Metaphysics is a word originating in the Greek and which means "what is beyond physics". It is an area of philosophy that seeks the essence knowledge of things.
The common foundation of all that exists, the soul, God, the purpose of existence and being while being, for example, are objects of study in metaphysics.
Some of the questions commonly associated with philosophy such as "what are we?", "where did we come from?", "where are we going?" are metaphysical questions.
The term metaphysics was consecrated by Andronicus of Rhodes from the classification and ordering of the Aristotelian books. Those referring to the science of first principles and first causes had no classification and thus were placed after ("beyond") the writings of physics.
Metaphysics is the studies of nature that are beyond everything physical, beyond what is non-material. For this reason, nowadays, metaphysics is often a term used to refer to esoterism. The adjectives metaphysical and metaphysics, on the other hand, are used by common sense as a synonym for something inaccessible, which cannot be understood.
Metaphysics in Philosophy
Throughout history, metaphysics has taken on several different meanings. The idea arises in Plato's philosophy, referring to his "world of ideas", to the truth, which would give rise to everything we know.
For Aristotle, metaphysics is simultaneously ontology and theology, as it deals with the supreme being in the hierarchy of beings. This supreme being would be the cause of everything that exists, the first immobile engine that set the universe in motion.
The scholastic tradition, in the Middle Ages, identified metaphysics with theology, although it distinguished them by the methods used. To explain God, metaphysics appeals to reason while theology is based on divine revelation.
In the Modern Age, there is a separation between the Aristotelian and Platonic conceptions. Metaphysics as ontology becomes theory of knowledge and theory of science (epistemology); as a science of the transcendental, it becomes a theory of religion and worldviews.
Immanuel Kant, in the 18th century, who asked himself about the possibility of metaphysics as a science. your work The Foundation of Moral Metaphysics addresses human morality as a problem of reason.
In the nineteenth century, metaphysics is identified with pure speculation in the face of the positive character of the sciences. From Heidegger and Jaspers onwards, thinkers interested in the problematic of being strove to elaborate a feasible and current notion of metaphysics.
See too:
- Ontology
- Theology
- Epistemology