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Granted that "speculative philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted," and granted, further, that "the true method of discovery," i.e., "for the divination of the generic notions which apply to all facts," is "the method of imaginative rationalization," or "the method of generalization"; still, one may insist that a method of discovery is one thing, a method of justification, something else.

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The one kind of thing he does say, however, that appears to point to what, in my opinion, needs to be said is best represented when he says that "[w]hatever thread of presupposition characterizes social expression through the various epochs of rational society must find its place in philosophic theory," or when he talks about uncritically trusting the verbal statements of an established metaphysical system leading us into "difficulties which take the shape of negations of what in practice is presupposed" (17 [25]; 13 [20]). Of course, his many other statements about "practice" – such —such as "[w]hatever is found in 'practice' must lie within the scope of the metaphysical description," and "[w]hen the description fails to include the 'practice,' the metaphysics is inadequate and requires revision" (13 [19]) – are —are statements of essentially the same kind. And they all point to something very like presuppositional analysis – or, more exactly, presuppositional analysis of self-understanding and life-praxis – as praxis—as the proper method for verifying, or justifying, the putative discoveries of speculative philosophy.

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It also means that justification of speculative philosophy's formulations of the ultimate generalities requires the independent development of an existentialist analysis/transcendental metaphysics by way of analyzing the necessary presuppositions of self-understanding and lifepraxislife-praxis. If, as Whitehead admits, the words and phrases in which these formulations are cast "must be stretched towards a generality foreign to their ordinary usage" and therefore "remain metaphors mutely appealing for an imaginative leap," whether or not these formulations are true, or "adequate," can be decided only by appealing to the literal terms relative to which they are metaphors. 

Thus, so far as I can see, "speculative philosophy" can be justified only in the same way in which more or less explicit understandings of existence, including the "secondary" understandings of philosophy, require to be justified – namely, by reference to the metaphysics (as well as the ethics) developed by analyzing the necessary presuppositions of our self-understanding and life-praxis.

14 October 2000