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Philosophy Then

What is Metaphysics Anyway?

Peter Adamson considers Aristotle’s original use of the term.

I’ve occasionally had the disappointing experience of walking into a bookshop, seeing a shelf marked ‘Metaphysics’ and, beginning to peruse it, only then finding that it’s filled with volumes on mindfulness, crystals, and learning about one’s past lives. I wouldn’t be surprised if New Age enthusiasts have occasionally had the reverse disappointment upon learning that a ‘Metaphysics’ course they signed up for will involve arguing about the nature of reality, personal identity, and the problem of free will.

This confusion over what metaphysics is, exactly, is an old one. A historically-minded person asked to define this field of philosophy might say that metaphysics simply studies the sort of issues tackled in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the first work to use the word in its title. But this answer would need a significant caveat: Aristotle did not use this title himself, and indeed the book is almost certainly a collection of disparate materials cobbled together centuries after Aristotle’s death.

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