Metaphysics as a way to deal with existential anxiety and fluid symbolical systems to enrich our worldview
I think that the most rational metaphysical stance is idealism. Everything knowable is only available to us phenomenally, through immediate experience. What is it that we are experiencing then? Some reality beyond our senses certainly, the noumenal realm, a strongly objective reality beyond our senses. However, this reality is in principle unknowable to the subject, so why even bother with it? This kind of metaphysical predisposition can distract us from solving problems of the here and now, distract us from being in the world.
Nietzsche rejected metaphysics. In fact, he inverted platonism praising the immanent and rebelling against the transcendent. He called for an upheaval of a new morality based on affirming life rather than calling to the transcendent. However, it seems like both views, the idealist and the metaphysical, are biased. Their proponents cling to some metaphysical system which saves them from the existential anxiety of the unknowable cosmos. They radically oppose each other and cannot find common ground. For a fresh perspective, however, I have recently been inspired by Michael Levin and his groundbreaking research in biology, to admit a more engineer worldview which has served me spectacularly well.
Whenever you talk about god and the transcendent it is very useful to be able to think metaphysically. It is useful to think how the divine ideas structure and shape our worldview. However, when you are thinking about flowing fluid or orbiting planets and their properties, you better be a materialist - thinking about the transcendent reality of water and planets would really distract you from solving the problems at hand.
Ideas can give shape and meaning to knowledge. For example, ideas can organise history mnemonically and form narratives which are much more comprehensible and have more predictive power than raw facts. Big examples of this are Hegel, Spengler, and Gebser. Modern academia seems to dislike this paradigm and prefers a different approach, wherein scholars isolate themselves in a single disconnected historical perspective and actively investigate it, defending their academic territory but missing the bigger picture.
It seems to me that the affinity to stick to a certain metaphysical worldview is a manifestation of the deep existential anxiety about the endless abyssal mystery of reality. It is a futile attempt to explain the world away and find some ontological ground. But as Terence McKenna said, reality is more mysterious than anyone can even imagine. I hence want to advocate for a different perspective.
The two approaches - materialistic and idealistic - don’t have to conflict. Rather I think that they can exist in the world together if we learn to use them appropriately. If we use both approaches, and many other paradigms, as symbolical systems - systems that organise our reality into interpretable descriptive and explanatory structures - we can be fluid and investigate different levels of reality with whatever models we please, as long as they make sense. It’s kind of like speaking different languages, where each of them finds its use as you travel the world. It is a paradigmatic synthesis that sees reality as an interconnected whole. This is akin to Castaneda’s shifting of the assemblage point and can make our worldview much richer. It can allow for new systems of thought to emerge which have so far been taboo in academia, opening the doors to more esoteric disciplines. We have a huge amount of strong evidence from quantum physics, near death experiences, parapsychological phenomena, psychology, and many other fields that is simply dismissed by science because it doesn’t fit into their conceptual framework. They reject it as false because they don’t fit their materialist assumptions about the world. It is greatly illustrated by a brilliant quantum physicist who was unfortunately another scientist that was reluctant to reconcile science with ontology as he famously said “shut up and calculate”.
I have no interest in convincing anyone of anything. But I do want to open this door for anyone that is willing to look the unfathomable reality in the eyes and pursue its mystery.
But if you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you…