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Holism Resurfacing: How Far Should We Go With It?

  • Márta Ujvári EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: March 19, 2021

Abstract

The recent holistic trends in metaphysics are surveyed here and a tentative typology is offered. The non-linear mode of composition is suggested as the key feature of holism, apart from its familiar non-reductionism and emergentism. It is argued that those holistic views are promising that refrain from extreme relationalism based on the denial of there being self-subsistence particulars; also, those refraining from the postulation of an unarticulated all-embracing whole where both relations and terms are denied to be genuine ontological items. The further suggestion is that a trade-off between the holistic perspective and the limits imposed upon it in the form of built-in confinements may help in making this metaphysics go.


Corresponding author: Márta Ujvári, Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary, E-mail:

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of the paper was presented in the form of an invited lecture at the Institute of Philosophy, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungary, in September 2020. I am grateful to Gábor Szabó, László E. Szabó, Gergely Kertész and Dániel Budai for their valuable comments and remarks.

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Published Online: 2021-03-19
Published in Print: 2021-09-27

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