Metaphysics

🤔 Philosophy & Ethics By CampusDown Wiki Editorial Team Last updated October 15, 2026

Quick answer: Metaphysics asks what ultimately exists and how reality is structured. Starting from Aristotle's first philosophy, it passed through Kant's critique and 20th-century rejection to today's analytic metaphysics.

Contents

1. Name and scope
2. Main currents
3. Analytic metaphysics
4. References

Name and scope

The name comes from Andronicus's edition placing certain Aristotle texts "after the Physics". Aristotle called the subject first philosophy, the study of being qua being. Christian Wolff divided it into general metaphysics (ontology) and special metaphysics (cosmology, rational psychology, natural theology).

Main currents

Ancient: Parmenides, Plato's Forms (recollection), Aristotle's substance, matter and form, four causes.
Medieval: realism versus nominalism on universals; proofs of God.
Modern: Descartes's dualism, Spinoza's monism, Leibniz's monads.
Kant: reason beyond experience falls into antinomies; metaphysics becomes critique of the conditions of knowledge.
20th century: logical positivists called metaphysical claims meaningless; Heidegger sought to overcome metaphysics.

Analytic metaphysics

Quine's ontological commitment, Kripke and Lewis on possible worlds, causation, time, personal identity, mind and free will are central topics today.

References

Aristotle. Metaphysics (W. D. Ross, Trans.). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924.
Kant, I. (1781/1998). Critique of Pure Reason (P. Guyer & A. Wood, Trans.). Cambridge University Press.
Loux, M. J., & Crisp, T. M. (2017). Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (4th ed.). Routledge.
van Inwagen, P., Sullivan, M., & Bernstein, S. (2023). Metaphysics. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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This article was last updated on October 15, 2026. It is based on widely recognized original works and textbooks; when citing it in a paper, please check the original sources listed in the references.