The metaphysics of belief: a Wittgenstein and Collingwood convergence

Abstract

In this article I make plausible ‘a metaphysics of belief’ by showing how Collingwood's metaphysics of absolute presuppositions helps us understand various comments and fragments by Wittgenstein regarding ‘the metaphysical subject’. For both, metaphysical beliefs are presuppositional; as such, they constitute twin foci – a terminus ad quem and a terminus a quo – without which the activity of thinking rationally, scientifically, and morally is impossible. Finally, although for both philosophers metaphysical beliefs are not susceptible to conventional modes of explanation, justification, and verification, both seem to suggest in various ways that metaphysical beliefs are nevertheless susceptible to a certain kind of ‘practical’ justification.