metaphysics may be seen as the rock bottom(s) of belief.

        Having exposed the possibility of the postmodern metaphysical alternative in Chapter One and having identified the consequences of that alternative in relation to language-using in Chapter Two, Chapter Three explores how alignment with one metaphysical alternative or the other may make a significant difference with respect to actions and their political and social outcomes. Turning to Kenneth Burke, Chapter Three begins by highlighting A Rhetoric of Motives where Burke persuasively demonstrates how the core motivational resources of rhetoric circulate around the terms “Order,” “the Secret,” and “the Kill”—a triumvirate Burke also collectively evokes with the ominous but accurate phrase “Cult of the Kill.” This view of rhetoric provides the starting point for a comparison between Burke’s dramatism and Heidegger’s philosophy of Being in the context of Heidegger’s association with National Socialism and Burke’s comments (unlinked in his texts) on Heidegger’s philosophy and Nazi ideology. It is argued that the texts of both Burke and Heidegger, while appearing to side with a postmodern oppositional tension, ultimately remain consistent with premodern metaphysics and a sacrificial understanding of the negative. Although the texts of both show elements of an alternative to traditional metaphysics, that alternative never rises to a decisive displacement of the premodern oppositional orientation as central in their thinking.

        Using similar strategies, Burke and Heidegger both retreat from the postmodern alternative but differ markedly in their responses to premodern metaphysics and its manifestation in Nazism. This difference is used to gain a better understanding of Heidegger’s response to Nazism as well as a better understanding of the relation between traditional metaphysics and the postmodern alternative. The latter, it is argued, mitigates the consequences of the orientation to the negative that, as part of premodern metaphysics, promotes an increased vulnerability to the dangers of victimage brought to tragic perfection in the Holocaust. This alternative also reveals the sense in which the “metaphysical exigency” discussed in Chapter Two that Derrida identifies with traditional metaphysics may be broken into a subtle distinction between two metaphysical exigencies: one consistent with patterns of unworthiness or impurity (premodern) and the other consistent with patterns of subordination (modern).

        Chapter Four moves to a more historical discussion of the development of metaphysics as it has coursed through natural science in theoretical physics and through human science in language theory. This discussion is organized around the issues raised in the Sokal hoax of 1996. Specifically, Alan Sokal’s concern about a decline in intellectual standards includes an indictment of what he calls current “subjectivist” trends accompanying a general erosion of “objectivity” stemming from postmodern views such as deconstruction. This erosion is identified most importantly in postmodern claims about the instability of rigorous (in this case, essentializing) distinctions between opposites. It is argued that the deconstructive practice of disturbing the status quo between opposites extends as far back as Newton and constitutes one of the central themes of physics since the Enlightenment. The historical discussion moves to a summary of the parallel developments in physics and language studies from Newton to Einstein and from Saussure to Derrida. These developments are shown to support the contention that to question postmodern language theory exemplified in deconstruction necessitates questioning also the parallel developments in physics from Newton to the present.

        Current theory in both physics and language studies has evolved to the point where maintaining traditionally essential distinctions between opposites has become largely a thing of the past. This trend necessitates, contrary to what Sokal proposes and consistent with current themes in the rhetoric of science, adherence to belief in a construction of reality in language and experience that is nevertheless not essentially subjectivist nor idealist.

        Having established in Chapters One through Four metaphysical alternatives and the reasons for preferring the postmodern alternative, Chapter Five focuses upon the task of identifying more explicitly the features of a postmodern approach to language. It is argued that a postmodern approach, as suggested in Chapter Two, will not yield a theory of rhetoric within a more encompassing view of language so much as it will yield a rhetorical theory of language or language-using—where the term “rhetorical” serves to indicate the persuasive and strategic effects of language in contrast to competing theories that emphasize the possibilities, in one form or another, for coercive effects. This approach is illustrated through the work of S. John Macksoud who, among the first postmodern language theorists, is the first to offer a thoroughly rhetorical theory of language-using. Macksoud’s work occurred before popularization of the term “postmodern,” but he understood that a transition beyond modern views of language entails moving in the direction of a rhetorically rooted theory of language-using.

        Derrida has not characterized deconstruction as “rhetorical” nor a “theory”—choosing to avoid the baggage associated with both terms, and, in fact, avoiding explicit characterization of deconstruction as much as possible. Nevertheless, his views show remarkable similarity with Macksoud’s. Like Derrida, Macksoud examines strategic and interpretive qualities of language-using. And also, like Derrida, Macksoud finds that these qualities are not merely incidental to language, characteristic of certain uses, but essential to every use of language; every utterance covertly or overtly exhorts a particular way of seeing and thereby advances an argument. These and related insights prompt Macksoud to offer several elementary propositions toward a rhetorical theory of language—propositions with which, it is argued, Derrida would largely concur. These propositions complement four laws of language which may be generated from Derrida’s work. Macksoud’s propositions and the laws based upon Derrida’s work provide a boundary within and around which it becomes possible to understand what it might mean to adopt a postmodern approach to language consistent with a postmodern metaphysics.

        In different ways and from different directions each chapter makes the case for preferring postmodern metaphysics, primarily in the form of deconstruction, over available alternatives. For many this will not be experienced as a welcome recommendation. Over the years it has circulated among various academic departments and disciplines, deconstruction has provoked the most vehement of critical responses and has been accused of being compatible with the darkest and most destructive of social forces.

        If, as argued herein, all language using is rhetorical, and the operative theoretical grounding or justification for saying as much borrows heavily from deconstructive theory, then any contemporary concern with the question of the ethics of rhetoric is quickly overtaken by a concern with the ethics of deconstruction. Deconstruction and its ethical implications have been brought into question in no small part due to the displacement of the notion of truth evidently necessitated by deconstructive practices. Any orientation to truth that throws into any degree of question the ability to speak the truth is an orientation not likely to meet with favor within the halls of social institutions where speaking the truth and discriminating between the true and the untrue is judged to be essential to daily operations. But, as will be argued throughout, deconstruction does not strip the value from notions such as truth, subjectivity, and evaluation and thereby does not precipitate, as some have argued, the end of philosophy.

        The question of the ethics of deconstruction has arisen in perhaps the most public and disturbing way out of the controversies surrounding the Nazi affiliations of Martin Heidegger and Paul de Man—one a primary influence on deconstructive thinking via Derrida and the other a significant colleague of Derrida’s in the development and popularization of deconstruction. Heidegger’s and de Man’s links to National Socialism are discussed in Chapter Three and in Appendix C respectively and so will not be addressed here. At this point it is sufficient to say that those who have attempted to make the argument for a significant compatibility between deconstruction and forms of authoritarianism, fascism, totalitarianism, nihilism, or indeed any “ism” have extraordinarily misunderstood deconstruction.

        Those who have found significant compatibility between these ideologies and deconstruction have no doubt been stupefied or outraged by one of Derrida’s most unanticipated claims. In a Cardozo Law Review publication of 1990 Derrida boldly asserts that “deconstruction is justice.” On the face of it this equation seems fantastic, especially when Derrida elaborates with the additional claim that “justice is undeconstructible.” Given Derrida’s unbounded applications of deconstruction to every category and discipline, most would have thought he would find nothing to be “undeconstructible”—least of all justice, for even Plato would seem to have found a way to deconstruct justice. Nevertheless, Derrida’s claim that “deconstruction is justice” should in itself be sufficient—precisely because of its unexpectedness—to prompt a rethinking of what he might mean by “deconstruction.” Offering one possible explanation of what he might mean may prove helpful in further illuminating the reasons for recommending postmodern metaphysics.

        In postmodern metaphysics in general, and in deconstruction in particular, oppositional relation is structured (or, from the view of traditional metaphysics, destructured) in such a way that both sides of the opposition are, ultimately, equally essential and the hierarchy of their relation becomes shifting and fluid; the “other” is always essentially included and never fixed in hierarchical subordination. Even though unstable between the margins of hierarchical play and power fluctuation, this relation may be likened to “justice” as the name for an affirmation of an openness toward the other not only as person but also as what is and what is yet to come. This “justice,” this affirmation, affirms at the deepest level of comportment toward being an openness to the other—an essential inclusiveness and thereby always a relative balance through hierarchical fluctuation. The fundamental affirmation of inclusiveness underlying, indeed constituting, deconstruction makes it possible for Derrida to say that deconstruction is justice. This inclusiveness, even where it may through various attitudes be refused and denied, is nevertheless irreducible and thereby undeconstructible—which is to say, one step beyond every deconstruction.

        Critics of deconstruction have been quick to draw attention to the troubling consequence that radical inclusiveness, in the form of openness to and affirmation of the other, is not a panacea for conflict and social ills, especially when the "other" happens to march through the door as Hitlerism, Stalinism, or some other variant of social cleansing masquerading as utopia. However, as will be argued in the following chapters, deconstruction's inclusiveness need not result in a paralysis of moral conduct, a loss of critical discernment, or an inability to identify and censure wrongdoing. While it may not be possible to guarantee the practice of justice in the social context through the effects of deconstruction, it is possible, through the adoption of these attitudes rather than others, to better facilitate a balanced participation in the avenues of power that comprise the lifeblood of human community.

        Specifically with regard to the problems of victimage and scapegoating, so thoroughly analyzed by Kenneth Burke, the postmodern metaphysical exigency accomplishes a displacement, while not an annihilation, of the principle of exclusion. However, if Burke is correct concerning the influence of the sacrificial negative, it is possible to make a fairly certain prediction. Wherever a cathartic metaphysics with the premodern structure of oppositional relation remains a dominant attitude or belief structure in regions of intense conflict, initiatives and negotiations of every kind—no matter how well conceived or faithfully launched—will fail to produce lasting peace or cooperation. Cathartic metaphysics preconditions reliance upon the scapegoating mechanism—particularly in crisis situations. This mechanism, with its destructive consequences, has been all too evident in perennial areas of conflict such as the Middle East, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, and India/Pakistan—which also correspond to areas of passionate religious conviction.

        The institutionalized versions of religious belief in these troubled areas remain, in most cases, compatible with traditions that clearly embody the structure of oppositional relation corresponding to premodern metaphysics. Because such traditions have ancient and thereby extraordinarily venerated roots, even contemplating let alone mounting a critical examination of the core of such beliefs has been, for most parties involved, unthinkable. But based on the analyses presented in the chapters herein, the sad possibility emerges that lasting peace in areas of intense conflict, as well as in every corner of the world, may only arrive when longstanding core beliefs are voluntarily subjected to critique and exposed to the possibility that they may lie at the root of the problem. If this text contributes to the possibility of such critique and its potential benefits, then it will have served its purpose.

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