Abstract
This article elaborates a claim, first introduced by Wilhelm Dilthey,
that metaphysics represents an illusory flight from the tragedy of human
finitude. Metaphysics, of which psychoanalytic metapsychologies
are a form, transforms the unbearable fragility and transience of all
things human into an enduring, permanent, changeless reality, an illusory
world of eternal truths. Three “clinical cases” illustrate this thesis
in the work and lives of a philosopher and two psychoanalytic theorists:
Friedrich Nietzsche and his metaphysical doctrine of the eternal
return of the same, Sigmund Freud and his dual instinct theory, and
Heinz Kohut and his theoretical language of the self. It is contended
that the best safeguard against the pitfalls of metaphysical illusion lies
in a shared commitment to reflection on the constitutive contexts of
all our theoretical ideas.