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- However, since the development, during the twentieth century, of the philosophies of phenomenology and its later form, existentialism, most philosophers have looked for answers based on things that we can know for sure rather than faith or wishful thinking; the phenomenologists and existentialists base their metaphysics on the observation that the only thing we can know for sure is our experience, and therefore they take the existence that we experience, or phenomena, as the first fact of...
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EXISTENTIAL METAPHYSICS. A metaphysics that is existence-oriented, as opposed to one that is essence-oriented. The term is usually applied to the 20th-century emphasis within thomism that stresses the existential significance of philosophical (and theological) ideas, i.e., the way in which such ideas ndicate or connote forms or aspects of that ...
The Metaphysics which consists of drawing out the implications of the fact that anything is at all is characteristic of the Middle Ages and neo–Thomism rather than of the nineteenth century. Cf. Cassirer, An Essay on Man, and S. K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key.
- Philip Leon
- 1953
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is often characterized as first philosophy, implying that it is more fundamental than other forms of philosophical inquiry.
- I. Definition and Key Ideas
- II. Metaphysics vs. Epistemology
- III. Famous Quotes About Metaphysics
- IV. The History and Importance of Metaphysics
- V. Metaphysics in Popular Culture
- VI. Controversies
Metaphysics is the most abstract branch of philosophy. It’s the branch that deals with the “first principles” of existence, seeking to define basic concepts like existence, being, causality, substance, time, and space. Within metaphysics, one of the main sub-branches is ontology, or the study of being. These two terms are so closely related that yo...
Whereas metaphysics is the study of reality, epistemology is the study of how we come to knowreality. There are many questions that fall into the overlap between metaphysics and epistemology. These are mainly grouped under the heading of philosophy of mind, the sub-field of philosophy that deals with how minds work, what they are made of, and how t...
Quote 1
This is one of the most basic metaphysical questions, and has been raised by several philosophers in the Western tradition. Several answers have been offered, notably the idea of a god who creates existence for the same reason an artist creates a sculpture – for the joy of creation. However, since the development, during the twentieth century, of the philosophies of phenomenology and its later form, existentialism, most philosophers have looked for answers based on things that we can know for...
Quote 2
Metaphysicians frequently ask what causality is and even whether or not there is truly any such thing. Some philosophers are extremely skeptical about causality, arguing that all we can ever know is that something happened and then something else happened. We’ll never truly know if there was a causal link between them, or if it was just a coincidence, or if some third event happened which was the realcause. Emerson, in this quote, is showing his colors as a pragmatist, or someone who believes...
Metaphysics is such a broad field that it’s hard to say when it started. The word “metaphysics” comes from Aristotle, but he was certainly not the first philosopher to raise metaphysical questions. Long before Aristotle was born, early Greek philosophers were developing all sorts of metaphysical and ontological theories: for example, the theory of ...
Example 1
The Matrixraises many philosophical questions. Most of the questions are epistemological (e.g. “how would we know if we were living inside a computer simulation like the Matrix?”), but a few are metaphysical (e.g. “what would happen to the body if the mind suffered an injury in the Matrix?”) At one point, Morpheus says that “the body cannot live without the mind,” but is that really true? The answer depends on what “the mind” is and how it relates to the body, and these are complex questions...
Example 2
(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) This is a line from the comedy writer Terry Pratchett, whose works often get their humor from philosophical puzzles. In this case, the question is “how can nothingexplode?” On one level, it simply doesn’t make sense. However, since there is very strong evidence that the Big Bang did in fact happen, the statement is worth considering. A dedicated metaphysician might try to make sense out of the idea by raising questions about what “nothing” really means; it’...
Dualism vs. Monism
Given that metaphysics is such an old field, it should come as no surprise that it has many long-running controversies. One of the oldest is between monists, who believe in a single kind of substance in the world, and dualists, who argue that there are two. “Substance” is an idea from ontology, which basically means, “what anything is made of”; so this debate is about whether everything is made of matter, or everything is made of mind–or other possibilities! Dualists differ widely in the spec...
Metaphysics: is it a waste of time?
Although metaphysics has been around for as long as philosophy itself, many philosophers have questioned whether it actually makes any sense. Ludwig Wittgenstein, for example, argued that the metaphysical was beyond the reach of human language, and therefore that it is futile to try and “describe” it as philosophers typically do. Instead, Wittgenstein argued, you had to approach metaphysical truth through other means – though he never specified what those might be. Music, art, and religious r...
- a. Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) as an Existentialist Philosopher. Kierkegaard was many things: philosopher, religious writer, satirist, psychologist, journalist, literary critic and generally considered the ‘father’ of existentialism.
- b. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) as an Existentialist Philosopher. “I know my lot. Some day my name will be linked to the memory of something monstrous, of a crisis as yet unprecedented on earth…” (Nietzsche 2007:88).
- c. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) as an Existentialist Philosopher. Heidegger exercised an unparalleled influence on modern thought. Without knowledge of his work recent developments in modern European philosophy (Sartre, Gadamer, Arendt, Marcuse, Derrida, Foucault et al.)
- d. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) as an Existentialist Philosopher. In the public consciousness, at least, Sartre must surely be the central figure of existentialism.
One of the most original contributions of Sartre’s metaphysics lies in his analysis of the notion of nothingness and the claim that it plays a central role at the heart of being (chapter 1, Part One).
Jan 6, 2023 · 1. Nihilism and the Crisis of Modernity. We can find early glimpses of what might be called the “existential attitude” (Solomon 2005) in the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies of antiquity, in the struggle with sin and desire in St. Augustine’s Confessions, in the intimate reflections on death and the meaning of life in Michel de Montaigne’s Essays, and in the confrontation with the ...
