Metaphysics: Definition, Concepts, and Principles
Metaphysics: Definition and Basic Concepts
Metaphysics is the study of being, that is, what all entities have in common. It examines the broadest aspects of being, including first principles and first causes.
As in many other fields, we owe the clear and concise definition of metaphysics to Aristotle (who called it “first philosophy”). Metaphysics is the science that studies entities as such and the determinations that belong to them.
The Different Meanings of Being: The Categories
The categories are the different ways we say something “that is,” to predicate something of something. “Category” (cathegorein) comes from the Greek verb that means to predicate.
Substance is something that is or exists independently, and that is the substrate (sub-stantia in Latin) of accidents and changes.
Within substance, Aristotle distinguishes:
- Primary substance: This is the individual, concrete entity. For example, Kevin and Brian.
- Secondary substance: This is the universal, the genus and species that defines that individual. In our example: child, as this refers to a large group (genus: in ancient Greece, Animal; in contemporary biology, Homo) and their specific difference (according to Aristotle, Rational; in contemporary biology, Sapiens).
Particular and Universal
These two terms coincide well with the distinction between first and second substance, but not completely. The first substance is a particular entity, of course, and the second a universal. But there are also universal concepts that refer to accidents, for example, White (quality), marriage (relationship), or large (amount).
Essence and Existence
This is also a fundamental distinction in metaphysics. It gains relevance with the rise of Arabic philosophy and becomes crucial in scholastic philosophy from Thomas Aquinas onward.
Essence corresponds quite well with the concept of secondary substance and can be defined as the set of properties that a thing cannot lack to be what it is.
Existence, however, is the property of a substance or thing in the world to actually occur in reality. It is the fact of occurring in reality.
Being and Can Be: The Ontological Modes
This is another important division in many ontological systems. It was systematically introduced, like many others, by Aristotle. He did so in an attempt to explain change, against the theses of the school of Parmenides.
The Study of First Principles and First Causes
We have repeatedly stated that metaphysics studies the first principles of being (and thinking, not study). According to tradition, these principles are threefold: identity (A = A), non-contradiction (not possible A and not A), and the excluded middle (either A or not A, and nothing else). Now, what do we mean by the word “principle”? This, both in Greek and in Castilian, can have several meanings:
Metaphysical Ontologies: Spiritualist and Materialist
Depending on the types of principles that are regarded as existing, we have what has come to be called spiritualist or materialist metaphysical ontologies. As with all classifications, however, there are times when various theories about reality are forcibly fit into these categories. Many religions and mythologies explain principles in many different ways. But philosophy, remember, begins when the natural level is separated from the supernatural, and an attempt is made to find those principles without resorting to the supernatural. In this sense, the first philosophers who speak of the first principles are the Greeks:
Thales said that everything is, ultimately, composed of water.
Anaximenes tells us that everything is made of air. We have also received his explanation about the process followed to transform things into each other: condensation and rarefaction. Air, when rarefied, becomes fire, and when condensed, it becomes steam, water, organic matter, soil, and, when very condensed, stone and metal.
Already in the 5th century BC, Empedocles tells us about the four elements that Aristotle later adopted: water, earth, air, and fire. He also identifies something as a guiding principle: love and hatred, conflicting tendencies to join and separate everything that exists.
Anaximenes was a contemporary of Pythagoras in the 6th century BC.