A bibliography of such references would be in effect a bibliography of metaphysics, or rather of epistemology.
A comparison of these tropes with the ten tropes enumerated in the article Aenesidemus shows that scepticism has made an advance into the more abtruse questions of metaphysics.
A failure to solve the problems of metaphysics must always remain a failure, in spite of all protestations that it was inevitable; and it in no wise justifies an advance to so selfcontradictory an asylum ignorantiae as the Unknowable.
A summary of his philosophy is contained in his article "Metaphysics" in the 8th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (separately published, 1860).
Above all natural substances, the objects of natural science, there stands a supernatural substance, the object of metaphysics as theology.
Accordingly Aquinas prepared himself on this side by commentaries on Aristotle's De Inter pretatione, on his Posterior Analytics, on the Metaphysics, the Physics, the De Anima, and on Aristotle's other psychological and physical writings, each commentary having for its aim to lay hold of the material and grasp the method contained and employed in each treatise.
Accordingly, the expositors of religious metaphysics, Ghazal" included, are the enemies of true religion, because they make it a mere matter of syllogism.
After his master's death, in the third period of his own life, and during his connexion with Alexander, but before the final construction of his philosophy into a system, he was tending to write more and more in the didactic style; to separate from dialectic, not only metaphysics, but also politics, rhetoric and poetry; to admit by the side of philosophy the arts of persuasive language; to think it part of their legitimate work to rouse the passions; and in all these ways to depart from the ascetic rigidity of the philosophy of Plato, so as to prepare for the tolerant spirit of his own, and especially for his ethical doctrine that virtue consists not in suppressing but in moderating almost all human passions.
After his reception into the Church of Rome, Ward gave himself up to ethics, metaphysics and moral philosophy.
After that date two more became known; the whole was familiar to John of Salisbury in 1159; while the Physics and Metaphysics came into notice about 1200.
Again, according to both works, an individual substance is a subject, a universal its predicate; and they have in common the Aristotelian metaphysics, which differs greatly from the modern logic of subject and predicate.
Again, the method of true realism is that of Aristotle, and consists in recognizing the independence of metaphysics.
All these systems of metaphysics, differ as they may, agree that things are known to exist beyond sensible phenomena, but yet are mental realities of some kind.
Although he rejects traditional metaphysics, he does not share either the program of logical positivism or that of ordinary language philosophy.
Although, however, we may concede that such great works as the Metaphysics, the Politics and the logical writings did not receive their present form from Aristotle himself, that concession does not deprive Aristotle of the authorship, but only of the arrangement of those works.
Among his principal contributions to this work were articles on "Instinct," "Theology" and "Metaphysics."
An Aristotelian work often goes on continuously at first, and then becomes disappointing by suddenly introducing discussions which break the connexion or are even inconsistent with the beginning; as in the Posterior Analytics, which, after developing a theory of demonstration from necessary principles, suddenly makes the admission, which is also the main theory of science in the Metaphysics, that demonstration is about either the necessary or the contingent, from principles either necessary or contingent, only not accidental.
And the chief contribution of Aristotle to theism is a theory, found in his Physics as well as his Metaphysics, of God as first mover of the universe, himself unmoved.
And the need which most philosophers have felt for some philosophical foundation for morality arises, not from any desire to subordinate moral insight to speculative theory, but because the moral facts themselves are inexplicable except in the light of first principles which metaphysics alone can criticize.
Another work on what has sometimes been termed the metaphysics of language appeared from his pen in 1828, under the title of Ober den Dualis; but the great work of his life, on the ancient Kawi language of Java, was unfortunately interrupted by his death on the 8th of April 183 5.
Appointed superintendent of the cathedral school of his native city, he taught with such success as to attract pupils from all parts of France, and powerfully contributed to diffuse an interest in the study of logic and metaphysics, and to introduce that dialectic development of theology which is designated the scholastic. The earliest of his writings of which we have any record is an Exhortatory Discourse to the hermits of his district, written at their own request and for their spiritual edification.
Aristotle at once maintains the primacy of metaphysics and vindicates the independence of the special sciences.
Aristotle knew Plato, was present at his lectures on the Good, wrote a report of them (7rEpi Ta yaBoii), and described this latter philosophy of Plato in his Metaphysics.
Aristotle rightly used all the sciences of his day, and especially his own physics, as a basis of his metaphysics.
Aristotle then even in the second period of his life, while Plato, was still alive, began to differ from him in metaphysics.
Aristotle then wrote three moral treatises, which agree in the fundamental doctrines that happiness requires external fortune, but is activity of soul according to virtue, rising from morality through prudence to wisdom, or that science of the divine which constitutes the theology of his Metaphysics.
Aristotle, in a passage already cited, Metaphysics, A5, speaks of Xenophanes as the first of the Eleatic unitarians, adding that his monotheism was reached through the contemplation of the oupavos.
Aristotle, the founder of metaphysics as a distinct science, was also the founder of metaphysical realism, and still remains its main authority.
Aristotle, who made this great discovery, must have had great difficulty in developing the new investigation of reasoning processes out of dialectic, rhetoric, poetics, grammar, metaphysics, mathematics, physics and ethics; and in disengaging it from other kinds of learning.
As Paul Janet truly remarked, positivism contains an unconscious metaphysics in rejecting final causes and an immaterial soul.
As psychology recognizes a distinction of pleasure and pain, and metaphysics of good and evil, so morality assumes the difference between right and wrong in action, good and bad in character; but the distinction in psychology and metaphysics applies to what is, the difference in morality is based on a judgment of what is by what ought to be.
As such it is used specially in (1) theology and metaphysics, (2) mathematics.
As the Platonic philosophy was primarily moral, and its metaphysics a theory of the moral order of the universe, Aristotle from the first must have mastered the Platonic ethics.
As then we find this identification of pleasure with activity in the Metaphysics and in the De Anima, as well as in the Nicomachean Ethics, the Eudemian Ethics and the Magna Moralia, the only logical conclusion, from which there is no escape, is that, so far as the treatment of pleasure goes, any Aristotelian treatise which defines it as activity is genuine.
As we advance from the logic to the metaphysics and from that to his ontology, it becomes clear that the concepts are only " categories " or predicates of a reality lying outside of them, and there is an ultimate division between the world as the object or matter of thought and the thinking or moving principle which gives its life.
At Athens, the philosophers who taught in the schools hallowed by memories of Plato still openly professed what passed for Paganism, though it was really a body of moral doctrine, strongly tinged with mysticism, in which there was far more of Christianity and of the speculative metaphysics of the East than of the old Olympian religion.
At the age of sixty, having become widely known by his writings on philosophy, he was called to the chair of logic and metaphysics in the university of Naples, which he held till his death in November 1846.
At the same time, while the independence of metaphysics leads us to metaphysical realism, this is not to deny the value of psychology, still less of logic. Besides the duty of determining what we know, there is the duty of determining how we know it.
At this time he began the publication, with critical apparatus, of Boetius (De Arithmetica), and Aristotle's Physics (1492), Ethics (1497), Metaphysics (150 I) and Politics (1506).
Before the publication of the texts, when they were known only by hearsay, the term Abhidhamma was usually rendered "Metaphysics."
Beginning with metaphysics and ethics and passing on to mathematics, he turned to chemistry at the end of 17 9 7, and within a few months of reading Nicholson's and Lavoisier's treatises on that science had produced a new theory of light and heat.
Besides being a chancery lawyer, he was more particularly a philosopher, conspicuous for his knowledge of Hegelian metaphysics.
Besides his translations of Aristotle's Metaphysics and Xenophon's Memorabilia, his most important work is a treatise directed against George of Trebizond, a violent Aristotelian, entitled In Calumniatorem Platonis.
Both proceeded to take Hegelianism seriously, and between them spread a kind of Hegelian orthodoxy in metaphysics and in theology throughout Great Britain.
But although Green's loyalty to the primary facts of the moral consciousness prevented him from constructing a rationalistic system of morals based solely upon the conclusions of metaphysics, it was perhaps inevitable that the revival of interest in metaphysics so prominent in his own speculations should lead to a more daring criticism of ethical first principles in other writers.
But at any rate the process was gradual; and Aristotle was advanced in metaphysics, mathematics, physics, dialectics, rhetoric and poetics, before he became the founder of logic.
But at last, in 1718, his talents were recognized by his appointment as professor of metaphysics at the university of Copenhagen; and in 1720 he was promoted to the lucrative chair of public eloquence, which gave him a seat in the consistory.
But he continues to use the terms "philosophy," "metaphysics," and "mental science" as synonymous.
But his metaphysics is an interesting example of a phenomenalist, sympathizing with noumenalists so different as Hegel and Fechner, and yet maintaining his phenomenalism.
But in his metaphysics founded thereon he interprets the outside object to mean an object outside you and me, but not self-subsistent; not outside universal reason, but only " Bent reason."
But in order to discharge it, a reform of psychology as well as of metaphysics is required.
But it is most closely related to the sciences of metaphysics and psychology, which form with it a triad of sciences.
But it may be doubted whether he succeeds in clearly distinguishing ethical feelings from ethical judgments, and if they are to be treated as synonymous it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that the implications of moral " judgment " must involve a reference to metaphysics.
But just as the subject of every science is the manifestation of this unknown essence of life while that essence itself can only be the subject of metaphysics, even the manifestation of the force of free will in human beings in space, in time, and in dependence on cause forms the subject of history, while free will itself is the subject of metaphysics.
But some conceptions are such that the more distinct they are made the more contradictory their elements become; so to change and supplement these as to make them at length thinkable is the problem of the second part of philosophy, or metaphysics.
But the historical origin of the questions at issue is to be sought rather in theology than in metaphysics, while the discovery made from time to time by men of science of the inapplicability of natural laws or modes of operation (which they have been accustomed to regard as of universal range and necessity) to the facts or assumed facts of human activity, is a constant source of fresh discussions of the problem.
But the publication of Appearance and Reality by the same author marked a great advance in philosophical criticism of ethical postulates, and a growing dissatisfaction with current reconciliations between moral first principles and the conclusions of metaphysics.
But the subjects dealt with concern more or less all the great problems of thought on what may be called the theological side of metaphysics - the sufficiency of reason, the trustworthiness of experience, the admissibility of revelation, free will, foreknowledge, and the rest.
But there is no warrant for restricting the term to any special mode of approaching the problems indicated; and as these form the central subject of metaphysical inquiry, no valid distinction can be drawn between natural theology and general metaphysics.
But they frame their stories, necessarily and naturally, in harmony with their general theory of things, with what we may call " savage metaphysics."
But those who, like the positivists, agnostics and sceptics, deny the possibility of metaphysics as a theory of the ultimate nature of things, are still obliged to retain philosophy as a theory of knowledge, in order to justify the asserted limitation or impotence of human reason.
But we cannot classify metaphysics by the antithesis of monism and dualism without making confusion worse confounded.
But Zeller does not give enough weight either to the evidence of early composition contained in the Politics and Meteorology, or to the evidence of subsequent contemporaneous composition contained in the cross-references, e.g between the Physics and the Metaphysics.
But, in thus adapting to his own purposes the Leibnitzian analysis of material into immaterial, he drew his own conclusions according to his own metaphysics, which required that the supposed centres of force are not Leibnitzian " monads," nor Herbartian " reals," nor divine modifications such as Lotze afterwards supposed, but are elements of a system which in outer aspect is bodily and in inner aspect is spiritual, and obeying laws of spirit.
But, unfortunately for Fechner, the very opposite conclusion followed from the presuppositions of his parallelistic metaphysics, and from the Leibnitzian view of the conservation of energy, which he was the first in our time to use in order to argue that a physical cause cannot produce a psychical effect, on the ground that physical energy must be exactly replaced by physical energy.
By the gradual sifting out of the special sciences philosophy thus came to embrace primarily the inquiries grouped as "metaphysics" or "first philosophy."
Carrying on the same analytical method into the special department of moral philosophy, Green held that ethics applies to the peculiar conditions of social life that investigation into man's nature which metaphysics began.
Charles, however, has given good grounds for supposing that it is merely a preface, and that the work went on to discuss grammar, logic (which Bacon thought of little service, as reasoning was innate), mathematics, general physics, metaphysics and moral philosophy.
Clarke, include General Metaphysics (1890), by John Rickaby, who effectively criticizes Hegel by precise distinctions, which, though scholastic, did not deserve to be forgotten.
Comte tells us that man first gets over theology, then over metaphysics, and finally rests in positivism.
Consequently, the universal essence of a species of substances is not one and the same eternal essence in all the individuals of a species but only similar, and is not substance as Aristotle calls it in the Metaphysics, inconsistently with his own doctrine of substance, but is a whole number of similar substances, e.g.
Contrary to postmodern critique, Mozart's contemporaries rejected disembodied metaphysics.
Cousin made no reply to Hamilton's criticism beyond alleging that Hamilton's doctrine necessarily restricted human knowledge and certainty to psychology and logic, and destroyed metaphysics by introducing nescience and uncertainty into its highest sphere - theodicy.
During his master's life, in the second period of his own life, he protested against the Platonic hypothesis of forms, formal numbers and the one as the good, and tended to separate metaphysics from dialectic by beginning to pass from dialogues to didactic works.
English moral philosophy cannot long tolerate a metaphysics which by merging all minds in one would destroy personality, personal causation and moral responsibility, as James Martineau well said.
Ethics had been based upon logic and metaphysics.
Fechner first confused physics and metaphysics in psychophysics, and next proceeded to confuse them again in his work on evolution (Einige Ideen zur SchOpfungs and Entwicklungs-geschichte der Organismen, 1873).
Fichte's " Wissenschaftslehre," he said, is a completely untenable system, and a metaphysics of fruitless apices, in which he disclaimed any participation; his own Kritik he refused to regard as a propaedeutic to be construed by the Fichtian or any other standpoint, declaring that it is to be understood according to the letter; and he went so far as to assert that his own critical philosophy is so satisfactory to the reason, theoretical and practical, as to be incapable of improvement, and for all future ages indispensable for the highest ends of humanity.
Finally he died without completing some of his works, such as the Politics, and notably that work of his whole philosophic career and foundation of his whole philosophy - the Metaphysics - which, projected in his early criticism of Plato's philosophy of universal forms, gradually developed into his positive philosophy of individual substances, but remained unfinished after all.
Finally, in 1254, we find the university officially prescribing how many hours are to be devoted to the explanation of the Metaphysics and the principal physical treatises of Aristotle.
Finally, Schopenhauer's voluntarism has had a profound effect on psychology inside and outside Germany, and to a less degree produced attempts to deduce from voluntaristic psychology new systems of voluntaristic metaphysics, such as those of Paulsen and Wundt.
Five years later he became professor ordinarius of logic and metaphysics; in 1759 he exchanged this for a professorship of rhetoric and poetry.
Following this summary philosophy come the sciences proper, rising like a pyramid in successive stages, the lowest floor being occupied by natural history or experience, the second by physics, the third, which is next the peak of unity, by metaphysics.
For granting that it places the centre of reality outside the individual self it does so only at the price of reducing the reality of the latter to an appearance; 1 Institutes of Metaphysics (1854); Works (1866).
For metaphysics Clauberg suggested the names ontosophy or ontology,, the latter being afterwards adopted by Wolff.
For metaphysics, properly so called, and even psychology, except so far as it afforded a basis for ethics, he evidently had no taste.
For this investigation Aristotle's most usual name is "first philosophy" or, as a modern might say, "first principles"; but there has since been appropriated to it, apparently by accident, the title "metaphysics."
For though both works rest on the reality of individual substances, the Categories (chap. 5) admits that universal species and genera can be called substances, whereas the Metaphysics (Z 13) denies that a universal can be a substance at all.
For what does it matter to metaphysics whether by association sensations suggest ideas, and so give rise to ideas of substance and causation a posteriori, or synthetic unity of consciousness combines sensations by a priori notions of substance and causation into objects which are merely mental phenomena of experience, when it is at once allowed by the followers of Hume and Kant alike that reason in any logical use has no power of inferring things beyond the experience of the reasoner?
Forty times, it is said, he read through the Metaphysics of Aristotle, till the words were imprinted on his memory; but their meaning was hopelessly obscure, until one day they found illumination from the little commentary by Farabi, which he bought at a bookstall for the small sum of three dirhems. So great was his joy at the discovery, thus made by help of a work from which he had expected only mystery, that he hastened to return thanks to God, and bestowed an alms upon the poor.
Fran invited Dr. Kevin to join a group that met on Sundays to discuss metaphysics.
From 1801 to 1804 he was professor of philosophy at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, after which he succeeded Kant in the chair of logic and metaphysics at the university of Konigsberg.
From the age of sixteen to nearly twenty his health was so unsatisfactory that he attended neither school nor college, bilt worked at Chaldee and Syriac, began to read Arabic, and mastered 'S Gravesande's Natural Philosophy, together with various textbooks of logic and metaphysics.
From the Roman Catholic point of view this reaction to " Thomism " was a timely protest against modern metaphysics.
Geulincx carried out to their extreme consequences the irreconcilable elements in the Cartesian metaphysics, and his works have the peculiar value attaching to the vigorous development of a one-sided principle.
Hamilton encouraging the confusion by speaking of "psychology or metaphysics," 1 while his lectures on metaphysics are mainly taken up with what belongs in the strictest sense to psychology proper, with an occasional excursus (as in the theory of perception) into epistemology.
He accordingly set himself to studying various branches of literature, specially metaphysics and moral philosophy.
He believed in reciprocal action; and the very essence of his metaphysics consists in sublimating the interaction of bodies into the interaction of immaterial elements, which produce effects on one another and on the soul as one of them.
He edited the North British Review from 1850 to 1857, and in 1856, having previously been a Free Church minister, he succeeded Sir William Hamilton as professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Edinburgh University.
He entered the order of the Dominicans at the age of sixteen, and ten years later became doctor of theology at Padua, where he was subsequently professor of metaphysics.
He expressed in an eager, disjointed, but condensed and laboured fashion, certain deep-lying convictions - that philosophy must come back from unsubstantial metaphysics to the solid facts of human nature and natural science, that the human body was no less important than the human spirit ("Der Mensch ist was er isst") and that Christianity was utterly out of harmony with the age.
He further denies that Aristotle identified his First Philosophy with a " theology," holding the text of the Metaphysics to be out of order and 1 Philosophische Monatshefte (1888), Heft 1 and 2.
He graduated at Western Reserve College in 1864 and at Andover Theological Seminary in 1869; preached in Edinburg, Ohio, in 1869-1871, and in the Spring Street Congregational Church of Milwaukee in 5875-5879; and was professor of philosophy at Bowdoin College in 58 791881, and Clark professor of metaphysics and moral philosophy at Yale from 1881 till 5905, when he took charge of the graduate department of philosophy and psychology; he became professor emeritus in 1905.
He had a distinguished university career at Edinburgh, and Balliol College, Oxford, and after being fellow of Jesus and tutor of Balliol was elected professor of logic and metaphysics at St Andrews.
He has not bequeathed an imposing system, hardly even a striking discovery in metaphysics, but he is a signal example in the Anglo-Saxon world of the love of attainable truth for the sake of truth and goodness.
He is inclined, therefore, to regard as the function of metaphysics the complete statement of these ultimate, indemonstrable notions, and therefore the determination of the limits to knowledge by their means.
He is unconsciously returning to the metaphysics of Aristotle in spirit; yet he differs from toto coelo in the letter.
He left others imperfectly arranged, and some of the most important, the Metaphysics, the Politics and the logical writings.
He means that the logical analysis of demonstration in the Analytics would teach them beforehand that there cannot be demonstration, though there must be induction, of an axiom, or any other principle; whereas, if they are not logically prepared for metaphysics, they will expect a demonstration of the axiom, as Heraclitus, the Heraclitean Cratylus and the Sophist Protagoras actually did, - and in vain.
He once for all lifted the problem of metaphysics to a higher level, and, in conjunction with his successor, Hume, determined the form into which later metaphysical questions have been thrown.
He previously, in the same year, finished his treatises on the Metaphysics of Ethics, which, with his Anthropology, completed in 1798, were the last considerable works that he revised with his own hand.
He rejected the Platonic hypothesis of forms, and affirmed that they are not separate but common, without however as yet having advanced to a constructive metaphysics of his own; while at the same time, after having at first adopted his master's dialectical treatment of metaphysical problems, he soon passed from dialogues to didactic works,, which had the result of separating metaphysics from dialectic. The all-important consequence of this first departure from Platonism was that Aristotle became and remained primarily a metaphysician.
He soon, however, turned his attention to metaphysics and psychology, and for the North American Review and later for the National he wrote philosophical essays on the lines of Mill, Darwin and Spencer.
He spent all his spare time in the study of classics, history, metaphysics and political economy, and in learning German, French and Italian.
He supposes in metaphysics the same transcendence in forming cosmological, psychological, and ontological " ideals."
He thought that the source of all things was moisture and is by Aristotle coupled with Thales (Metaphysics, A 3).
He went first to University College, London; at Heidelberg he worked at German; at Berlin he studied psychology, metaphysics and also physiology under du Bois-Reymond, and heard lectures on Hegel, Kant and the history of philosophy, ancient and modern.
He withdrew in 1794 from society; next year he gave up all his classes but one public lecture on logic or metaphysics; and in 1797, before the removal of the interdict on his theological teaching, he ceased altogether his public labours, after an academic course of fortytwo years.
He wrote both on psychology and on metaphysics, but is known especially as a historian of philosophy.
Hegel, having identified being with thought, merged metaphysics in logic. But he divided logic into objective and subjective, and thus practically confessed that there is one science of the objects and another of the pro cesses of thought.
Hegel's lectures, in the winter of 1801-1802, on logic and metaphysics were attended by about eleven students.
Hence, to proceed from psychology to metaphysics is to proceed from the less to the more known; and the paradoxes of psychological have caused those of metaphysical idealism.
Heraclitus is in a real sense the founder of metaphysics.
Here we have only room for its spirit, which we shall try to give as if he were himself speaking to us, as head of the Peripatetic school at Athens, and holding no longer the early views of his dialogues, or the immature views of such treatises as the Categories, but only his mature views, such as he expresses in the Metaphysics.
Herein he identified metaphysics and ethics, combining the good with the truly existent and evil with the non-existent.
His aim is to remedy this defect by psychology, under the conviction that a true metaphysics is at bottom psychology, and a true psychology fundamentally metaphysics.
His best-known extant work is a commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle.
His First Principles, his book on metaphysics, is founded on this same point, that what we know is phenomena produced by an unknown noumenal power.
His intellect was profound and comprehensive, thoroughly qualified to grapple with the deepest problems of metaphysics, but by natural preference occupying itself mainly with the practical and moral.
His knowledge of the metaphysics of Spinoza was such that he was selected by one of the professors to prepare materials for a treatise De Spinosismo, which was afterwards published.
His Logic, Metaphysics, Physics, De Caelo, are treatises giving a synoptic view of Aristotelian doctrine.
His memory began to fail, and a large work at which he wrought night and day, on the connexion between physics and metaphysics, was found to be only a repetition of his already published doctrines.
His more general research interests include metaphysics, the philosophy of mind and Early Modern Philosophy, especially Descartes and Locke.
His reputation soon widened, and in 1754 he became professor of logic, metaphysics and Greek in the university of Reggio, and in 1760 was translated to Modena, where he continued to teach with great assiduity and success, but devoted his whole leisure to natural science.
His theory of the nature of will was his own, and arrived at from a voluntaristic psychology leading to a voluntaristic metaphysics of his own.
How does this issue impact not only on inter-faith dialog but on the underlying metaphysics and theology of this question?
How otherwise, we wonder, could one man writing alone and with so few predecessors compose the first systematic treatises on the psychology of the mental powers and on the logic of reasoning, the first natural history of animals, and the first civil history of one hundred and fifty-eight constitutions, in addition to authoritative treatises on metaphysics, biology, ethics, politics, rhetoric and poetry; in all penetrating to the very essence of the subject, and, what is most wonderful, describing more facts than any other man has ever done on so many subjects ?
However this may be, the power of the movement is visible enough from the spread of Thomism over the civilized world, and in England from the difference between the freer treatment of metaphysics by some Roman Catholic writers and that which has arisen under the immediate influence of Thomism.
I don't think any linguistic metaphysics is of any value unless account is taken of the points that it raises.
Ideal metaphysics, though they fail of the inner truth of things, have a value as the embodiment of high aspirations, in the same way as poetry and religion.
If self-consciousness be treated in this objective fashion, then we pass naturally from epistemology to metaphysics or ontology.
If so, materialism is not the whole truth of metaphysics.
If the theory of knowledge thus passes insensibly into metaphysics it becomes somewhat difficult to assign a distinct sphere to logic (q.v.).
In 1705 Cartesianism was still subject to prohibitions from the authorities; but in a project of new statutes, drawn up for the faculty of arts at Paris in 1720, the Method and Meditations of Descartes were placed beside the Organon and the Metaphysics of Aristotle as text-books for philosophical study.
In 1744 was published the Siris, partly occasioned by the controversy as to the efficacy of tar-water in cases of small-pox, but rising far above the circumstance from which it took its rise, and revealing hidden depths in the Berkeleian metaphysics.
In 1770 he obtained the chair of logic and metaphysics at Konigsberg, and delivered as his inaugural address the dissertation De mundi sensibilis et intelligibilis forma et principiis.
In 1836 Sir William Hamilton was appointed to the chair of Logic and Metaphysics, and Fraser became his pupil.
In 1847-1850 he was professor of moral philosophy and metaphysics at Amherst; and in 1850-1854 was Washburn professor of Church history, and in 1854-1874 Roosevelt professor of systematic theology, at Union Theological Seminary.
In 1860 appeared Fechner's Elemente der Psychophysik, a work which deeply affected subsequent psychology, and almost revolutionized metaphysics of body and soul, and of physical and psychical relations generally.
In a MS. of 102 quarto sheets, of which the first three and the seventh are wanting, there is preserved the original sketch of the Hegelian system, so far as the logic and metaphysics and part of the philosophy of nature are concerned.
In brief then the common ground of the Categories and the Metaphysics is the fundamental position that all things are substances having belonging to them universals and attributes, which have no separate being as Plato falsely supposed.
In Fichte's system the connexion of ethics and metaphysics is still more intimate; indeed, we may compare it in this respect to Platonism; as Plato blends the most fundamental notions of each of these studies in the one idea of good, so Fichte blends them in the one idea free-will.
In France there are the works of Cousin (1835), Felix Ravaisson, who wrote on the Metaphysics (1837-1846), and Barthelemy St Hilaire, who translated the Organon and other works (1844 seq.).
In he was chosen professor at the gymnasium of his native town, in 1763 librarian to the university, in 1770 professor of rhetoric, and in 1782 of logic and metaphysics.
In his Antient Metaphysics (1 779- 1 799), Monboddo conceived man as gradually elevating himself from an animal condition, in which his mind is immersed in matter, to a state in which mind acts independently of body.
In his Psychology Herbart rejects altogether the doctrine of mental faculties as one refuted by his metaphysics, and tries to show that all psychical phenomena whatever result from the action and interaction of elementary ideas or presentations (Vorstellungen).
In his writings, which were numerous, he seems to have covered nearly the whole of the Academic programme; but metaphysics and ethics were the subjects which principally engaged his thoughts.
In line with this, too, is his demand that psychology shall be cleared of metaphysics; and to his lead is no doubt due in great measure the position that psychology has now acquired as a distinct positive science.
In logic and metaphysics it investigates either the process of apprehension itself, or conceptions such as cause, substance, space, time, which the ordinary scientific consciousness never criticizes.
In metaphysics and in natural history Aristotle was a law to him, and in medicine Galen, but he was not a slave to the text or the details of either.
In metaphysics, accidentalism denies the doctrine that everything occurs or results from a definite cause.
In modern philosophy the phenomenon is neither the "thing-in-itself," nor the noumenon or object of pure thought, but the thingin-itself as it appears to the mind in sensation (see especially Kant; and Metaphysics).
In philosophy, properly so called, the humanistic scorn for medieval dullness and obscurity swept away theological metaphysics as valueless.
In proportion as the Christian Church had to go deeper into metaphysics in the formulation of its belief as to God, as to Christ, as to the soul, the Greek philosophical terminology, which was the only vehicle then available for precise thought, had to become more and more an essential part of Christianity.
In pure metaphysics the term "immanence-philosophy" is given to a doctrine held largely by German philosophers (Rehmke, Leclair, Schuppe and others) according to which all reality is reduced to elements immanent in consciousness.
In respect to them, the final result was found in a series of irreducible notions or categories, the prima possibilia, the analysis and elucidation of which was specifically the business of philosophy or metaphysics.
In science and theology, mathematics and poetry, metaphysics and law, he is a competent and always a fair if not a profound critic. The bent of his own mind is manifest in his treatment of pure literature and of political speculation - which seems to be inspired with stronger personal interest and a higher sense of power than other parts of his work display.
In science the process has been reversed; nature ascends, so to speak, into the region of the supernatural and subdues it to itself; the marvellous or miraculous is brought under the domain of natural law, the canons of physics extend over metaphysics, and religion takes its place as one element in the natural relationship of man to his environment.
In short, his metaphysics was founded on a misnomer, and simply consisted in calling unconscious force by the name of unconscious will (Unbewusster Wille).
In Some Dogmas of Religion (1906), he uses " dogma " of affirmations, whether supported by reasoning or merely asserted, if they claim " metaphysical " value, metaphysics being defined as " the systematic study of the ultimate nature of reality."
In the course of further centuries these books in turn were superseded by new treatises; and in one school at least, that of the Maha-yana (great vehicle) there was eventually developed a system of metaphysics.
In the Metaphysics (A 7, 1072 b 16), in discussing the occupation of God, he says " his pleasure is activity," or " his activity is pleasure," according to a difference of readings which makes no difference to the identification of pleasure and activity (b pyELa).
In the middle of the century two men sought to incorporate in their philosophy the physical basis which Hegel had ignored in his spiritism - recognizing that life is conditioned by an environment and not an abstraction for metaphysics.
In the unwritten lectures of his old age, he developed this formal into a mathematical metaphysics.
In the very first days of his sojourn he had written a pamphlet with the imposing title of Treatise on Metaphysics.
In them is foreshadowed all that he afterwards worked out in metaphysics, psychology, ethics and aesthetics.
In theology the appearance of dualism is sporadic and has not the fundamental, determining importance which it has in metaphysics.
In these main contentions the Eleatic school achieved a real advance, and paved the way to the modern conception of metaphysics.
In this aversion to a purely or mainly intellectual training may be traced a recoil from the systematic metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle, whose tendency was to subordinate the practical man to the philosopher.
In this case metaphysics generally will have to recognize three monisms, a materialistic monism of body, an idealistic monism of soul, and a realistic monism of substance, which is also a dualism of substances.
In this direction pragmatism may ultimately lead to a number of metaphysics, each of which will represent a personal guess at a final synthesis of experience, while remaining essentially undogmatic and improvable.
In thus reverting to the crudities of certain Pythagoreans, he laid himself open to the criticisms of Aristotle, who, in his Metaphysics, recognizing amongst contemporary Platonists three principal groups - (1) those who, like Plato, distinguished mathematical and ideal numbers; (2) those who, like Xenocrates, identified them; and (3) those who, like Speusippus, postulated mathematical numbers only - has much to say against the Xenocratean interpretation of the theory, and in particular points out that, if the ideas are numbers made up of arithmetical units, they not only cease to be principles, but also become subject to arithmetical operations.
Instead, therefore, of fate or necessity, or matter, or the unknown, a living, active mind is looked upon as the centre and spring of the universe, and this is the essence of the Berkeleian metaphysics.
Into questions of metaphysics, as commonly understood, Bacon can hardly be said to have entered, but a long line of thinkers have drawn inspiration from him, and it is not without justice that he has been looked upon as the originator and guiding spirit of what is known as the empirical school.
It also contained much that was doubtful, and much that was ill-adapted to the metaphysics of realism.
It becomes necessary, therefore, to determine how far Fechner derived his psychophysics from experience, how far from fallacies of inference, from his romantic imagination and from his theosophic metaphysics, which indeed coloured his whole book on psychophysics.
It does not, with the former, regard logic as purely formal in the sense of abstracting thought from being, nor does it follow the latter in amalgamating metaphysics with logic by identifying being with thought.
It follows that Aristotelianism in the Categories and in the Metaphysics is a realism both of individuals and of universals; of individual substances as real subjects, and of universals as real predicates.
It gives too much weight to Aristotle's logic, and too little to his metaphysics, on account of two prejudices of the commentators which led them to place both logic and physics before metaphysics.
It has frequently tended, however, and still tends, to be used as specially convertible with the narrower term "metaphysics."
It illustrates well how energetic and vital, and how fruitful, is much of the debate in contemporary metaphysics.
It is a great mistake to suppose that because he took no great part in politics he had no interest in the practical questions of his time, or that he was so immersed in metaphysics as to live in the clouds.
It is clear then that a man's metaphysics and psychology must colour his logic. It is accordingly necessary to the logician to know beforehand the general distinctions and principles of things in metaphysics, and the mental operations of sense, conception, memory and experience in psychology, so as to discover the processes of inference from experience about things in logic.
It is curious, in the first place, to find the independence of moral philosophy upon metaphysics supported by metaphysical arguments.
It is evident that a philosophy containing so many questionable opinions is not fit to be made into an authoritative orthodoxy in metaphysics.
It is evident that philosophy as theory of knowledge must have for its complement philosophy as metaphysics (ontology) or theory of being.
It is evident, however, that if logic deals with conceptions which may be considered constitutive of knowledge as such, and if ethics deals with the harmonious realization of human life, which is the highest known form of existence, both sciences must have a great deal of weight in the settling of the general question of metaphysics.
It is more likely that Aristotle identified pleasure with activity in the De Anima, the Metaphysics and the three moral treatises, as we have seen; but that afterwards some subsequent Peripatetic, considering that the pleasure of perceiving or thinking is not the same as perceiving or thinking, declared the previous identification of pleasure with activity absurd.
It is really just a suggestion of how we might come to terms with the Eastern idea of enlightenment by looking at western metaphysics.
It is thus contrasted with metaphysics, which considers the nature of reality, and with psychology, which deals with the objective part of cognition, and, as Prof. James Ward said, "is essentially genetic in its method" (Mind, April 1883, pp. 166-167).
It is to her that the Principles of Philosophy were dedicated; and in her alone, according to Descartes, were united those generally separated talents for metaphysics and for mathematics which are so characteristically co-operative in the Cartesian system.
It is, however, not the real order for studying the philosophy of Aristotle, because there is more Metaphysics in his Physics than Physics in his Metaphysics, and more Metaphysics in his Logic than Logic in his Metaphysics.
It shows the influence of the Sepher Yesirah, is marked by the teaching of a celestial Trinity, is a rough outline of what the Zohar was destined to be, and gave the first opening to a thorough study of metaphysics among the Jews.
It will not be easy to infuse into so abstract and bloodless a term as "metaphysics" the fuller life (and especially the inclusion of ethical considerations) suggested by the more concrete term "philosophy."
Jude Currivan PhD is a healer and scientist who has studied metaphysics and experienced multi-dimensional realities since early childhood.
Justinian himself, with the aid of Leontius of Byzantium (c. 4 8 5-543), a monk with a decided turn for Aristotelian logic and metaphysics, had tried to reconcile the Cyrillian and Chalcedonian positions, but he inclined more and'more towards the monophysite view, and even went so far as to condemn by edict three teachers (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret, the opponent of Cyril, and Ibas of Edessa) who were offensive to the monophysites.
Kant swept away, so far as his influence extended, such " dogmatic metaphysics " and the old-fashioned theism which it constituted or included; but Kant himself introduced, in his own more sceptical yet also more moral type of theistic doctrine, a new trichotomy - God, Freedom, Immortality, the three " postulates " of the practical reason."
Kant's critical philosophy thus undercuts what rationalist metaphysics had offered as proofs for the existence of God.
Laurie's metaphysics is an attempt to supply a psychological propaedeutic to Hegelian metaphysics.
Like all true followers of Kant, Riehl prefers epistemology to metaphysics; yet in reality he founds a metaphysics on epistemology, which he calls " critical realism," so far as it asserts a knowledge of things beyond phenomena, and " critical monism," so far as it holds that these things are unlike both physical and psychical phenomena, but are nevertheless the common basis of both.
Linnaeus's primarily zoological classification of man did not, however, suit the philosophical opinion of the time, which responded more readily to the systems represented by Buffon, and later by Cuvier, in which the human mind and soul formed an impassable wall of partition between him and other mammalia, so that the definition of man's position in the animal world was treated as not belonging to zoology, but to metaphysics and theology.
Logic cannot, it is true, decide what these things are, nor what the senses know about them, without appealing to metaphysics and psychology.
Logic, ethics and physics, psychology, theory of knowledge and metaphysics are all fused together by Plato in a semi-religious synthesis.
Lotze resolves space into " ideal space "; and finally, in the philosophy of religion, or in view of the thought of God (in his Metaphysics), he denies the objective existence of time.
Lotze's metaphysics is thus distinguished from the theism of Newton and Leibnitz by its pantheism, and from the pantheism of Spinoza by its idealism.
Maha-vira treated ethics as corollary and subordinate to his metaphysics, with which he was chiefly concerned."
Man's place is not even central, as he appears a temporary inhabitant of a minor planet in one of the lesser stellar systems. Every science is involved, and theology has come into conflict with metaphysics, logic, astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, zoology, biology, history and even economics and medicine.
Mansel and Jowett, Green and Caird, Bradley and Bosanquet arose in quick succession, the predecessors of a generation which aims at a new metaphysics.
Mario Perniola has argued that these opposing meanings arise from the different metaphysics underlying the Greek and the Judaic traditions.
Menger's understanding of economic theory is essentialist and grounded in Aristotelian metaphysics.
Metaphor has replaced metaphysics and the Western-style rhetoric has replaced mystery.
Metaphysics and speculative theories were valueless for Paul; he was conscious of a mighty power transforming his own life and filling him with joy, and that this power was identical with Jesus of Nazareth he knew.
Metaphysics as Metaphor Many philosophers think that physicalism is a naturalistic metaphysics as Metaphor Many philosophers think that physicalism is a naturalistic metaphysics.
Metaphysics he held to be based on psychology.
Metaphysics is the science of being in general, and therefore of the things which become objects apprehended by our minds.
Metaphysics, again, is concerned with the ultimate problems of matter and spirit; it endeavours to go behind the phenomena of sense and focus its attention on the fundamental truths which are the only logical bases of natural science.
Metaphysics, on the other hand, is analytical in method; in it the notions are given, and by analysis they are cleared up. It is to be observed that the description of mathematics as synthetic is not an anticipation of the critical doctrine on the same subject.
Moreover, even in the Categories as names signifying distinct things they imply distinct things; and hence the Categories, as well as the Metaphysics, draws the metaphysical conclusion that individual substances are the things without which there is nothing else, and thereby lays the positive foundation of the philosophy running through all the extant Aristotelian writings.
Moreover, he compared dialectic and sophistry, on account of their generality, with primary philosophy in the Metaphysics (P 2, 1004 b 17-26); to the effect that all three concern themselves with all things, but that about everything metaphysics is scientific, dialectic tentative, sophistry apparent, not real.
My argument is that mechanical realist metaphysics are necesssary in order to make it seamless.
No real advance in metaphysics can take place, and natural science itself is in some danger, until the true history of the evidences of the laws of mechanical force is restored; and then it will soon appear that in the force of collision what we know is not material points determining one another's opposite accelerations, but bodies by force of impenetrable pressure causing one another to keep apart.
Not long ago, in England at all events, metaphysics was merged in psychology.
Nothing could be farther from Green's teaching than the belief that constructive metaphysics could, unaided by the intuitions of the moral consciousness, discover laws for the regulation of conduct.
Now, when in surrendering theology and metaphysics we have also to surrender God and the soul, we are not free from materialism.
Of metaphysics proper Voltaire neither then nor at any other time understood anything, and the subject, like every other, merely served him as a pretext for laughing at religion with the usual reservation of a tolerably affirmative deism.
Of the imperfect arrangement of the Metaphysics we have already spoken; and we shall speak of that of his logical writings when we come to the order of his whole system.
On either alternative, however, " the first discourses " mentioned may have originally been a separate discourse; for Book F begins quite fresh with the definition of the science of being, long afterwards called " Metaphysics," and Book Z begins Aristotle's fundamental doctrine of substance.
On the contrary, Theophrastus and Eudemus, his immediate followers, both wrote works presupposing Aristotle's Metaphysics and his logical works, and Dicaearchus, their contemporary, used his Politics for his own Tripoliticus.
On the other hand, Aristotle entitles the science of all being " Primary Philosophy " (irpcori OeXoaoOla), and the science of physical being " Secondary Philosophy " (SEUTEpa 49eXoa041a), which suggests that his order is from Metaphysics to Physics, the reverse of his editor's order from Physics to Metaphysics.
On the other hand, in the Metaphysics (Z 13), he distinctly denies that any universal can be a substance, on the ground that a substance is a subject, whereas a universal is a predicate and a belonging of a subject, from which it follows as he says that no universal is a substance, and no substance universal.
On the other hand, in the Metaphysics, the distinction between inherence and predication disappears; and what is more, the relation of an attribute to a substance is regarded as so close that an attribute is merely the substance modified.
On the whole then, in his early dialectical and didactic writings, of which mere fragments remain, Aristotle had already diverged from Plato, and first of all in metaphysics.
On these foundations he builds the details of his idealistic metaphysics.
Once you have the basics and are starting to examine the deeper meanings of the hexagrams, other texts can introduce you to the metaphysics and cosmology involved.
One cannot but feel regret at seeing the Reformed Churches blown about by every wind of doctrine, and catching at straws now from Kant, now from Hegel, and now from Lotze, or at home from Green, Caird, Martineau, Balfour and Ward in succession, without ever having considered the basis of their faith; while the Roman Catholics are making every effort to ground a Universal Church on a sane system of metaphysics.
One mass of Greek and Roman erudition, including history and metaphysics, law and science, civic institutions and the art of war, mythology and magistracies, metrical systems and oratory, agriculture and astronomy, domestic manners and religious rites, grammar and philology, biography and numismatics, formed the miscellaneous subject-matter of this so-styled rhetoric. Notes taken at these lectures supplied young scholars with hints for further exploration; and a certain tradition of treating antique authors for the display of general learning, as well as for the elucidation of their texts, came into vogue, which has determined the method of scholarship for the last three centuries in Europe.
One of Price's most intimate friends was Dr Priestley, in spite of the fact that they took the most opposite views on morals and metaphysics.
Other commentaries on the Topics and the first six books of the Metaphysics still exist in manuscript.
Perhaps something similar occurred to the Metaphysics, as Alexander imputed its redaction to Eudemus, and the majority of ancient commentators attributed its second opening (Book a) to Pasicles, nephew of Eudemus.
Permission was given to lecture on the logical books, both those which had been known all along and those introduced since 1128, but the veto upon the Physics is extended to the Metaphysics and the summaries of the Arabian commentators.
Phenomenal Idealism In Germany Phenomenal idealism is the metaphysics which deduces that, as we begin by perceiving nothing but mental phenomena of sense, so all we know at last from these data is also phenomena of sense, actual or possible.
Philosophy, even under its most discredited name of metaphysics, has no other subjectmatter than the nature of the real world, as that world lies around us in everyday life, and lies open to observers on every side.
Plato and Speusippus in the Ethics, Eudoxus and Callippus in the Metaphysics, he was writing these passages after the deaths of these persons; but he might have been also writing the Ethics and the Metaphysics both beforehand and afterwards.
Psychology or metaphysics tend in their systems to usurp the place of authority formerly assigned to ethics proper.
Reference should be made either to the individual philosophers themselves or to articles on metaphysics or on ethics.
Reference to the articles on Logic, Metaphysics, &c., will show that subsequent criticism, however much it has owed by way of stimulus to Mill's strenuous rationalism, has been able to point to much that is inconsistent, inadequate and even superficial in his writings.
Regis, by removing the paradoxes and adjusting the metaphysics to the popular powers of apprehension, made Cartesianism popular, and reduced it to a regular system.
Renan began to perceive the essential contradiction between the metaphysics which he studied and the faith that he professed, but an appetite for truths that can be verified restrained his scepticism.
Ross has translated the Metaphysics.
Science, he says, may be compared to a tree; metaphysics is the root, physics is the trunk, and the three chief branches are mechanics, medicine and Ouvres, viii.
See METAPHYSICS; and Lange's History of Materialism.
She was an accomplished linguist, musician and mathematician, and deeply interested in metaphysics.
So again, in his last great ethico-political treatise (the Laws) there is hardly a trace of his peculiar metaphysics.
So far he reminds one of Herbart, who founded his " realistic " metaphysics on similar misunderstandings; except that, while Herbart concluded that the world consists of a number of simple " reals," each with a simple quality but unknown, Bradley concludes that reality is one absolute experience which harmonizes the supposed contradictions in an unknown manner.
So far true metaphysics is a dualism of body and soul.
So far true metaphysics is a monism of substance, in the sense that all things are substances and that all substances, however different, are members of one substance, the whole universe of body and spirit.
So soon as we make clear to ourselves the essential nature of this method, we are able to discern the specific difficulties or perplexities arising ' See further Idealism; Metaphysics; Logic, &c., where Kant's relation to subsequent thought is discussed.
Sometimes, however, doctrine becomes so intertwined with the older metaphysics that they are difficult to separate.
Speculative or theoretical natural philosophy has to deal with natural substances and qualities and is subdivided into physics and metaphysics.
Subsidiary to metaphysics, as the central inquiry, stand the sciences of logic and ethics, to which may be added aesthetics, constituting three normative sciences - sciences, that is, which do not, primarily, describe facts, but rather prescribe ends or set forth ideals.
Such is Aristotle's realism of individuals and universals, contained in his primary philosophy, as expressed in the Metaphysics, especially in Book Z, his authoritative pronouncement on being and substance.
Such is Aristotle's theological realism without materialism and the origin of all spiritualistic realism, contained in his Metaphysics (A 6-end).
Such is the great mind of Aristotle manifested in the large map of learning, by which we have now to determine the order of his extant philosophical writings, with a view to studying them in their real order, which is neither chronological nor traditional, but philosophical and scientific. Turning over the pages of the Berlin edition, but passing over works which are perhaps spurious, we should put first and foremost speculative philosophy, and therein the primary philosophy of his Metaphysics (980 a 211093 b 29); then the secondary philosophy of his Physics, followed by his other physical works, general and biological, including among the latter the Historia Animalium as preparatory to the De Partibus Animalium, and the De Anima and Parva Naturalia, which he called " physical " but we call " psychological" (184 a 10-967 b 27); next, the practical philosophy of the Ethics, including the Eudemian Ethics and the Magna Moralia as earlier and the Nicomachean Ethics as later (1094-124 9 b 25), and of the Politics (1252-1342), with the addition of the newly discovered Athenian Constitution as ancillary to it; finally, the productive science, or art, of the Rhetoric, including the earlier Rhetoric to Alexander and the later Rhetorical Art, and of the Poetics, which was unfinished (1354-end).
The allegorical interpretations and metaphysics which had been imported into religion had taken men's minds away from the plain sense of the Koran.
The attitude itself is as old as Scepticism; but the expressions "agnostic" and "agnosticism" were applied by Huxley to sum up his deductions from those contemporary developments of metaphysics with which the names of Hamilton ("the Unconditioned") and Herbert Spencer ("the Unknowable") were associated; and it is important, therefore, to fix precisely his own intellectual standpoint in the matter.
The basis of Bradley's logic is the fallacious dialectic of Hegel's metaphysics, founded on the supposition that two things, which are different, but have something in common, are the same.
The body may perhaps compensates for the loss of a true metaphysics.
The connexion of ethics with metaphysics will be patent as a matter of fact, if it be remembered how Plato's philosophy is summed up in the idea of the good, and how Aristotle also employs the essentially ethical notion of end as the ultimate category by which the universe may be explained or reduced to unity.
The contrary method is psychological metaphysics, which makes metaphysics dependent on psychology, on the ground that the origin of knowledge determines its limits.
The doctrine that all things are substances which are separate individuals, stated in the Categories, is expanded in the Metaphysics.
The doctrine that matter can be divided into, or regarded as composed of, discrete particles (termed " atoms " by early writers, and " molecules " by modern ones) has at all times played an important part in metaphysics and natural science.
The earlier doctors who avail themselves of Aristotle's works, while bowing to his authority implicitly in matters of logic, are generally found defending a Christianized Platonism against the doctrine of the Metaphysics.
The extent to which these two attitudes have been combined or separated is discussed in the ensuing article which deals with the various schools of modern metaphysics in relation to the principles of the Aristotelian " first philosophy."
The first deals with mere party questions without sincerity and without depth; and the second, composed as an amusement in retirement without any serious preparation, in their attacks on metaphysics and theology and in their feeble deism present no originality and carry no conviction.
The first difference then between the Categories and the Metaphysics is in the nature of an attribute; and the theory of inherence in the Categories is nearer to Plato and more rudimentary than the theory of predication in the Metaphysics.
The first kind of investigation rises little above mere natural history; but the other is more important and paves the way for metaphysics.
The first two divisions - the " objective logic " - are what is usually called metaphysics.
The fourth position is the coping-stone of Kant's metaphysics.
The great commentaries exist only for the Posterior Analytics, Physics, De Caelo, De Anima and Metaphysics.
The incomplete state in which Aristotle left the Metaphysics, the Politics and his logical works, brings us to the hard question how much he did, and how much his Peripatetic followers did to his writings after his death.
The independence of metaphysics as the science of being, the principles of contradiction and excluded middle with their qualifications, the distinction without separation between substance and attributes, the definition of substance as a distinct individual thing, the discovery that the world consists of substances existing apart but related to one another, the distinction between material and efficient causes or matter and force, the recognition both of the natural and of the supernatural - all these and many other half-forgotten truths are the reasons why we must always begin with the study of Aristotle's Metaphysics.
The intellectual intuition of Schelling, as above consciousness, the pure being of Hegel, as an empty abstraction, unvindicated, illegitimately assumed, and arbitrarily developed, are equally useless as bases of metaphysics.
The investigations will then naturally divide themselves into three parts, the first of which deals with those to our mind inevitable forms in which we are obliged to think about things, if we think at all (metaphysics), the second being devoted to the great region of facts, trying to apply the results of metaphysics to these, specially the two great regions of external and mental phenomena (cosmology and psychology), the third dealing with those standards of value from which we pronounce our aesthetical or ethical approval or disapproval.
The key to Lotze's theoretical philosophy lies in his metaphysics, to the exposition of which important subject the first and last of his larger publications have been devoted.
The leading idea of this work was contained in a paper published in the Berlin Memoirs for 1772.5 Its object was the elimination of the, to some minds, unsatisfactory conception of the infinite from the metaphysics of the higher mathematics, and the substitution for the differential and integral calculus of an analogous method depending wholly on the serial development of algebraical functions.
The Logic and Metaphysics have been printed more than once, the latter, e.g., at Venice in 1493, 1495 and 1546.
The longest of these new chapters deal with the primacy of the will, with death and with the metaphysics of sexual love.
The Metaphysics is clearly a compilation formed from essays or discourses; and it illustrates another characteristic of Aristotle's gradual method of composition.
The metaphysics of Aristotle, the ethics of Spinoza, the philosophical works of Cicero, and many kindred works, were also frequent subjects of study.
The metaphysics resulting from this epistemology is that the socalled thing in itself is not a cause of our sensations, but a product of one's own thinking, a determination of the Ego, a thing known to the Ego which constructs it.
The misapprehension of the significance of µera led to various mistaken uses of the term " metaphysics," e.g.
The mode of thought which dominates the modern capitalist philosophy and science is called the metaphysics.
The more philosophic part of the circle, forming a group in which Euclid of Megara (see Megarian School) seems at first to have taken the lead, regarded this Good as the object of a still unfulfilled guest, and were led to identify it with the hidden secret of the universe, and thus to pass from ethics to metaphysics.
The nature of axiomatic certainty is part of the fundamental problem of logic and metaphysics.
The object of his metaphysics is so to remodel the current notions regarding the existence of things and their connexions with which the usage of language supplies us as to make them consistent and thinkable.
The only logical conclusion is that the Categories, being nearer to Plato on the nature of attributes, and still nearer on the relation of universals to substances, is earlier than the Metaphysics.
The order in which, for clearness of exposition, it will be most convenient to consider these disciplines will be psychology, epistemology or theory of knowledge, and metaphysics, then logic, aesthetics and ethics.
The originality of Paulsen consists in trying to supply an epistemological ecplanation of the metaphysics of Fechner, by reconciling him with Kant and Schopenhauer.
The other great movement in modern moral philosophy due to the influence of German, and especially Hegelian, idealism followed naturally for the most part from the revival of interest in metaphysics noticeable in the latter half of the 10th century.
The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics.
The philosophy of Plato is dialogue trying to become science; that of Aristotle science retaining traces of dialectic. Secondly as regards subjectmatter, even in his early writings Aristotle tends to widen the scope of philosophic inquiry, so as not only to embrace metaphysics and politics, but also to encourage rhetoric and poetics, which Plato tended to discourage or limit.
The physical basis of the system remained unchanged but neglected; all creative force or even original research in the departments of physics and metaphysics vanished.
The psychological metaphysics of Cousin and of Janet was, however, too flimsy a realism to withstand its passage into this very idealism of matter which has become the dominant French metaphysics.
The question of aesthetics would then be formulated - What is it in things that makes them beautiful, and what is the relation of this aspect of the universe to its ultimate nature, as that is expounded in metaphysics?
The real bearing of old questions, and the meaninglessness of many disputes, were seen in the new conception of Aristotelianism given by the Metaphysics and other treatises.
The real point is their interdependence, which is so intimate that one sign of great philosophy is a consistent metaphysics, psychology and logic. If the world of things is known to be partly material and partly mental, then the mind must have powers of sense and inference enabling it to know these things, and there must be processes of inference carrying us from and beyond the sensible to the insensible world of matter and mind.
The realist, then, ought to begin with metaphysics without psychological prejudices.
The reason is that Aristotle was primarily a metaphysician half for and half against Plato, occupied himself with metaphysics all his philosophical life, made the science of things the universal basis of all sciences without destroying their independence, and so gradually brought round philosophy from universal forms to individual substances.
The relation of the self to the not-self need not to be treated here (see Metaphysics).
The result of the foregoing, however, is to show that, as soon as epistemology draws its conclusion, it becomes metaphysics; the theory of knowledge passes into a theory of being.
The Schoolmen, however, gradually came to realize that the result to their logic was to make it a sermocionalis scientia, and to their metaphysics the danger of nominalism.
The second question he answered from his parallelistic metaphysics by deducing that even within the organism there is only a constant dependency of sensation on nervous process without causation, because the nervous process is physical but the sensation psychical.
The Sophistes is apparently matter for animadversion by Aristotle in the Metaphysics and elsewhere, but derives stronger support from the testimonies to the Politicus which presumes it.
The term has also been applied to the Italian humanists of the Renaissance, and in modern times, somewhat vaguely, to thinkers who have based their speculations on the Platonic metaphysics or on Plotinus, and incorporated with it a tendency towards a mystical explanation of ultimate phenomena.
The Thomism, therefore, of our day is wrong, from a metaphysical point of view, so far as it elevates Aristotelianism, as seriously modified but not fundamentally corrected by Aquinas, into an authoritative orthodoxy in metaphysics.
The traditional order of the Aristotelian writings, still continued in the Berlin edition, beginning with the logical writings on page 1, proceeding to the physical writings on page 184, and postponing the Metaphysics to page 980, is not the real order of Aristotle's philosophy.
The truth is that the Metaphysics both precedes and follows the Physics, because it had been all along occupying Aristotle ever since he began to differ from Plato's metaphysical views and indeed forms a kind of presupposed basis of his whole system.
The universal substance, which we may call the absolute, is at this stage of our investigations not endowed with the attributes of a personal Deity, and it will remain to be seen by further analysis in how far we are able - without contradiction - to identify it with the object of religious veneration, in how far that which to metaphysics is merely a postulate can be gradually brought nearer to us and become a living power.
The upholders of such a theory would, in general, deride the term `"metaphysics" or "ontology"; but it is evident, none the less, that their position itself implies a certain theory of the universe and of our own place in it, and the establishment of this theory constitutes their metaphysics.
Then in 1855 he published his Atomenlehre, partly founded on his physics, but mainly on his metaphysics.
Theology (the science that reflects on revelation) must be permitted to transform metaphysics.
There are the central dogmas of logic, metaphysics and physics, from which start the subsequent inquiries of Locke, Leibnitz and Newton.
There is no committal to the metaphysics in the light of which the logical inquiry is at last to find its complete justification.
There is no metaphysics in it at all, only psychological ethics of a peculiarly dry and scholastic kind.
There is nothing indeed in the Metaphysics to show whether he left it in isolated treatises or in its present disorder; and nothing in the Politics.
These are the doctrines of animism, and, according to the usual anthropological theory, these spirits come to thrive to god's estate in favourable circumstances, as where the dead man, when alive, had great man y or wakan, a great share of the ether, so to speak, which, in savage metaphysics, is the viewless vehicle of magical influences.
These examples are enough to show that the psychological metaphysics of spiritual realism has not been able to withstand the rise and progress of spiritual idealism in France.
They emanate from scientific writers who rightly try to rise from science to metaphysics, but, as Bacon says, build a universal philosophy on a few experiments.
They involve an elaborate discussion, not only of Christian evidences, but of the entire subject-matter alike of Ethics and Metaphysics, of Philosophy as a whole, and of the philosophies of individual writers who have dealt in their different ways with the problems of existence and epistemology.
They point up the poverty of false metaphysics to rid us of the temptation of doing metaphysics this way.
Thi is Wundt's view, but only in the sense that reason passes from ideas to `'ideals," whether in the special sciences or in metaphysics.
Thirdly, it can justly claim the honour of Plato's name, since it expressly goes back to him for its metaphysics, directly combating those of the Stoa.
Thirdly, on the grounds that logical thinking adds the notion of substance, as substrate, to experience of the physical, but not of the psychical, and that the most proper being of mind is will, he concludes that wills are not active substances, but substance-generating activities (" nicht thatige Substanzen sondern substanzerzeugende Thdtigkeiten," System, 429) What kind of metaphysics, then, follows from this compound of psychology and epistemology?
This blind dualism found its natural consequence in the revolt of the Renaissance thinkers, Bruno and Paracelsus, who asserted the unity of mind and matter in all existence and were the precursors of the more intelligent monism of Leibnitz and the scientific metaphysics of his successors.
This conception of the self belongs mainly to metaphysics and involves the whole problem of the relation between subject and object, the nature of reality, and the possibility of knowledge of self and of object.
This essential agreement suffices to show that the Categories and the Metaphysics are the result of one mind.
This has taken the direction on the one hand of a revival of realism (see Metaphysics), on the other of a new form of subjective idealism (see Pragmatism).
This inquiry which was long called "rational cosmology," may be said to form part of the general subject of metaphysics, or at all events a pendant to it.
This introduces us to the second part of the question we are seeking to determine, namely the relation of epistemology to metaphysics.
This is the basis and the only proper basis of ontology or metaphysics - the science of being - and of the philosophy of history.
This leads to the consideration of the main divisions of philosophy - PsYcxoLoGY (q.v.), epistemology (theory of knowledge, Erkenntnisstheorie), and metaphysics (ontology; see Metaphysic).
This opinion of the Swedish naturalist seems to have been little noticed in Great Britain till it was taken up by the learned but credulous Scottish judge, Lord Monboddo (see his Origin and Progress of Language, 1774, &c.; Antient Metaphysics, 1778).
This was followed in 1824 by a German translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics.
This way of solving, or passing over, the ultimate problems of thought has had many followers in cultured circles imbued with the new physical science of the day, and with disgust for the dogmatic creeds of contemporary orthodoxy; and its outspoken and even aggressive vindication by physicists of the eminence of Huxley had a potent influence upon the attitude taken towards metaphysics, and upon the form which subsequent Christian apologetics adopted.
This, of course, is not metaphysics, but theology.
Though he disclaims being a follower of Herbart, his formal definition of philosophy and his conception of the object of metaphysics are similar to those of Herbart, who defines philosophy as an attempt to remodel the notions given by experience.
Throughout his philosophy he endeavours to connect metaphysics with ethics and the theory of education.
Thus he would enter in the Metaphysics a reference to the Physics, and in the Physics a reference to the Metaphysics, precisely because both were manuscripts in his library.
Thus his metaphysics is Leibnitzian, like that of Lotze, and yet is opposed to the most characteristic feature of monadology - the percipient indivisible monad.
Thus the doctrines of evolution and of creation, or the making of things, stand apart, or blend, in the metaphysics and religion of the lowest and least progressive of known peoples.
To the learned Rome might serve up authority with a garnish of neo-Scholastic metaphysics; for average mankind authority pure and simple was enough.
To the odd terminology of Donne's poetic philosophy Dryden gave the name of "metaphysics," and Johnson, borrowing the suggestion, invented the title of the "metaphysical school" to describe, not Donne only, but all the amorous and philosophical poets who succeeded him, and who employed a similarly fantastic language, and who affected odd figurative inversions.
To understand Wundt is to discover what a mess modern psychology has made to metaphysics.
We cannot, therefore, agree with many recent idealists who regard Leibnitz as one of themselves, though it is true that, when stripped of its realism, his metaphysics easily passed into the metaphysical idealisms of Lotze and of Fechner.
We have dwelt on this curious metaphysics of Fechner because it contains the master-key to the philosophy of the present moment.
We have now to see that, in writing the Categories, on the one hand he carried his differences from his master further than he had done in his early criticisms by insisting that individual substances are not only real, but are the very things which sustain the universal; but on the other hand, he clung to further relics of the Platonic theory, and it is those which differentiate the Categories and the Metaphysics.
We must look for ethics to supply the corner-stone of metaphysics, and psychology is a necessary propaedeutic. The System der Philosophie (1899; 3rd ed., 1907) contained the results of Wundt's work up to that date, both in the domain of science and in the more strictly philosophic field.
We never find in Bacon himself any consciousness of originality; he is rather a keen and systematic thinker, working in a wellbeaten track, from which his contemporaries were being drawn by theology and metaphysics.
We, on the contrary, mainly through the influence of Descartes, rather ask what are the things we know, and therefore, some more and some less, come to connect ontology with epistemology, and in consequence come to treat metaphysics in relation to psychology and logic, from which epistemology is an offshoot.
What conclusion are we to draw from these differences between the Categories and the Metaphysics?
What, then, is the future of metaphysics?
While he preached every Sunday, he also gradually took up in his lectures in the university almost every branch of theology and philosophy - New Testament exegesis, introduction to and interpretation of the New Testament, ethics (both philosophic and Christian), dogmatic and practical theology, church history, history of philosophy, psychology, dialectics (logic and metaphysics), politics, pedagogy and aesthetics.
With some more show of authority it puts Logic before Metaphysics.
With the conviction that the only fair way of describing metaphysics has been to avoid putting forward one system, and even to pay most attention to the dominant idealism, we have nevertheless been driven occasionally to test opinions by this independent metaphysical method.
With the systematic study of the Latin, and to a slight extent also of the Greek classics, he conjoined that of logic in the prolix system of Crousaz; and he further invigorated his reasoning powers, as well as enlarged his knowledge of metaphysics and jurisprudence, by the perusal of Locke, Grotius and Montesquieu.
Wundt, starting from a psychology of unitary experience, deduces a consistent metaphysics of no inference of things transcending experience throughout - or rather until he came to the very last sentence of his System der Philosophie (1889), where he suddenly passes from a necessity of " ideals " (Ideen), to a necessity of " faith " (Glauben), without " knowledge " (Wissen).
Yet in getting over theology he ceases to believe in God, and in getting over metaphysics he ceases to believe in soul.
Yet Leibnitz and Sir William Hamilton recognize him as the best modern exponent of the physics and metaphysics of Aristotle.
Yet they thought it the only avenue to metaphysics.
Zeller tries to get over this difficulty of cross-reference by detaching Metaphysics, Book A, from the rest and placing it before the Physics.