H. P. Grice: Metaphysics and Ordinary Language -- Metaphysics as Ontology-cum-Metaphysics, 1955. Grice's criticism of John Wisdom's simplistic account of 'our knowledge of other minds' and metaphysics as a 'bunch' of 'self-evident falsehoods'!

We are to enquire what “metaphysics” is, i.e., what distinguishes “metaphysics” from the rest of we call “philosophy.”

It seems likely that this question – what distinguishes “metaphysics” from the rest of “philosophy” -- is one which it is particularly difficult to answer, shall we say, neutrally, i.e. dis-passionately. 

Many a philosopher thinks that the essential task of a philosopher is indeed to provide a “metaphysical doctrine.”

Some philosophers even say that this is the only justification for the existence of philosophers!

But many other philosophers, oddly enough, think that every “metaphysical doctrine” is spurious.

Some philosophers have even called any “metaphysical doctrine”  “meaningless”.”

Ayer comes to mind!

The very expression “metaphysics,” or as we prefer, the adjective, “metaphysical,” has a very unique power, even at Oxford (now that Freddie is around!) to attract or repel, i.e. to encourage a rather uncritical enthusiasm on the one hand, or an impatient condemnation on the other. 

All the more reason for giving, if possible, as I shall do my best to endeavor to provide, as I say, what I call a, shall we say, pretty “neutral” and, above all, drily “dispassionate” account.

The expression “metaphysika” is the way by which a treatise by Aristotle was catalogued. Literally, i.e. sans implicature, it boringly means, “the stuff that comes after the stuff on ‘physika’”

Aristotle describes the subject of this rather obscure treatise as being “the science of being as such,” if that makes sense – what we now we call “ontology,” rather --, a supremely or supercallifragilistically general study of being, existence or reality, and as such pretty distinct from this or that special or specific science and more “fundamental” than each. 

Aristotle indeed, being the boring systematic philosopher her was, argues that there MUST be such a science.

Since this or that special science, besides having its own peculiar subject matter, makes use in common 

with all the others of certain “quite general,” as he puts it, notions, such as those of, say, “identity” and or versus “difference,” or again, “unity” and or versus “plurality.” 

Such common notions as these (the identical-different distinction, the unitary-pluralistic distinction) would provide the topics of this “general” science of, say, “being,” while this or that “kind” of specific existence or reality, each with its own peculiar features provides the subject matter of 

the more departmental studies.

It’s not otiose that at Oxford we speak of a sub-faculty of philosophy, but don’t ask us what ‘sub’ stands for!

Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics as a supremely supercallifragilisc general study which is somehow presupposed by the special sciences, is a fairly enduring one. 

We find this conception of ‘metaphysics’ as a supercallifragilisitc general study of being, for example, though with variations, in philosophers as different as Descartes, Leibniz and Kant. 

But a metaphysician (as we may call the philosopher who loves metaphysics) may agree with Aristotle 

about the comprehensive and general and ultimate nature or character of their subject without sharing Kant's or Descartes's concern (as opposed to Leibniz, say) with the foundations of so-called “science.”

Near us, Bradley is an example. 

Bradley, if you’ve seen him at Magdalen – he is usually regarded as the Waynflete professor of metaphysical philosophy, but he ain’t – says, and I shall quote him verbatim:

“We may agree, perhaps, to understand by “metaphysics” an attempt to know reality (what things are, the noumenon) as against mere appearance (the sense datum, the phainomenon), or the study of this or that first principle (have you heard of a ‘second’ principle?) or this or that ultimate truth, or again the effort to comprehend the universe, not simply piece-meal or by fragments, but somehow as a whole.”

Bradley’s grandiloquent invocation agrees with Aristotle’s conception in contrasting “metaphysics” with departmental or, as Bradley would say, this or that “fragmentary” study. 

Again, don’t ask us what ‘sub’ means in ‘sub-faculty’!

An 'attempt to know reality' sounds something like 'a study of being as such,’ even if they might differ in this or that implicatum!

For one, Aristotle says nothing about ‘know,’ and ‘reality’ comes from the Latin, not the Greek!

Yet both Aristotle (and why not Plato, as Bradley would prefer) and Bradley would agree on the task of discovering this or that 'first principle'. 

But Bradley ridicules the idea that he is concerned to get at the presuppositions, to use Collingwood’s jargon – HE is the Waynflete! -- or foundations of science, or science with a capital S.

Cf. the time-honoured adage of ‘philosophia’ as ‘regina scientiarum’!

Some more “contemporary” accounts of “metaphysics” sound, on the face of it at least, very different from either of these. 

Consider, for example, from the OTHER place, John Wisdom's description of a metaphysical, shall we say, ‘statement’ – I prefer ‘utterance’ or pronouncement!

Wisdom says that a metaphysical, shall we say, ‘proposition’ is, characteristically, a sort of illuminating falsehood, a pointed paradox, which uses what Wisdom calls ‘ordinary language’ in a disturbing, baffling, and even shocking way, but not otiosely, but in order to make your tutee aware of a hidden difference or a hidden resemblance between this thing and that thing – a difference and a resemblance hidden by our ordinary ways of “talking.”

The metaphysician renders what is clear, obscure.

And the metaphysician MUST retort to some EXTRA-ordinary language, as Wisdom calls it!

Of course, to be fair to Wisdom and the OTHER place, Wisdom does not claim this to be a complete characterisation, nor perhaps a literally correct one. 

Since Wisdom loves a figure of speech and a figure of thought!

Perhaps what Wisdom claims should *itself* be seen as an illuminating paradox, a meta-meta-physical one!

In any case, its relation to Aristotle's, or, closer to us, F. H. Bradley's, account of the matter is not obvious, is it?

But perhaps a relation CAN be established. 

Certainly not every metaphysical statement is a paradox serving to call attention to an usually unnoticed difference or resemblance. 

For many a metaphysical statement is so obscure (or unperspicuous, as I prefer) that it takes long training, usually at Oxford, before the metaphysician’s meaning can be grasped.

A paradox, such as Socrates’s, must operate with this or that familiar concept.

For the essence of a paradox is that it administers a shock, and you cannot shock your tutee when he is standing on such unfamiliar ground that he has no particular expectations. 

Nevertheless there IS a connection between “metaphysics” and Wisdom's kind of paradox. 

He is not speaking otiosely!

Suppose we consider the paradox:

i.                    Everyone is really always alone. 

Considered by itself, it is no more than an epigram -- rather a flat one  - about the human condition. 

The implicatum, via hyperbole, is “I am being witty.”

The pronouncement (i)  might be said, at least, to minimise the difference between “being BY oneself” and “being WITH other people,” Heidegger’s “Mit-Sein.”

But now consider the pronouncement (i), not simply by itself, but surrounded and supported by a certain kind of “metaphysical” argument: by a “metaphysical” argument to the effect that what passes for “knowledge” of the other's mental or psychological process is, at best, an unverifiable conjecture, since the mind (or soul) and the body are totally distinct things, and the working of the mind (or soul, as Aristotle would prefer, ‘psyche’) is always withdrawn behind the screen of its bodily manifestations, as Witters would have it. (Not in vain Wisdom calls himself or hisself a disciple of Witters!)

When this solitude-affirming paradox, (i) is seen in the context of a general theory about the soul and the body and the possibilities and limits of so-called “knowledge” (as in “Knowledge of other minds,” to use Wisdom’s fashionable sobriquet), when it is seen as embodying such a “metaphysical” theory, indeed the paradox BECOMES clearly a “metaphysical” statement. 

But the fact that the statement or proposition is most clearly seen as “metaphysical” in such a setting does not mean that there is no “metaphysics” at all in it when it is deprived of the setting. (Cf. my “The general theory of context.”). An utterance like

(ii) Everyone is alone.

invites us to change, for a moment at least and in one respect, our ordinary way of looking at and talking about things, and hints (or the metaphysician implicates rather) that the changed view the tutee gets is the truer, the profounder, view. 

Cf. Cook Wilson, “What we know we know,” as delighting this air marshal.

And part of Bradley's characterization of “metaphysics” - 'the attempt to “know” reality (the noumenon) as against mere appearance (the phainomenon)' - seems to herald a similarly general, similarly paradoxical, invitation to a general change of view in our way of talking about things, which will also be a change to a profounder view. 

To this, I usually reply: “That pillar box seems red to me.”

We may surmise, perhaps, that the attempt to secure that comprehensiveness, which both Aristotle and F. H. Bradley find characteristic of their enquiry, leads often enough to those shifts of view, 

expressible in paradox, which *Wisdom*, at the other place, finds characteristically (does he mean ‘definitionally’) “metaphysical.”

But what exactly is the meaning (or what exactly does the propounder of the thesis0 of the requirement that “metaphysics” should yield a comprehensive system of reality? 

A theory about the nature of, so-called, “reality might be held to be comprehensive in so far as there are no elements of reality to which the theory or doctrine does not apply; and the doctrine or theory might be held to be “systematic” if the propositions comprised in the doctrine or theory are interdependent or dovetailed; that is to say, if the propositions of the theory are not divided into a number of independent, incomensurabale, groups. 

An extreme case of something “systematic” in this required usage would be a deductive system alla Gentzen (or Whitehead and Russell, following Peano) in which from a limited number of this or that axiom the philosopher, alla Spinoza, derives, as a LOGICAL consequence, every remaining proposition of the doctrine or theory.

It is notable that some seventeenth-century rationalist metaphysicians thought of metaphysics as constituting such a deductive system, even if they were having Euclid (or Galileo, or Copernicus, or Newton?) rather than Whitehead in mind! 

It might be objected that if we are to understand in this way the idea of a comprehensive and systematic account of reality, science with a capital S, as a whole, or even some particular science, PHYSICS!, qualifies as metaphysics, which is what Patricia Churchland thinks!

Physics is certainly systematic enough (pace Einstein, who, as a person, isn’t), might be said to deal with the whole of reality. 

But this objection by Patricia Churchland has little force. 

For though physics might be said to be concerned with the whole of reality, it could not be said to be concerned with every aspect (say, my emotions) or feature of reality (the way that pillar box seems to me)

A physical law, to echo Nancy Cartwright, may govern, for example, part of the behaviour of a living body (if not his soul); but if we wish to know about the way an organism develops, we have to go, not to the physicist, but to the biologist, as Aristotle would have it. For we need to take into account the ‘telos’ (causa finalis) of what the organism is developing into!

So we can still regard physics as insufficiently comprehensive to qualify as metaphysics, unless of course we are content with a ‘teleology’ which is ‘mechanistically derivable.’

And though science as a whole might be thought to be comprehensive, in that every aspect of reality falls under some particular science or other, nevertheless each particular sciences is too independent of (or incommensurable with) one another for science as a whole to count as a single system, regardless of what they are saying in the New World about ‘unified science’!

Nevertheless, a big difficulty remains in drawing a distinction between “metaphysics” and “physics” or science. 

I am amused that Oxford once held the chair of “NATURAL philosophy,” about which Waynflete was so insulted, that he funded the Waynflete Chair of META-physical philosophy, instead. He proposed “Trans-Natural Philosophy,” but the Vice-Chancelor objected (“We don’t want wizards here! You might just as well have a chair of Super-Natural Philosophy!).

It is perhaps not inconceivable that Science might advance to a point at which it would be possible to recast the whole of science as a single system. 

For example, after enormous strides within biology itself, it might perhaps become possible to re-interpret the basic teleological goal-oriented concepts of biology in terms of the concepts of physics, and so represent this or that biological phenomenon as obeying this or that law which is only a special case of this or that PHYSICAL law. 

What is here envisaged, notably in the New World, is, roughly speaking, a very large-scale version of the “unification” effected by the Kinetic Theory of Gases, which brings this or that seemingly independent law concerning this or that gas within a single wider system, by exhibiting it as special cases of a “dynamical” law. 

This result is achieved, roughly, by thinking of a gas as being composed of particles, and re-defining, in terms of the properties of this or that particle, this or that concept involved in this or that law about this or that gas. 

Such a unification and systematization of the whole of science is of course, at present, the wildest of dreams, typically in the New World, and may even be logically (or as we say at Oxford, conceptually) impossible, though it has not been shown to be so, we grant!

But suppose it is to occur.

One, at least at Oxford unless you are Freddie, would still surely refuse to call the resulting systematized science, or even the most general part of it, 

a metaphysical system.

I am amused of Russell’s sobriquet of ‘stone-age metaphysics’! What’s wrong with ‘stone-age physics’?

This Oxonian refusal based on the dignity of the Aristotelian use of ‘metaphysical’ would not be the result of mere prejudice, but a predilection!

Just because the universal systematized science is science, it would not be “metaphysics”!

For even the most general and basic law it contains ultimately depends for its acceptability upon the results of observation and experiment in a way which is quite uncharacteristic 

of the principles of a metaphysical system, unless you are Hume!

The method of science, this or that test for acceptability of this or that scientific law, remains quite different from the method of “metaphysics” and this or that test for the acceptability of this or that metaphysical principle.

So we have here a further question. 

For even though it is true that the most general law or axiom of a “unified science” would NOT count as “metaphysics,” it is also true that this or that metaphysician may have thought it at least a part of his task to lay, or to lay bare, the foundations of science. 

We must ask, then, how we are to conceive, or how they are conceived,  of the relations between the “metaphysical” foundation and the scientific super-structure, if we can use Marx’s jargon.

That relation, it is clear, is not to be understood simply as the relation of the most general to the less general law of nature.

This or that metaphysician may not explicitly ask himself this question, nor is it clear what answer he would have given if he had. 

But there are exceptions. 

One of them is our dear, beloved, Immanuel Kant!

Now, Kant thinks there is a certain principle which has a quite special place in knowledge, in that it states the conditions under which alone scientific knowledge of nature, considered as a spatio-temporal system, is possible. 

This principle is not itself a part of science. 

Rather, the principle embodies the conditions of the POSSIBILITY of science, or as Strawson would say, the ‘bounds of sense,’ and of ordinary everyday knowledge too, for that matter, as Strawson aptly shows.

It is an important part of the metaphysician's task to discover what fundamental idea this principle involves, and what the principle itself is; and also to prove

 that it has this peculiar character. 

For this is the only kind of proof of which the principle is susceptible. 

Whatever the shortcomings of Kant's doctrine, it at least gives a clear meaning to saying that “metaphysics” 

is concerned with the “presuppositions,” to use Collingwood’s jargon, of science.

Yet the shortcomings are important. 

Kant's fundamental principle varies greatly in character as he writes this or that draft; and very few would now agree that each principle that Kant imagines embodies a general presupposition of the possibility of scientific knowledge!

And most would now be very sceptical of the possibility of establishing a rival principle with just this status. 

A more acceptable notion might be that of a principle which is, in something like Kant's jargon, 

the presupposition, not of scientific knowledge in general, but of a particular 

 scientific enquiry, or of the science of a particular time. 

And this is in fact Collingwood's brilliant idea of the nature of metaphysics.

He is an archaeologist and a historian, and he likes Italian literature, so we have to take what he says ‘with a pinch of salt,’ as Benedetto Croce would have it.

For Collingwood, the metaphysician (and he is one, as the Waynflete professor of metaphysical philosophy at Oxford) exposes this or that ‘presupposition,’ absolute or relative, of the science of a particular epoch. 

Only we need not, like Collingwood, think of the metaphysician just as an archaeologist of thought, as Foucault will! 

The metaphysician might also be, as he has often intended to be and sometimes has been, a revolutionary, fostering this or that new direction in scientific “discovery,” to use Popper’s phrase, rather than uncovering the foundations of scientific remains.

This line of thought about metaphysics is not peculiar to a relatively traditional thinker (even by Oxford standards) like R. G. Collingwood. 

There is at least some analogy between R. G. Collingwood’s views and those, for example, of Rudolf Carnap, a member of the radical Vienna Circle, which Ayer called his “Academy”! (He is pouring scorn on Plato).

Carnap, Ayer’s tutor at Vienna – his tutor at Oxford was, oddly, the Waynflete professor of metaphysical philosophy, Gilbert Ryle -- draws a sharp distinction between a question which arises 

 within a given system of concepts, or framework of ideas, and questions which are sometimes raised 

 outside of that framework or system. 

Questions of the first sort belong to the field of some science -- or of everyday life, even! -- and are answered by the methods appropriate to those fields. 

Sometimes it might seem that Freddie doubted about the latter!

A questions of the latter sort, an ‘external’ question has traditionally appeared in “metaphysics” in the misleading form of questions about the reality or existence of some very general class of entities corresponding to the fundamental ideas of the system of 

concepts in question. 

Thus, Carnap: if there are pirots which karulise elatically, there’s pirotology.

Thus a philosopher may ask whether there really exists such a thing as a number (Carnap: “Caesar is a prime number”), whether a space-time point of physics is ‘real’ (Austin’s trouser word, as he has it with his artless sexism), and so on. 

But such a question can be significantly understood only as raising the practical (not theoretical)

 issue of whether or not to embrace and use a given conceptual scheme or framework of ideas. 

To answer affirmatively, according to Carnap, and rightly, is simply to adopt such a framework for use, and hence 

to give shape or direction to a whole field of enquiry.

Carnap's view of the matter might seem to make it slightly mysterious to us Oxonians that there should be such things as a “metaphysical” “assertion,” as opposed to a “metaphysical” “decision.”

But then his example of a ‘metaphysical’ “assertion” is Heideggerian: “Nothing noths!”

 This mystery may be solved in principle by regarding a “metaphysician” as engaged in a kind of propaganda on behalf of some conceptual scheme, 

the acceptance of which is obscurely felt to be a “presupposition” of the development of science in a particular direction. 

Like all forms of propaganda, conceptual or metaphysical propaganda is liable to involve distortion 

and exaggeration, or hyperbole, if we must be implicatural. And at Oxford we value UNDER-statement (if not innuendo!), guarded as we are.

 As Carnap's remark suggests, one form which conceptual advocacy is liable to take is the entering of 

a strong claim for the status of 

 on behalf of some general class of entities, together with a disposition to deny this status to other, less favoured things. 

Metaphysical snobbery! To be refuted by our newly fangled ontological Marxism: if an entity works, let it exist!

At least from Aristotle's time till the end of the eighteenth century, the traditional honorific title 

for things declared to be real, or ultimately real, was that of “metaphysics”!

So we constantly find the entities favoured in any particular “metaphysical” system being accorded the rank of this or that substance, while everything else is given some inferior, dependent status, or is even declared to be merely aappearance. 

The types of entity favoured in this way have varied enormously. 

For Berkeley, an Irish bishop, it is the mind or the spirit – his own, as it happens.

For Leibniz, it is some curious mindlike centre of conscious or unconscious experience. 

Hume is inclined to scoff at the whole notion.

But in so far as anything deserved the title, Hume thought it was individual sense-impressions and images. 

Russell followed suit, and myself, in “Personal identity” (Mind).

For Spinoza, on the other hand, it is nothing less than everything: the single comprehensive system of reality, which he called God or Nature – in Latin (Deus sive Natura).

But the best example for the immediate purpose is provided by, of all people, Descartes, about whose idea of certainty I have philosophized quite a bit, since it’s in total contrast with Moore’s!

Descartes, unlike Berkeley and Hume, is a very scientifically-minded philosopher, with very clear ideas about the proper direction for science. 

Descartes, whose middle name was “Euclid,” seems to have thought that mathematics, and in particular geometry, provided the model for scientific procedure. 

And this determines Descartes’s thinking in two ways. 

First, Descartes thinks that the fundamental method in science is the axiomatic-deductive method of geometry, and this Descartes conceives (as Spinoza morality “more geometrico”) of as rigorous reasoning from a self-evident axiom (“Cogito, ergo sum.”)

Second, Descartes thinks that the subject-matter of physical science, from mechanics to medicine, must be fundamentally the same as the subject-matter of geometry!

The only characteristics that the objects studied by geometry posses are spatial characteristics. 

So from the point of view of science in general, the only important features of things in the physical world were also their spatial characteristics, what he called ‘extensio,’ ‘res extensa.’

Physical science in general is a kind of dynamic, or kinetic, geometry. 

Here we have an exclusive preference for a certain type of scientific method, and 

a certain type of scientific explanation: the method is deductive, the type of explanation mechanical. 

These beliefs about the right way to do science are exactly reflected in Descartes's “ontology” – one of the two branches of metaphysics; the other is philosophical eschatology, or the study of categories), and it is reflected in his doctrine, that is, about what “really” exists. 

Apart from God, the divine substance, Descartes recognizes just two kinds of substance, two types of real entity. 

First, there was material substance, or matter; and the belief that the only scientifically important characteristics of things in the physical world are their spatial characteristics goes over, in the language of “metaphysics,”

into the doctrine that these are their only 

 characteristics. 

Second, Descartes recognizes the mind or soul, or the mental substance, of which the essential characteristic was thinking; and thinking itself, in its pure form at least, is ' conceived of as simply the intuitive grasping of this or that self-evident axiom and this or that of its deductive consequence. 

These restrictive doctrines about reality and knowledge naturally call for adjustments elsewhere in our ordinary scheme of things. 

With the help of the divine substance, these are duly provided.

It is not always obvious that the metaphysician's scheme involves this kind of “ontological” preference, or favoritism, or prejudice, or snobbery this tendency, that is, to promote one or two categories of entity to the rank of the real, or of 

the ultimately real, to the exclusion of others, Descartes’s ‘entia realissima.’

Kant, as much concerned as Descartes with the foundations of science, seems, in a way, to show 

no such preference, favoritism, prejudice, or snobbery, even if he has his predilection. 

Kant seems prepared to accord reality to all the general types of phenomena which we encounter in experience or, rather, to draw the distinction between the illusory and the real, as we normally do, within these 

types and not between them. 

Yet it is only a relative reality or, as he says, an “empirical” or phenomenal reality – which amused Bradley: “Kant’s reality is my appearance, and vice versa!” -- that he was willing to grant, in this liberal, tolerant (to use Carnap’s political jargon) way, to all the general classes of things we encounter. 

For the whole world of Nature, studied by Science, is declared by Kant to be ultimately only appearance, or the phainomenon, in contrast with the transcendent and unknowable reality which lay behind it, with freedom, and practical reason! 

So, in a sense, Kant downgrades the whole of what we know in favour of what we do not and cannot know. 

In this he is being almost an enlightened Witters!

But this thoroughgoing contrast between appearance (the phainomenon) and reality (the noumenon) is perhaps of less importance to Kant in connection with science than in connection with morality!

The transcendent reality is of interest to Kant, not as a scientific enquirer, but as a moral being, not as a creature faced with this or that problem of theoretical alethic or pure reason or knowledge, but as a creature faced with this or that problem of conduct! 

Kant is a very ambitious metaphysician, shall we add the obvious?, who sought to secure, at one stroke, the foundations of science and the foundations of morality!

This last point is of importance. 

Though a concern with the foundations of science is, or has been, one impetus to the 

construction of this or that metaphysical system, it is only one among others. 

Kant’s concern with morality, with the right way to behave, is scarcely less important. 

And other disciplines have contributed to this “metaphysical” drive. 

In the nineteenth century, for example, when History (and indeed that Hybrid called Sociology) came of age and began to preoccupy this or that philosopher of science had done in the seventeenth century, this or that metaphysical system (such as ‘evolution theory’) starts to grow out of this historical study – Witness Hegel! 

Thus the historically minded metaphysician searches for the true nature of this or that historical explanation and concludes, perhaps, that the key concept is that of a certain mode of 

development of human institutions, ending with the Kaiser!

Suppose he (he is Hegel) then extends this theory beyond the confines of history, maintaining that this same concept, which is, 

in a certain sense, a concept of mental development, provides the only true explanation of the whole 

universe. 

The result is the comprehensive system Hegel ends up presenting.

Hegel honours one type of historical explanation by making it the foundation of his system; and it was 

this system that Marx turns upside down, making the whole process of development material (specifically ‘economical’ – ‘money or the capital is the root of all evil’ – as he philosophized at the British museum reading room) instead of 

mental or spiritual.

A system like that of Marx and Hegel has, and is intended to have, implications regarding human behaviour. 

But concern with a moral or an emotional, even with an aesthetic, requirement may take many different forms. 

It may take the form of a desire to provide some transcendental authority, some more than human backing, for a particular morality.

A moral conclusion about how we OUGHT to behave is to follow from a “metaphysical” premise about the nature of reality!

The naturalistic fallacy that disgusted Moore!

It may take the more general form of a wish to supply transcendental backing for morality in general, as in Witters!

 Or it may take the form of a wish to demonstrate that there is some surpassing and unobvious excellence about the nature of things, an ultimate satisfactoriness in the universe. 

Spinoza provides another example of the first of these. 

Spinoza, of all peoople claims to demonstrate, from the nature of reality, that the supreme satisfaction is also 

the supreme virtue, and that both consist of what he calls the intellectual love of God: which seems to mean, for Spinoza, a kind of acquiescent and admiring understanding of the workings of Nature. 

When I tried to ‘explain’ this to my tutor at Corpus, Hardie, I recall distinctly,

“Love of God.”

“And what do you mean by ‘of’?”

Kant is the supreme example of the second possibility.

The whole world of nature, including my ordinary human self -- the whole province of scientific knowledge, in fact  - is declared to be a mere appearance (a phainomenon), in contrast with the world of transcendent reality, the world of things in themselves (the noumenon).

 Reality is set behind a curtain impenetrable to scientific enquiry, a removal which both guarantees 

its security and heightens its prestige. 

But communications are not wholly severed. 

From behind the curtain, as it were, Reality speaks -- giving us, indeed, not information, but one big commands, one big moral imperative: the golden rule, which I made the basis of my principle of conversational helpfulness. 

In some admittedly unintelligible way, Reality is within me, as a rational being, or person, meant to ‘personise’; and, with unquestionable authority, it lays down the general form of the moral law which I 

ought, as an ordinary human being, to obey – happily, I must say!

Finally, Leibniz, who unites so many intellectual concerns in a brilliant, if precarious, harmony, provides a good example of the third form which this element in metaphysics may take, with his celebrated optimism.

 'Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds' -- The optismism is not, in the context of his system, at all as absurd as Voltaire made out. 

We may find it unsympathetic, which is another matter.

For Leibniz's criteria of the highest excellence were peculiarly his own. 

He thought he could demonstrate that reality must be the best!

And then came Ryle, and the War, and I found myself having to instill metaphysics on my tutee, rather than having it instilled by my tutor!

Ah, Oxford!