The Dangers of Metaphysical Dissection

Abstract:

This paper explores the foundational fractures in Western thought that result from the dissection of metaphysical unity. Beginning with Ferrier's severance of knowing from being, Wilson's disruption of the connection between ethics and metaphysical realism, and Dewey’s pragmatic removal of truth from ontological reality, the analysis traces how these intellectual ruptures undermined the American founding's covenantal structure. Special attention is given to Anti-Federalist Brutus, whose metaphysical coherence and warnings against judicial overreach anticipated the breakdown of constitutional integrity. AEI argues that reintegration of the severed metaphysical body is necessary for the recovery of law, liberty, and civic order in the Republic.

I. Introduction: What Is Metaphysical Dissection? 

Metaphysical dissection refers to the attempt to isolate the domains of being, knowing, and acting as if they can function independently. This process undermines the natural unity of human understanding. When these dimensions are treated as separate, their internal coherence weakens. The result is the fragmentation of truth, the corruption of law, and the loss of stable civic order. A political system that once depended on metaphysical realism begins to lose its shape. Institutions drift, language becomes unstable, and citizens are left unmoored from both moral direction and ontological ground. This paper outlines three major severances, identifies the agents responsible, and maps the consequences. AEI maintains that these fractures must be reversed by reintegrating the metaphysical body of the Republic.

The American Founding was grounded in a metaphysic of fixed human nature, moral realism, and the Creator as the source of rights. Yet some figures within the Founding period, and several intellectual movements thereafter, incorporated rationalist, pragmatist, and abstract frameworks that displaced covenantal metaphysics.

This paper outlines three major severances, identifies the agents responsible, and maps the consequences. AEI maintains that these fractures must be reversed by reintegrating the metaphysical body of the Republic.

II. Ferrier and Erkenntnistheorie: Knowing Without Being

James Frederick Ferrier shifted the philosophical center of gravity by redefining philosophy as the science of knowing. In doing so, he severed knowledge from ontological grounding. Instead of viewing knowledge as a correspondence with reality, he positioned it as a self-contained system.

Ferrier’s conception of epistemology introduced the German notion of Erkenntnistheorie, a theory of knowledge rooted in Kantian and Fichtean subjectivism. While Ferrier wrote in the context of Scottish philosophy, his structure mirrored continental assumptions that knowledge begins not with what is, but with the conditions of knowing. This marked a departure from the Scottish Common Sense Realism of Thomas Reid and others, who affirmed the direct knowability of external reality.

By displacing being with cognition, Ferrier initiated a shift toward nominalism and constructivism. Though he did not exert political influence directly, his principle of dislocating knowledge from being opened the door to broader moral and legal abstractions. The effect was cumulative. Later thinkers operated without the foundational assumption that reality precedes and governs knowledge (Ferrier, 1854).

III. Wilson: Law Without Metaphysical Ground

James Wilson adopted a form of legal rationalism, which is the belief that law derives its legitimacy and structure primarily from human reason, often as exercised by legal elites, rather than from a transcendent moral or metaphysical order. He emphasized judicial interpretation and the capacity of human intellect to define legal and moral boundaries, often relying on deductive reasoning to draw conclusions from abstract legal principles.

Wilson's rationalism was influenced in part by French Enlightenment models of legal codification, and he positioned the judiciary as a conduit for moral authority. While he paid tribute to natural law, his framework allowed divine law to be absorbed into human legal deliberation. The result was a gradual shift from law as recognition of moral reality to law as a system managed and interpreted by elite reason (Wilson, 1790–1791).

This marked a decisive turn in American jurisprudence. Law became contingent on interpretation rather than reflective of immutable moral truths. Ethics lost its metaphysical anchor, and the judiciary began to assume legislative and theological functions. Over time, constitutional interpretation was no longer tied to fixed ontological assumptions but became a tool for social engineering. Wilson’s embrace of legal rationalism created structural conditions for judicial supremacy and the erosion of covenantal limits.

IV. Blackstone: Sovereignty Disconnected from Ontology 

Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England portrayed the law as the will of Parliament, which was viewed as sovereign and not inherently bound by metaphysical or divine constraints. This notion, often referred to as parliamentary will, held that Parliament could legislate on any matter without being subordinate to higher, ontological truths or divine law. Although Blackstone made passing reference to natural law, his emphasis was on legal structure as determined by institutional authority.

This approach implicitly severed legal authority from ontological grounding. Law became a function of institutional enactment rather than metaphysical correspondence. Wilson would later transfer this emphasis on institutional authority to the American judiciary. In both cases, sovereignty was relocated away from divine or covenantal reality and into human institutions. Law was thus subject to the whims of elite interpretation or political majority (Blackstone, 1765–1769).

V. Dewey and Pragmatism: Truth Without Reality 

A third major metaphysical severance arose in the American pragmatist tradition. Charles Sanders Peirce introduced the method of practical effects, but it was William James and John Dewey who completed the rupture between truth and reality.

In pragmatism, truth is defined by utility or outcome. It is no longer understood as correspondence to being. Dewey explicitly rejected fixed metaphysical categories, moral absolutes, and traditional notions of truth, replacing them with experimentalism and process.

This shift removed truth from its ontological referent. Moral realism gave way to moral utility. In education, law, and civic philosophy, pragmatism promoted consensus and adaptation over metaphysical fidelity. Dewey’s influence on the American school system replaced formation in truth with conditioning in flexibility. The Republic, deprived of metaphysical foundation, began to drift (Dewey, 1916).

VI. Brutus: Guardian of Ontological Order 

The Anti-Federalist writer Brutus worked from a metaphysical framework that preserved the integrity of language, nature, and law. He emphasized the need for precise definition of constitutional terms and warned against expansive and ambiguous phrases such as general welfare and necessary and proper. Brutus anticipated judicial overreach and the risks of abstraction.

His metaphysics affirmed a decentralized and morally grounded civic order. He argued for law that reflects human nature and reality rather than constructs devised by elites. In contrast to Wilson’s emphasis on legal rationalism, Brutus upheld covenantal realism. He provides a consistent example of resistance to metaphysical dissection in American political development (Brutus, 1787).

VII. Downstream Consequences: Fragmentation and Drift 

The displacement of metaphysics in legal and political philosophy has produced a system in which rights are asserted without referents, and judicial institutions create meaning through interpretation rather than recognizing fixed truths. Courts increasingly function as authors of the law, interpreting texts with disregard for original moral and ontological assumptions.

As a result, terms such as liberty, rights, and justice now lack stability. Their meanings shift according to ideology or institutional preference. The foundational unity between ethics, law, and metaphysical realism has deteriorated. The severances initiated by Ferrier, Wilson, and Dewey help explain the present condition of institutional relativism and civic confusion.

VIII. Reintegrating the Metaphysical Body of the Republic

The American Republic was founded on the integration of being, knowing, and acting. Its constitutional order depended on metaphysical realism, affirming that human nature is fixed, moral order is discoverable, and truth corresponds to reality. Each severance, from Ferrier’s dislocation of knowledge from being, to Wilson’s detachment of law from metaphysical foundations, to Dewey’s removal of truth from reality, cut through the Republic’s structural integrity.

The result has been institutional decay, moral confusion, and cultural fragmentation. AEI contends that healing requires more than mere reform. It requires metaphysical reintegration, a reunification of truth, law, and reality rooted in the realist metaphysics that animated the American founding.

This white paper (and the entirety of the work of the AEI) is a call to restore wholeness. The Republic cannot be preserved on procedural or functional grounds. It must recover its metaphysical coherence to remain a just and intelligible order, and this begins with you.

References 

Blackstone, W. (1765–1769). Commentaries on the Laws of England. Yale Avalon Project. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/blackstone.asp

Brutus. (1787). Brutus I. Teaching American History. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/brutus-i/

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/democracyandeduc00deweuoft

Ferrier, J. F. (1854). Institutes of Metaphysic: The Theory of Knowing and Being. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/institutesmetap00ferrgoog

Wilson, J. (1790–1791). Collected Works of James Wilson. Liberty Fund. https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/wilson-collected-works-of-james-wilson-2-vols