For whatever reason, I’ve found myself reading books by professed materialists (Santayana, Geertz, Langer). A couple of years ago that would have been grounds for dropping the book immediately, but now I’m approaching it phenomenologically: Anchor your work in whatever metaphysic you like if you need to — as long as I am able to bracket that metaphysic and still find validity in what you’ve built upon it.

If I am going to take a philosophy seriously that philosophy must be capable of standing on any base, and of standing on no base, and of standing on all conceivable bases simultaneously. Taking a philosophy seriously means its ideas eventually might be accepted and integrated into my own body of understanding, as opposed to being  regarded as an intellectual sickness to diagnose or an alien artifact to observe externally as “someone else’s”. Taking a philosophy seriously means it might deeply influence my own way of seeing the world.

When a person confesses faith in a particular metaphysic or seems intent on eliminating metaphysics altogether it makes me suspicious, but that suspicion is only grounds for caution, not rejection.