The Philosopher's Handbook by Rosen Stanley

Author:Rosen, Stanley [Rosen, Stanley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-55907-4
Publisher: Random House Inc.
Published: 2009-02-18T16:00:00+00:00

PART FOUR

METAPHYSICS

INTRODUCTION

by

RICHARD VELKLEY

What Is Metaphysics?

Metaphysics—the term itself appears first in late antiquity—names the investigation of the ultimate principles, causes, origins, constituents, and categories of all things. Philosophy begins in ancient Greece as metaphysics, and from thence the tradition of metaphysical inquiry continues almost without break into the twentieth century. In our time metaphysics is thought by many as a thinking attending mostly to the supernatural, and superseded by the modern sciences to the extent that it addresses nature. The selected readings that follow and this introduction should help to correct this misinformed view.

Metaphysics is a prime instance of the essential stance of philosophy: the habitual refusal to accept the “reduction of the strange to the familiar.” It exposes a troublesome fact: the arts, sciences, and all human activities employ fundamental notions that their practitioners cannot or will not clarify and justify. For example, all the sciences save mathematics employ some idea of cause. But what is a cause? This question must be pursued by an inquiry that is logically prior to particular causal investigations. What is meant by law of nature? Through such terms as cause and law we seek to identify fundamental connections, or unities, within the world. But what makes anything “one”? Is nature itself a “one” and a whole, of some sort? Is nature's unity grounded in a single unifying principle, or is it a mere aggregate of parts?

Beyond these questions there is the question of the “why” of the natural whole. Why does it, or anything at all, exist? To pursue this question one must address some logically primary questions: What does it mean to speak of being or existence? Do these words denote properties of things, so that existing is a property like red? If it is a property, is it then separable from the thing, as red is separable from apple? Or is the existence of the apple simply the apple itself, and nothing more? But if that is the case, how is it that we can think about existence or being in some universal sense? Is there a universal class or genus being denoting a reality that exists apart from particular beings?

There is a temptation to suppose that these notions (cause, law, unity, being, etc.) exist solely through linguistic convention, and hence it should be an easy matter to settle on agreed meanings. Yet these notions, or similar ones, do not emerge randomly and accidentally, like conventions; they naturally occur whenever humans think. Furthermore, reflection on these notions and what they mean will always, as Aristotle observes, evoke wonder: “Indeed the question which was raised of old and is raised now and always, and is always the subject of doubt—is what is a Being?” Metaphysics is not just the raising of questions about being; it is the discovery that being is questionable.

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