"It is right that we be concerned with the scientific probity of metaphysics"
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Marcel slips a small grenade into a polite sentence: metaphysics, the domain that traditionally claims exemption from lab coats and peer review, must answer to "scientific probity". The phrase is doing double duty. "Right" signals ethics as much as correctness; probity is not just accuracy but intellectual honesty. He is less interested in turning metaphysics into physics than in insisting that metaphysics stop cheating.
Placed against Marcel's mid-century landscape, the line reads like a rebuttal to two temptations. One is positivism's smug eviction notice: if you can't measure it, it doesn't count. The other is metaphysics as lyrical freelancing, where grand claims about Being or God float above any disciplined method. Marcel, an existentialist with a religious bent, wants metaphysical questions to stay open and human-sized, not inflated into total systems. Calling for "scientific" standards is his way of importing humility, rigor, and self-critique without conceding that only science produces truth.
The subtext is an anxiety about authority. In a culture increasingly entranced by scientific prestige, metaphysics risks either mimicking science to gain legitimacy or dismissing science to protect its mystique. Marcel threads a needle: he borrows science's moral capital (probity, verification, accountability) while defending a different kind of inquiry - one rooted in lived experience, participation, and mystery. The line works because it refuses the false choice between sterile empiricism and irresponsible speculation, demanding that metaphysics earn its claims the hard way: by being answerable, not merely eloquent.
Placed against Marcel's mid-century landscape, the line reads like a rebuttal to two temptations. One is positivism's smug eviction notice: if you can't measure it, it doesn't count. The other is metaphysics as lyrical freelancing, where grand claims about Being or God float above any disciplined method. Marcel, an existentialist with a religious bent, wants metaphysical questions to stay open and human-sized, not inflated into total systems. Calling for "scientific" standards is his way of importing humility, rigor, and self-critique without conceding that only science produces truth.
The subtext is an anxiety about authority. In a culture increasingly entranced by scientific prestige, metaphysics risks either mimicking science to gain legitimacy or dismissing science to protect its mystique. Marcel threads a needle: he borrows science's moral capital (probity, verification, accountability) while defending a different kind of inquiry - one rooted in lived experience, participation, and mystery. The line works because it refuses the false choice between sterile empiricism and irresponsible speculation, demanding that metaphysics earn its claims the hard way: by being answerable, not merely eloquent.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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