Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Formal Structure Of Metaphysics And The Importance Of Being Earnest, Jeremy Barris

Humanities Faculty Research

This article considers how the formal structure of metaphysical thought is displayed in Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest. One frequent aim of metaphysics is to understand the world as a whole. We cannot gain such a global vantage point without separating ourselves from all the particular meanings things have for us within the world. But we start within the world, and so can only proceed on the basis of those particular meanings. Consequently we can only separate ourselves from them if they work to cancel themselves in favor of the global understanding. When the separate range of meanings is …