In his latest book, Michael Della Rocca adds yet another treasure to his already rich trove of philosophical gems. The Parmenidean Ascent is a courageous and successful effort, involving both radical metaphysics and history of philosophy (mostly analytic philosophy), which moves between the boundaries of subdisciplines with apparent ease. In fact, the book is partially aimed at overthrowing these very boundaries, showing how the separation of history of philosophy and original philosophical research is perilous and damaging for both parties, but especially for the latter.
Della Rocca's argument in the book derives its titular ascent from a relatively conservative reading of Parmenides, which claims that the philosophy of the Eleatic master can be better understood as an unrestricted endorsement of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. The PSR, as Della Rocca can affectionately call it after decades of successful research on this topic, is described as the spurring quest for explanation that grounds all of philosophy. In simplistic terms, it advocates the impossibility of curbing one's need to keep asking the questions ‘Why?’ and ‘How?’ until all interrogatives are satisfied. Each apparently sufficient answer can be further put on trial and combed through the fine teeth of the PSR to obtain a deeper explanation. This description achieves the intended purpose of showing the infinity of the PSR's depth, but it is also the infinity of its breadth that Della Rocca demonstrates in the Parmenidean Ascent.
In the core chapters of the book, Della Rocca shows the effectively infinite fields of application of the PSR. This principle encompasses with its grounding demand the metaphysics of substance (chapters 2-3) and action (chapter 4), epistemology (chapter 5), philosophy of meaning (chapter 6), the – only allegedly – distinct discipline of history of philosophy (chapter 7), and the metaphysics of explanation itself (chapter 8). Each of these chapters presents a twofold pars destruens aimed at showing how our current best explanations, in each of these fields, are inadequate to answer Della Rocca's explanatory demand. The twofold criticism consists firstly of an a posteriori survey, covering most of the positions available in analytic philosophy, showing that none of them can spare itself from the pestering demands of the PSR. Della Rocca conducts this analysis with relentless systematicity, to the point that these chapters could be used as an introductory manual surveying the landscape of current and classic analytic philosophy.
By contrast, the second critical argument brought by Della Rocca follows an a priori method. It demonstrates not just that none of the options available in the philosophical bazar withstands the Parmenidean offense once faced with an unbridled version of the PSR, but also why it is impossible for them to do so. According to Della Rocca, each of the answers provided by philosophers must motivate itself or ground itself. This necessity for reflexive grounding is made inescapable by philosophers’ acceptance of a commitment to explanation that is (almost) connatural to philosophy. Once we enter in the business of providing explanations for facts (may they be metaphysical, physical, epistemological, or historical), any halt of the explanatory process cannot be a brute decision and must itself come under the scrutiny of the PSR. To achieve such motivation or grounding, philosophers can only exploit one of four available options, according to Della Rocca.
The ‘Dellaroccan Quadrilemma’ (shown at p. 60 and again at the end of each chapter) claims that at some point in its quest for self-explanation, any given philosophical theory falls into one of the following mistakes: either we make a dogmatic claim where we treat some notion as primitive, or we are faced with a vicious regress, or we run into an explanatory circle, or a combination of the latter two. For Della Rocca, such depressing state of the art obtains because we rely on differentiated notions to build our philosophical systems. Differentiated notions, however, need to be connected through relations to satisfy the explanatory demands of the PSR. Relations, in turn, cannot be ‘free-floating’ and need to be grounded (pp. 249–50). Moreover, the connection between each relation and its grounding is subject to yet another request for explanation insofar as the relation itself becomes one of the relata, and so on ad libitum. Here, Della Rocca makes ample use of his stringent logic to prove that once we introduce differentiated notions in our philosophy, we are constantly on our heels, grasping for grounding. His solution is to propose an ‘ascent’ (pp. 77–82), a general renunciation to differentiated notions, in favour of a monolithic affirmation of the object of our reflections. Thus, we have no ‘substances’ – we have just substance. We have no ‘actions’ – we have just action. We have no ‘truths’ – we have just truth, etc.
Understandably, Della Rocca displays uneasiness with adopting even the most radical understanding of ‘monism’ as a correct label for his philosophical position. In fact, monism advocates the existence of exactly one differentiated or individuated item. But even this one item might expose us to the Quadrilemma, as Della Rocca correctly suspects. Thus, I would like to suggest that his position might be better described as ‘esse-ism’, a label which respects the necessity for an infinitive framing of the verb ‘being’. Within this esseism, Della Rocca can claim to have achieved an almost ataraxic state of philosophy as a discipline – showcased by the blankness of the concluding chapters, 12 and 13. To be sure, such an ataraxic state would not require us to stop doing philosophy. It would, in Della Rocca's intentions, only liberate us from the talon of relational philosophy and return us to a more joyous and more primordial investigation on the being of the world, its meaning, and its purpose.
If we accept Della Rocca's arguments on their own terms, their conclusions seem effectively unavoidable. As it is often the case with rationalism, the most promising strategy for challenging such arguments is to dispute their assumptions. In these brief paragraphs, I would like to offer two such challenges. The first and most general one regards Della Rocca's notion of explanation. In the Parmenidean Ascent, he proves himself the rightful heir of the Greeks and of the Eleatics especially. He implicitly demands that explanations (the reasons of the PSR) be provided in a form that unifies the distinct notions of grounding, rational explanation, dialectic conclusiveness and representation, and (at least efficient) cause of the explanandum (cf. p. 16). The Greek understanding of Λόγος (only partially matched by the Latin ratio and the English reason) is a powerful justification for this implicit schematism of explanation (in the Kantian sense). However, it is possible to criticize such hypertrophic interpretation of the role of reason (or reasonable explanations), and provide alternative explanations founded on affective, agential, or emotional grounds. To his credit, Della Rocca does envision this potential challenge. Responding with his usual wittiness, he turns it into an invitation for his opposer: ‘if you want to respond to this argument by defending the value of pursuing metaphysics in an irrational manner, please be my guest’ (p. 213). In this response, we can see the Greek mind at work. However, one could argue that to do metaphysics ‘irrationalistically’ is not equivalent to doing metaphysics irrationally. In other words, to claim that not all explanations need to bottom out in a logocentric argument or concept does not mean to give up the PSR in its non-rationalistic version. As an opponent to Della Rocca might claim with some right, a sufficient reason need not be a reason expressed in logocentric language.
Yet, the above objection is not my preferred attempt at circumventing Della Rocca's blockade of metaphysics, since I happen to share his belief in the commanding role of λόγος as an explanator. In fact, a less radical challenge to his characterization of metaphysics can be constructed by questioning his understanding of relations as a derivative notion, in need of tethering to achieve intelligibility. Such understanding of relations derives from a tendency common to most analytic philosophy. Della Rocca himself criticizes this tendency, under the name of ‘discreteness’, as ‘the view that the world is full of independent things or facts with no metaphysically necessary connections among them’ (p. 187). However, the inconsistency of this stance is highlighted by philosophers of various persuasions. The historical model for this approach can be traced back at least to Aquinas’ constitutive relations or Spinoza's reflexive causation (causa sui). Contemporary defenders of this perspective include positions as far apart as structural realism and general system theory. What is interesting in this context is that denying the primacy of the discrete object could potentially open interesting routes to the non-ascending metaphysician. Once we take relations (under their more palatable guise of ‘structures’) as our foundational metaphysical block, we gain objects such as substance, truth, meaning, and action as already constituted by the more fundamental structure and therefore already grounded. Moreover, we also gain legitimacy in the process of providing reasons and grounding for the relationship between such objects and the underlying structure, a process whose apparent dogmatism constitutes the casus belli for Della Rocca's Parmenidean Ascent.
Indeed, the two objections offered here do not disprove Della Rocca's claims. If anything, the eccentricity of my two challenges to Della Rocca's stringent arguments prove that his attempts are successful, and that one is pushed to extreme lengths in the attempt of responding to his bold claims, forced to call into question the very foundations of the system as it stands. In the Parmenidean Ascent, Della Rocca manages to unearth the prejudices of analytic philosophy, and unmasks the method of intuition and common sense as a conservative and ultimately doxographical procedure. In so doing, he stimulates a much-needed radical conversation on the purposes and methodology of analytic metaphysics. The relentless argumentation of the Parmenidean Ascent constitutes a benchmark for contemporary philosophy; its conclusions, an inescapable self-reflection on the very act of philosophizing, the art (or science) of seeking answers and asking questions.
