The logic of metaphysical thinking

This essay offers an analysis of the logical structure of classical metaphysics, with respect to its ontological, epistemological, and ethical assumptions; a consideration of the resilience of this structure, three means by which its critics have countered that resilience, and two errors of excess to which those means have led; and a brief discussion of the philosophical tradition's turn from metaphysics to science and government, and of the conversational tradition at its origin.