Mater, Pater, and Metaphysical Love: A Philosophical Exploration of Being, Value, and Revolt

This article examines the metaphysical divide between Mater (mother, matter, body) and Pater (father, logos, abstraction) in the Western philosophical tradition, drawing on Aristotle, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, and Martin Heidegger. It analyzes how this dichotomy has shaped the conceptualization of being, value, and love, and how love, as a semiotic and reciprocal force, can transcend this opposition. Through Kristeva’s concepts of the symbolic and the semiotic, Irigaray’s advocacy for feminine transcendence, and Heidegger’s Da-sein, a redefinition of metaphysics is proposed in which the body and the chaos of Mater are no longer subordinate but form the foundation of meaning and transcendence.