Malkina S.M. From Archi-Metaphysics to Postmetaphysics: the Metaphysics and the Problem of Power

Abstract: The discourse on overcoming metaphysics is a special philosophical genre that has been popular over the past two centuries. Besides, each time there is a shift in the interpretation of the metaphysical that raises the question about what metaphysics is and whether it exists at all. Badiou makes a supposition that the reasons for the resumption of attempts to overcome metaphysics lie in the fact that metaphysics by definition is the reign of the essentially undetermined. This allows to consider the question of metaphysics from the standpoint of the problem of power. The article focuses on the analysis of the rhetoric on overcoming metaphysics as a philosophical genre and Heidegger’s idea of metaphysics as the will to power which allows to analyze this rhetoric as a struggle for power. The author of the article concludes that it is necessary to distinguish between the forms of critical attitude to metaphysics. Antimetaphysical philosophy (that is aimed at overcoming and rejection of metaphysics) does not only have the metaphysical nature itself but is archi-metaphysics. It struggles with uncertainty and meaninglessness in metaphysics trying to establish a new will to power. Postmetaphysical philosophy does not seek to establish the will to power of a philosophizing subject by replacing the “senselessness” of metaphysics with a particular philosophical “meaning” but transforms the entire field of philosophy in such way that power relations no longer play a significant role.

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