Metaphysics: study of being, reality, and fundamental structure of the world

The term "metaphysics" has its origin in the bibliographical designation of a work by Aristotle, which consisted of 14 books of general philosophical content. The peripatetic Andronikos of Rhodes (1st century BC), in the first edition of Aristotle, placed these books after his eight books on 'physics' (τὰ μετὰ φυσικά tà metà tà physiká 'that after/next to physics'). This gave rise to the term 'metaphysics', which thus actually means 'that which is on the shelf behind physics', but at the same time didactically means 'that which follows the explanations about nature', or scientifically-systematically means 'that which comes after physics'. Which of the two viewpoints is considered more original is disputed among historians of philosophy. The exact meaning of the word at that time is unclear. The term is first attested by Nicolaos of Damascus. Aristotle himself did not use the term.

Since late antiquity, "metaphysics" has also been used to designate an independent philosophical discipline. In late antiquity and sporadically in the early Middle Ages, metaphysics also received the name epoptics (from the Greek to look, to grasp). On the other hand, especially since the 19th century, the adjective "metaphysical" has also been used in a pejorative way in the sense of "dubiously speculative", "unscientific", "senseless", "totalitarian" or "non-empirical mind games".

Themes of metaphysics

The goal of metaphysics is the knowledge of the basic structure and principles of reality. Depending on the philosophical position, metaphysics can cover different, generally very broad subject areas.

Moreover, classical metaphysics poses a basic question, which can be formulated roughly as follows:

• Why is being at all and not rather nothing? What is the reality of the real - what is the being of the existing?

This question of an ultimate explanation of what constitutes reality as such is of a more fundamental nature than the specific individual questions of classical metaphysics. Thus, in general metaphysics, for example, the question is asked by what means a context of all being is constituted, as well as, classically, often also how this overall context can be meaningfully interpreted.

Specifically, classical metaphysics deals with topics such as:

• How are the basic concepts and principles of ontology to be analyzed, such as being and nothingness, becoming and passing away, reality and possibility, freedom and necessity, spirit and nature, soul and matter, temporality and eternity, etc.?
• What corresponds to the building blocks of our sentences and thoughts, what do they refer to, what makes them true? For example, what is the relationship between the individual (individual objects) and the general (such as the property of being red)? Does the general have an independent existence? Do numbers exist? (see also the article Universal Problem)
• What about the reference of normative and descriptive, value and being statements? What about religious beliefs? What makes each of these true? Are there moral objects (values, facts)? Is there a first principle of reality that is identifiable with a god? What would be the nature of these? What exactly would be their relation to us?

Metaphysics develops basic concepts such as form/matter, act/potency, essence, being, substance, etc.

Insofar as these basic concepts are expressible by everything that exists, they are called categories by Aristotle, Kant and authors referring to them. However, it is sometimes unclear in the interpretation whether categories are mere words or concepts or whether they correspond to independently existing objects or types of objects.

Various individual philosophical disciplines, and indirectly also various individual sciences, are built on metaphysical concepts. In this respect, metaphysics can be regarded as fundamental for philosophy in general.

Systematics and methodology

Traditionally, metaphysics is divided into a general (metaphysica generalis) and a special (metaphysica specialis) branch; the first is ontology, the other includes rational theology, psychology, and cosmology:

• General metaphysics has the highest level of abstraction of all sciences; it inquires into the most general categories of being and is therefore also called fundamental philosophy. It is concerned with what things, properties, or processes are in their essence and in what relation they stand to each other. Insofar as it examines being as being, one speaks of ontology or the theory of being.
• Rational theology asks about the first cause of all being, i.e. about God as the highest being and as the ground of all reality. This philosophical sub-discipline is also called philosophical or natural theology.
• Rational psychology deals with the soul or the (human) mind as a simple substance.
• Rational cosmology investigates the essence of the world, i.e. the connection of everything that exists in the whole. As a doctrine of the structure of the material world as a natural system of physical substances, it has essentially coincided with natural philosophy since antiquity.

Metaphysics can proceed in different ways:

1. It is deductive or speculative when it starts from a supreme principle from which it gradually interprets the total reality. Such a highest principle could be, for example, the idea, God, being, the monad, the world spirit or also the will.
2. It is inductive when, in an attempt to unite the results of all the individual sciences in an overall view, it draws up a metaphysical picture of the world.
3. But it can also be understood as reductive (neither empirical-inductive nor speculative-deductive), if one understands it only as a speculative exaggeration of those convictions that people always have to presuppose in order to be able to recognize and act at all.

Critical reflection on its own basic concepts, principles and argumentation structures was just as much a part of metaphysics from the beginning as a demarcation from the other philosophical disciplines and from the individual sciences (physics, mathematics, biology, psychology, etc.).

Metaphysical positions