METAFISICA. — It is the ultimate philosophical consideration of the meaning, principles, and structure of reality. Thus all the contrasts, controversies, and doctrinal fluctuations that form the historical fabric of philosophy are, above all and essentially, the effort to clarify the possibility and nature of metaphysics. The term seems to derive from Andronico di Rodi (v.) gave to the books of Aristotle that he arranged after the treatises on physics (τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά).
I. NATURE AND METHOD
The problem of being as being (ὃν ἦ ὃν: Aristotle, Met., IV, 1, 1003 a 21), which is the object of m., poses two fundamental requirements that seem contradictory: 1) the affirmation of reality, insofar as m. properly considers reality in act and what precisely makes it and places it in act; this reality in act always presents itself to consciousness as singular, limited, contingent. 2) The affirmation of truth, insofar as m. has precisely the task of “grounding” the consistency of that which, in the immediate presentation of experience, reveals itself as inconsistent; this inconsistency of the real according to its immediate appearance requires recourse to principles of reality that are universal, absolute, and necessary in nature. The principal aporias raised against m. in every age stem from this fundamental tension, which poses the problem of the theoretical foundation of m.: the exhaustive solution to the problem lies in balancing the two requirements, so that neither one prevails over and absorbs the other. In these two extreme cases m. disappears as absolute knowledge of being: for if the affirmation of reality prevails, the real is identified without further qualification experience (v.), whether ordinary or scientific, in which the “presence” of the real is given (phenomenism, positivism..., [v.]); if the affirmation of truth prevails, the real becomes a result of the “coherence” of reason (conceptualism, rationalism, critical and absolute idealism [v.]...). The reconciliation or overcoming of the antithesis between the position of reality and the affirmation of truth is provided in traditional m. by the “mediation” (if one may call it that) of the “first principles” of knowledge, which satisfy both requirements at once: the principle of contradiction, of identity, of the excluded middle, of causality, of the whole and its parts... They are in fact the most universal propositions of human knowledge and the more or less proximate foundation of all other derived principles of knowledge and specialized science. But the evidence (v.) of reality, both in external experience and in internal experience. Aristotle, followed and developed further by St. Thomas, showed that from experience, almost through a process of noetic intensification which he calls ἐπαγωγή (“induction” [v.]), the first concepts (the “universals”) and the first judgments (ἀξιώματα: Met., I, 890 b 25 sgg.; Post. An., II, 99 b 23 sgg.) are formed in consciousness. Nevertheless, the evidence of reality and the necessity of validity that belong to the principles do not constitute an absolute a priori of content from which one can proceed analytically to deduce the structure of reality itself, or of the concrete, or of the procedure and conclusions of the particular sciences: the first principles constitute the absolute requirement which the contents of reality must satisfy in order to be intelligible. Aristotle rightly, in his moderate realism, places the “principle of contradiction” (v.) at the foundation of m.; all knowledge and all principles depend upon it (Met., III, 3, 1005 b 18 sgg.): for m. it continually raises problems, in order to distinguish and clarify them as the analysis of reality subsequently becomes more complex. This can be seen from the verystate of consciousness which Aristotle, after Plato, regards as the beginning of m., namely “wonder” or astonishment (διὰ τὸ θαυμάζειν ἤρξαντο οἱ ἄνθρωποι φύλακτον: Met., I, 1, 982 b 12; Plato, Theat., V, 155 d). “Wonder” is nothing other than the ineffable awareness of the tension between the affirmation of reality and the necessity of truth, which never abandons knowledge or qualifies it as human: it will suffice to indicate the principal structures of this tension generated by “wonder,” which are subsequently resolved into the fundamental structures of being itself.
1. First of all, with respect to becoming. — Being, as it presents itself to man both in external nature and in consciousness, requires that it “preserve itself” in order to affirm itself as what it is; in reality, experiential being changes, acquires and loses, arises and declines... and therefore in a certain sense such being is and is not: it is the task of m. to explain in what sense it is and in what sense it is not. The two fundamental pairs in Aristotle’s analysis of being, act and potency (v.), accident (v.), must be referred to the “wonder” becoming (v.) and to its phenomenological “contradiction.” That which moves, because it “passes” from one state to another, can be said both to be and not to be. Potency explains the passage insofar as the subject that passes states that it is not, while act explains it as the reason and the very term of becoming (Met., IX, 6, 1048 a 27 sgg.). Moreover, every becoming is the passage of some determinate “thing” which does not change in all respects simultaneously, but which, in certain respects, “persists,” at least within certain limits of space and time (St. Thomas, De spir. creat., a. 10 ad 8). Finally, the multiplicity of aspects presented by the real is not chaotic but structured according to a more fundamental principle of unity of the changing manifold and cohesion of the diverse: this principle is substance, the principal reality, whereas the changing and diverse manifold that lies almost on the surface or develops being in space and time is called accident (Met., VII, 13, 1038 b 24 sgg.). Thus the requirement of the principle of contradiction is satisfied for the second time, and the “structure of the real” already begins to emerge in all the breadth accessible to consciousness.
2. With respect to the structure of the real. — If the real, which is the object of m., is “that which is,” its structure lies in the relation between the “that” and “being,” or between the nature or essence that exists and its actuality of being. Consequently, it is the task of m. to determine both the content of the “that” and the “mode” of its being: the first onto-phenomenological determinations of act and potency, of substance and accident, then permit a deeper interpretation of the real, first with respect to essence in itself and subsequently concerning the relation of essence to the act of being. The requirement of the principle of contradiction is that the real always be something defined in itself according to characteristics that may indeed be integrated and limited but cannot be opposed in such a way as to cancel one another out: essence, therefore, although on the physical-metaphysical plane it may have a “composition” of the two principles (matter and form) that stand in a relation of act and potency, must in itself express a degree and a form of being. From the nature and perfection of essence one infers the nature and perfection of the act of being, and one can proceed to establish the ontological hierarchy of things: at its two extreme poles, by the requirement of contradiction, it has prime matter as “pure potency” and God as “pure act” (prime matter endowed with any actuality whatsoever, even the least, implies, according to St. Thomas, an open contradiction [cf. Quod., III, q. 1, a. 1]). If God possessed any “potentiality,” He would be limited and dependent and therefore would no longer be God (cf. Comp. theol., cap. 18-21).
3. With respect to the foundation of the real. — If the real, according to the characteristics it presents in experience, is classified body (v.) spirit (v.), the determination of the “mode of being” of the being is not yet shown to be complete: for the human soul and pure intelligences are still finite beings, and although they can “have” within themselves the presence of the truth of things, they can neither ground nor sustain II. Hence the problem
of the integral truth of reality, which cannot be found either in reality itself or in finite intelligent subjects. This is the tension of the relation finite-infinite, around which the various historical forms of m. seek and contend with one another. In traditional m., the contradiction is resolved by positing the “causal dependence” of the finite upon the infinite, so that, if the finite is founded in itself as “essence,” nevertheless, insofar as it is a “finite being,” it is founded in “another,” that is, in its cause; and if the proximate cause is finite, it likewise becomes, by the logic of contradiction, the effect of another cause, until a cause is reached that is pure act alone—and this is the pure Infinite: «Deus ex hoc infinitus (est) quod tantum forma vel actus est» (s. Tommaso, Comp. theol., cap. 20). Aristotle defended, against the sophists, the impossibility of an “infinite regress” in the chain of causes and the necessity of an absolute principle: «ὅτι γ' ἔστιν ἀρχὴ καὶ οὐκ ἄπειρα αἴτιν τῶν ὄντων» (Met., II, 2, 994 a 1). In the elaboration of reality, to which m. devotes itself, multiple requirements therefore converge; yet they are articulated according to relations of complementarity for the attainment of an absolute foundation of the truth of reality itself. Man knows reality through the senses and the intellect: sensory experience (external and internal) attests both the quality or nature of essences and concrete existence, but it is the reflection of the intellect that establishes and resolves the metaphysical requirement of the unity of essence and the unity of act. The first ontological determination expresses the fundamental principles and modes of being (act and potency, substance and accident), but the process of ontological foundation and the hierarchy of beings themselves presuppose an absolute emergence of one of the terms over the other, that is, the “primacy” of act over potency: φανερὸν δὲ ὅτι πρότερον ἐνέργειν δυνάμωσεν ἔστιν (Met., IX, 8, 1049 b 3). Finally, the ultimate foundation of reality requires that it be understood and posited in the Infinite and Absolute of that act which, by definition, entails no further reference: this is the essential requirement of m. The historical difference and opposition among the various m. arise from their divergence and dissimilarity in resolving the tensions mentioned above; but it must remain firmly established, if one is to speak of m., that it is the ultimate and highest form of knowledge, insofar as it relates everything to the foundation of act, and that the ultimate foundation must be Pure Act.
II. — HISTORICAL OUTLINE. — All the principal forms of philosophy, and therefore of m. itself, first appeared in Greek philosophy; Western philosophy subsequently took them up in order to rework them, with an opposite outcome, first in patristic-scholastic thought and then in modern and contemporary thought. The first form of Greek philosophy is the naturalistic m. of the Presocratics: the most recent studies of the fragments of their lost works (cf. K. Joel, W. Jaeger, O. Gigon...) have shown that the “physical” aspect and content of the principles of being (water, air, fire, numbers, and atoms...) possesses metaphysical significance, both insofar as the single element is precisely called upon to resolve the contrast between appearance and truth, and because a doctrine of the Absolute is already outlined within it, while the same doctrine soul (v.) is often present. Plato’s critique, and especially Aristotle’s critique, of the m. of the Presocratics as “materialist” has raised substantial reservations (cf. H. Chermiss). It may be affirmed that, from a critical-historical point of view, the m. of the Presocratics cannot strictly be characterized either as materialist or as spiritualist, because it remains at a stage prior to this classification. Materialistic m. in the strict sense first appears with Democritus alone, and is subsequently developed by the Stoics and Epicureans, followed by certain schools of Neoplatonists and Gnostics: the distinction between materialistic and spiritualistic m. is understood in relation to the struggle waged by these later systems against the ontological and ethical spiritualism of the Socratic systems. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that Greek m. was unable to resolve definitively the problem of the foundation of reality, either from the standpoint of essence or from that of the act of being: essences, in fact, were either determined exclusively in terms of the data of experience (naturalistic and materialistic m.) or in terms of conceptual requirements (Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic m.); in the first case, truth itself as a necessary value eluded it, while in the second an unbridgeable rupture was established between reality and appearance. “Metaphysical dualism” is not overcome but rather, in a certain sense, reaffirmed by the Aristotelian m. of act and potency, despite Aristotle’s advance toward a superior form of Platonism (J. Stenzel). The symptomatic sign of this Greek m. of “accomplished incompleteness” lies in the insistence, present in every system, upon the “dominion of act” and in the admission of something (which according to Aristotle is “potency”) that not only remains outside act itself but also eludes its definitive dominion (the eternity of the uncreated world). Perhaps, as the foundation rather than the consequence of the creation (v.) in Greek m., one must posit the absence of the concept of “spiritual personality” in the absolute sense, understood that is, as the subject of active freedom in temporal life and of individual immortality after death. This prevented the conception of God as absolute spirituality, to whom belonged not only the perfect functioning of his own life (Aristotle, Met., XII, 7, 1072 b 20-30), but also the first origin of all reality.
Christianity, therefore, by proclaiming the doctrine of creation from nothing, secured God’s absolute transcendence with respect to the world of nature and hence the absolute foundation of m. itself; by defending the “freedom” of the will and personal “immortality,” it guaranteed the possibility that, in attaining Absolute Truth, man might possess the fullness of his own life, and thereby expanded the very meaning of m. as an inquiry into the fulfillment of the life of the finite spirit itself. In the strict sense, there is no patristic m. as a “theory” of reality, because the Fathers are above all teachers of the faith; nevertheless, they frequently resort to concepts and problems from Greek culture, which still informed their milieu: above all Platonism, but also with profound influences from Stoic and Aristotelian doctrines. The most complete figure of patristic m. is s. Agostino, who has rightly been called “a thinker neither ancient nor medieval, but the classical representative of ancient Christian m.” (A. Dempf, Metaphysik des Mittelalters, Munich and Berlin 1930, p. 15), because in s. Agostino, as later in the Augustinian m. of the Middle Ages, metaphysical reflection begins from the truth of faith (the uncreated Word as the source of every particular truth) and returns to faith through the central affirmation of the vanity and insubstantiality of the finite.
The classical age of metaphysics is the Christian Middle Ages, insofar as, with the acceptance of Aristotle, the finite was attributed a consistency of its own within its order, and the problem of the theoretical determination of its constitutive principles therefore remained open. This work of speculative reflection constitutes a kind of “new beginning” in Christian metaphysics, made possible by the more mature conceptual technique of Aristotelianism, to which even those who took the anti-Aristotelian side (Augustinians influenced by Avicenna and Bonaventure, nominalists) remained indebted; nevertheless, certain extreme representatives of nominalism, such as Nicolò di Ultricuria, moved toward atomistic metaphysics (cf. J. R. O'Donnel, Nicholas of Autricourt, in The Medieval Studies, I, Toronto 1939, p. 181 ff.). The most mature form of medieval metaphysics is that of St. Thomas, insofar as he achieved a balance among all the principal tensions indicated above: the advance of Thomistic metaphysics lies in the theoretical grounding of the “positivity” of the creature in its finitude, which found its technical expression in the two characteristic theses: the real distinction between essence and the act of being in creatures, and the doctrine of the agent intellect as a faculty of the individual; both theses were fiercely opposed both by the theologizing metaphysics of Averroism (v.), devoted solely to reason. The countless controversies of the medieval schools were directed especially against Thomistic metaphysics, and the Angelic Doctor’s disciples did their utmost to resist them; nevertheless, some of them apparently yielded to the temptation to adopt problems and terms in the field of metaphysics that indicate a certain weakening in their grasp of the basic principles, and perhaps they were not without influence, since, beginning in the sixteenth century, Thomism continually narrowed its ranks (cf. C. Fabro, Per una storia del tomismo, in Sapienza, 4 [1951], p. 27 ff.).
The most distinguished work, which gathers together in an attempt at synthesis the results of this disintegration of Thomistic metaphysics, is represented by F. Suárez’s Disputaciones metaphysicae. These enjoyed an extremely wide following not only in Catholic schools, partly as a consequence of Spain’s domination over Europe in the seventeenth century, but also among the most distinguished representatives of modern thought, for example, Leibniz and, through him, Wolff, Baumgarten, Meier, and Kant, who channelled Protestant philosophical Enlightenment inspired by Lutheranism (cf. P. Mesnard, Leibniz dans le sillage de Suarez, in Archives de philosophie, 18 [1949], p. 22 ff.).
In modern thought metaphysics achieved considerable success with the rationalism of Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibniz, and their direct followers up to Kant: the truth of being is conceived as the perfect coherence of reason, and the content of being is supplied by the structures that reason gives itself (principle of immanence [v.]). English empiricism, on the other hand, conceives the truth of being according to the subjectivity of phenomenal appearance, which in Hume becomes a feeling (feeling) or belief (belief) in the reality of existence. Shaken by Hume, Kant declares the impossibility of metaphysics, insofar as the human mind lacks pure intuition of the “thing in itself,” so that the sphere of metaphysical objects (the existence of God, the creation of the world, freedom and the immortality of the soul) is merely “postulated” by practical reason. Transcendental idealism, bringing the “thing in itself” back into consciousness, erects subjectivity itself as freedom into the Absolute: Fichte in creative practical activity, Schelling in the intuition of the Absolute in nature, Hegel in the unfolding of Reason as the absolute Idea in nature and history. The transition from critical philosophy to idealist metaphysics takes place through the following stages: “there is no knowledge without category” (Kant); “There self-consciousness (v.) that produces them: but a productive self-consciousness must be absolute” (Fichte); “self-consciousness is absolute only if it is the identity of nature and spirit” (Schelling); “this identity (Reason) cannot be conscious unless it is self-conscious reason, that is, Spirit (Geist), which represents the concordant principle of the world” (K. Fischer, Lagik und Metaphysik oder Wissenschaftslehre, Stuttgart 1852, p. xiv ff.). With the rapid collapse of idealism, metaphysics fell into oblivion, positivism (v.) and then of neo-Kantianism in the second half of the nineteenth century: Italian and English neo-idealism itself does not admit metaphysics and replaces the Absolute in itself (retained by Hegel) dialectic (v.) either of facts (idealist phenomenism and historicism) or of the pure Absolute (Gentile).
In contemporary philosophy—with the exception of Marxism (v.), which tends to dissolve philosophy into the natural sciences (Zdanov)—there has been a “rebirth of metaphysics,” owing especially to “phenomenology” (Brentano, Husserl, Max Scheler, Wust...). In Husserl, however, because of the principle of the “intentionality of consciousness,” understood in a transcendental sense, one falls back into the metaphysics of immanence (cf. G. Lehmann, Die Ontologie der Gegenwart in ihren Grundgestalten, Halle 1933, p. 10). M. Scheler understands metaphysical knowledge as the “participation of being in essence” (als die Teilhabe eines Seienden am Sosein: cf. Vom Ewigen im Menschen, Leipzig 1923, I, 1, p. 9 ff.). N. Hartmann devoted himself to the development of a “critical ontology” inspired by Aristotle, but independent of every ultimate metaphysical, or theological, concern. In existentialism, ontology (v.), or as an analysis of the structure of finitude, but with a negative or, at most, problematic outcome. In J. P. Sartre, who returns to the Cartesian dualism of extension and thought, being is irredeemably split into the two branches of consciousness (pour-soi) and the world (en-soi), and the attempt to bring them closer is declared an “useless passion” (L'être et le néant, Paris 1943, p. 706). For Jaspers, who takes up the doctrine of Kant’s noumenon (das Umgreifende), the absolute truth of being is deferred indefinitely, and man must adhere to his “situation” and, at most, envisage the totality of being through “philosophical faith” (cf. Der philosophische Glaube, Munich 1947, p. 17 f.). The problem of founding a radically new metaphysics was undertaken by Heidegger, according to whom all Western philosophy, ancient as well as medieval and modern, is a “philosophy of essence” and has therefore resolved itself into a “metaphysics of subjectivity.” Its error is to have taken as the object of metaphysics “being insofar as it is being” and to have reduced being to essence, whereas the task is to refer being back to “being” and to ground it in the actuality of “being itself” (Sein selbst). The true foundation of metaphysics is therefore being, and the truth of being no longer lies in the “conformity” (ἀγώσως, αδαφησίος) object (v.), but consists in the primordial “becoming present” (this would be the original meaning of ἐνδία) of being itself (cf. especially Was ist Metaphysik, Frankfurt a. M. 1949, Introd.). A resolute opponent neopositivism (v.) of the Vienna and Prague Circles, according to which only that is “real” which is accessible to experience and can therefore be treated with the symbols of logistic: consequently, all the questions and terms of metaphysics are “meaningless” (cf. R. Carnap, Wissenschaft und Metaphysik, French trans., Paris 1934, pp. 10 f., 26 f.: critique of Heidegger). V. CONOSCENZA; ENTE; SOSTANZA.
Cornelio Fabro
#### METAFRASTE: V. SIMEONE LOGOTHETE.