More than one funeral has been held for metaphysical thinking. Its death is long behind us, and the authors who discovered or contributed to its demise are today read as classic thinkers on the order of Aristotle or Kant. On the other hand, the social sciences have been recording increasing amounts of empirical evidence pointing to a return of metaphysical thinking. This return is not simply a reappearance of the same thing – that is, it is not a rejection of the critique of metaphysics. Marked by its own termination, metaphysical thinking has reappeared and is looking for a new place among the various forms of diagnoses of the end of the world as we know it: the world of capitalism, anthropocentrism, an economy based on fossil fuels, and so forth. Metaphysics returns today after experiencing constructivism and radical doubt in its own possibility. At the same time, the old question about the political potential inherent in metaphysical thinking still has current foundations: social identity is still perceived in essentialist categories, and great narratives, including political ideologies and secular religions, are regaining their ability to organize the collective imagination.