“First foundations of an experimental metaphysics” Tensions, aporias and repressions of a materialist metaphysics

According to the most common understanding, materialism is anti-metaphysics. It instead appeals to the experimental method, to scientific practice in general, or to the empiricist bases of the evolution of Enlightenment materialism. But if Diderot writes that he places “bodies in Nature and not in (his) mind”, then why, in his article “Spinosiste”, does he explicitly identify his vital materialism with Spinoza’s metaphysical system? Here, I attempt to retrace some aporias present in the relation between materialism and metaphysics.