Please Oh
Please
And you cried and you cried
There’s something shaky about this whole enterprise
You know we’ve heard it all before
Every generation or so
Someone [bad word] along
To tell us what we’ve been doing wrong
But it’s getting hard to take them seriously
Because it’s always a different theory
It’s always a different theory

But you cried

Please stop
Please stop doing metaphysics
Please oh please stop
We can’t stop doing metaphysics
We can’t stop, we can’t stop, we can’t stop
Doing metaphysics

You can try with all your might
But F. H. Bradley had it right
It’s something you can try to disown
But you’ve a metaphysic all your own

So tell me, what’s the nature of the defect
Of the metaphysical project?
Is it semantic? epistemological?
I suppose a Heideggerian would say its onto-theological

To science are we insufficiently deferential?
Was our point of view too ahistorical?
Are our debates shallow, no more than merely verbal?
So many worries
But they’re all so blurry