METAPHYSICS. — It is the ultimate philosophical consideration of the meaning, principles, and structure of reality. Therefore, all contrasts, controversies, and doctrinal oscillations that form the historical fabric of philosophy are, first and foremost, essentially the search to clarify the possibility and nature of metaphysics. The term seems to derive from Rhodes (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 (οὐ γὰρ ἂν: Aristotle, Met., IV, 1, 1003 a 21), which is the object of metaphysics, presents two fundamental and seemingly opposing requirements: 1) the affirmation of reality, in that metaphysics properly considers reality in act and precisely what constitutes and posits it in act; this reality in act always presents itself to consciousness as singular, limited, and contingent. 2) The affirmation of truth, in that metaphysics has as its task precisely to “ground” the consistency of what, in the immediate presentation of experience, reveals itself as inconsistent; this inconsistency of the real according to its immediate appearance demands recourse to principles of reality of a universal, absolute, and necessary nature. This fundamental tension, which raises the problem of the theoretical foundation of metaphysics, underlies the main aporias raised against it at all times: the exhaustive solution to the problem lies in the balance of the two requirements so that one does not prevail and absorb the other. In these two extreme cases, metaphysics disappears as absolute knowledge of being: indeed, if the affirmation of reality prevails, the real is identified outright with the immediate of 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 affirmation of reality and the affirmation of truth is achieved in traditional metaphysics through the “mediation” (if it may be so called) of the “first principles” of knowing, which satisfy both requirements at once: the principle of contradiction, of identity, of the excluded middle, of causality, of the whole and the parts... These are, in fact, the most universal propositions of human knowing and the more or less proximate foundation of all other derived principles of knowledge and specialized science. But the first principles enjoy, together, the immediate evidence (v.) of reality, both in external and internal experience. Aristotle, followed and deepened by St. Thomas, showed that from experience, almost through a process of noetic intensification that he calls ἐπαγωγή (“induction” [v.]), the first concepts (the “universals”) and the first judgments (ἐξιώματα: Met., I, 890 b 25 ff.; Post. An., II, 99 b 23 ff.) are formed in consciousness. However, the evidence of reality and the necessity of value that pertain 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 in its concreteness or the procedures and conclusions of the particular sciences: the first principles constitute the absolute requirement to which the contents of reality must conform in order to be intelligible. Aristotle rightly, in his moderate realism, places at the foundation of metaphysics the “principle of contradiction” (v.), on which all knowledge and all principles depend (Met., III, 3, 1005 b 18 ff.): to metaphysics, it raises, from time to time, the problems necessary to distinguish and clarify them in the subsequent complication of the analysis of reality. This is seen even from the state of consciousness that Aristotle, following Plato, considers as the beginning of metaphysics, namely, “wonder” or astonishment (διὰ τὸ θαυμάζειν ἠξιώθησαν οἱ ἄνθρωποι φύσει: Met., I, 982 b 12; Plato, Theaet., V, 155 d). “Wonder” is nothing other than the ineffable awareness of the tension between the affirmation of reality and the necessity of truth that never abandons knowing or qualifies it as human: it will suffice to mention the main structures of this tension generated by “wonder,” which then resolve into the fundamental structures of being itself.1. First, with respect to becoming
Being, as it presents itself to man both in external nature and in consciousness, demands to “preserve” itself in order to affirm itself for what it is; in reality, the being of experience changes, acquires and loses, arises and declines... and thus, in a certain sense, such being is and is not: it is for metaphysics to explain in what sense it is and in what sense it is not. The two fundamental pairs of Aristotle’s analysis of being—act and potency (v.), substance and accident (v.)—are to be referred to the “wonder” of becoming (v.) and its “contradiction” as phenomenologically experienced. What moves because it “passes” from one state to another can be said to be and not to be. Potency explains the passing in that it is what the subject that passes says it is not, and act explains it as the reason and the very term of becoming (Met., IX, 6, 1048 a 27 ff.). Moreover, every becoming is the passing of some determinate “thing” that does not change in all respects at once, but in some 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 that reality presents is not chaotic but structured according to a more fundamental principle of unity of the changing multiplicity and of cohesion of the diverse: this principle is substance, the principal reality, while the changing and diverse multiplicity that appears almost on the surface or that unfolds being in space and time is called accident (Met., VII, 13, 1038 b 24 ff.). Thus, the requirement of the principle of contradiction is satisfied for the second time, and the “structure of the real” begins to take shape in all the amplitude accessible to consciousness.2. With respect to the structure of the real
If the real, which is the object of metaphysics, is “what is,” its structure lies in the relationship between the “what” and the “being,” or between nature or essence that exists and its actuality of being. Therefore, it is the task of metaphysics to determine both the content of the “what” and the “mode” of its being: then the first onto-phenomenological determinations of act and potency, of substance and accident, allow a deeper interpretation of the real, first with respect to essence in itself and then regarding the relationship of essence to the act of being. The requirement of the principle of contradiction is that the real always be something definite in itself according to characteristics that can indeed be integrated and limited but not opposed in such a way as to cancel each other out: essence, therefore, even if it may have on the physical-metaphysical plane a “composition” of the two principles (matter and form) that stand in the relationship of act and potency, in itself must express a degree and a form of the entity. From the nature and perfection of essence, one may infer the nature and perfection of the act of being and proceed to establish the ontological hierarchy of things: at its two extreme poles, by the requirement of contradiction, it has prime matter as “potency” (v.) and God as “act” (v.) (prime matter, if it were endowed with any actuality, however minimal, implies, according to St. Thomas, an open contradiction [cf. Quodl., III, q. 1, a. 1]). God, if He had any “potentiality,” would be limited and dependent and therefore no longer God (cf. Comp. theol., chaps. 18–21).3. With regard to the foundation of the real
If the real, according to the characteristics it presents in experience, is qualified according to the supreme classifications of body (v.) or spirit (v.), the determination of the “mode of being” of the entity is not yet shown to be satisfied: because the human soul and pure intelligences are still finite entities and, while they may “have” within themselves the presence of the truth of things, they cannot found or sustain II. Hence arises the problem of the integral truth of the real, which cannot be found either in the real itself or in finite intelligent subjects. This is the tension of the relationship: finite-infinite, around which the various historical forms of metaphysics (m.) struggle and contend.In traditional metaphysics, the solution to this contradiction lies in positing the “causal dependence” of the finite upon the infinite, so that while the finite, as “essence,” is founded in itself, as “finite being” it is founded in “another,” namely in its cause. If the proximate cause is finite, it too, by the logic of contradiction, becomes an effect of another cause, until a cause is reached that is pure act, and this is the Pure Infinite: “Deus ex hoc infinitus (est) quod tantum forma vel actus est” (St. Thomas, *Compendium theologiae*, chap. 20). Aristotle defended, against the Sophists, the impossibility of an “infinite regress” in the chain of causes and the necessity of an absolute principle: “οὕτω γὰρ ἐστιν ἀρχὴ καὶ οὐκ ἀπειρεῖν αὐτὸ τῶν ὄντων” (*Metaphysics*, II, 2, 994 a 1). In the elaboration of the real, to which metaphysics attends, multiple exigencies converge, which, however, are articulated according to relations of complementarity for the attainment of an absolute foundation of the truth of the real itself. Man knows the real through the senses and through the intelligence: sensory experience (both external and internal) attests both the quality or nature of essences and concrete existence, but it is the reflection of the intelligence that posits and resolves the metaphysical exigency 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 entities themselves presuppose an absolute emergence of one term over the other, namely the “primacy” of act over potency: φανεφόβος δὲ ὅτι πρότερον ἐνέ- γεται δυνάμεως ἐστιν (*Metaphysics*, IX, 8, 1049 b 5). Finally, the ultimate foundation of the real must be comprehended and posited in the Infinite and the Absolute of that act which, by definition, admits of no further reference: this is the essential exigency of metaphysics. The historical difference and opposition between the various metaphysical systems arises from the divergence and diversity in resolving the aforementioned tensions; yet it must remain firm, if one is to speak of metaphysics, that it is the ultimate and highest knowledge inasmuch as it relates all things to the foundation of act, and that the ultimate foundation must be Pure Act.
II. — HISTORICAL OUTLINE. — In Greek philosophy, all the principal forms of philosophy—and thus of metaphysics itself—have made their appearance, which Western philosophy has taken up again to re-elaborate, with opposite outcomes, first through patristic-scholastic thought and then through modern and contemporary thought. The first form of Greek philosophy is the naturalistic metaphysics of the pre-Socratics: the most recent studies on the fragments of their lost works (cf. K. Joel, W. Jaeger, O. Gigon...) have demonstrated that the “physical” aspect and content of the principles of being (water, air, fire, numbers, and atoms...) has metaphysical significance, both inasmuch as the single element is precisely called upon to resolve the contrast between appearance and truth, and because within it there is already outlined a doctrine of the Absolute, and often the doctrine of the immortality of the soul (v.) is present. The critique of Plato and, especially, of Aristotle against the metaphysics of the pre-Socratics as “materialist” has raised substantial reservations (cf. H. Cherniss). It can be affirmed that from a critical-historical standpoint, the metaphysics of the pre-Socratics cannot rigorously be qualified as either materialist or spiritualist, since it remains at a moment prior to this classification. Strictly speaking, materialistic metaphysics appears first with Democritus and is then developed by the Stoics and Epicureans, followed by some sects of Neoplatonists and Gnostics: the distinction between materialistic and spiritualistic metaphysics is understood in function of the struggle waged by these later systems against the ontological and ethical spiritualism of the Socratic systems. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that Greek metaphysics was unable to resolve definitively the problem of the foundation of the real, neither from the standpoint of essence nor from that of the act of being: for essences were either determined exclusively by the data of experience (naturalist and materialist metaphysics) or by the exigency of concept (Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic metaphysics); in the first case, truth itself as a necessary value escaped, while in the second, an unbridgeable fracture was established between reality and appearance. The “metaphysical dualism” is not overcome but, in a certain sense, is reinforced by Aristotelian metaphysics of act and potency, even while admitting Aristotle’s progress toward a superior form of Platonism (J. Stenzel). The symptomatic sign of this Greek metaphysics of “completed incompleteness” lies in the insistence, present in every system, on the “dominion of act” and in the admission of something (which is “potency” according to Aristotle) that not only remains outside of act itself but eludes its definitive dominion (eternity of the uncreated world). Perhaps more fundamental than the absence of the concept of creation (v.) in Greek metaphysics is the absence of the concept of “spiritual personality” in an absolute sense, understood as the subject of effective freedom in the life of time and of individual immortality after death. This prevented the conception of God as absolute spirituality to which not only would pertain the perfect function of His life (Aristotle, *Metaphysics*, XII, 7, 1072 b 20-30), but the first origin of all reality.
Christianity, therefore, with the proclamation of the doctrine of creation from nothing, secured the absolute transcendence of God with respect to the world of nature and thus the absolute foundation of metaphysics itself; with the defense of the “freedom” of the will and of “personal” immortality, it guaranteed to man the possibility of attaining in the possession of Absolute Truth the fullness of his own life, and thereby expanded the very meaning of metaphysics as an inquiry into the fulfillment of the life of finite spirit. In a strict sense, there does not exist a patristic metaphysics as a “theory” of the real, because the Fathers are above all teachers of the faith; nonetheless, they often resort to concepts and problems of Greek culture, which still permeates their environment: first and foremost Platonism, but with profound reflections of Stoic and Aristotelian doctrines. The most complete figure of patristic metaphysics is St. Augustine, who has rightly been called “a thinker neither ancient nor medieval, but the classical representative of ancient Christian metaphysics” (A. Dempf, *Metaphysik des Mittelalters*, Munich and Berlin 1930, p. 15), because in St. Augustine, as later in medieval metaphysics of an Augustinian type, metaphysical reflection proceeds from the truth of faith (the uncreated Word as the source of every particular truth) and returns to faith with the central affirmation of the vanity and inconsistency of the finite.
The classical age of metaphysics is the Christian Middle Ages, inasmuch as, with the acceptance of ARISTOTLE, finitude was attributed its own consistency within its order, and thus the problem of the theoretical determination of its constitutive principles remained open. This work of speculative reflection constitutes a kind of “new beginning” in Christian metaphysics, owing to the more mature conceptual technique of Aristotelianism, to which even those who took their stand on the anti-Aristotelian front (Augustinian AVICEBRONIANS, nominalism) remained indebted. Yet some extreme representatives of nominalism, such as NICHOLAS OF AUTRECOURT, passed over into atomistic metaphysics (cf. J. R. O’Donnel, *Nicholas of Antioch*, in *The Medieval Studies*, I, Toronto 1939, pp. 181 ff.).
The most mature form of medieval metaphysics is that of ST. THOMAS, inasmuch as he achieved a balance of all the principal tensions mentioned above. The progress of Thomistic metaphysics lay in the theoretical foundation 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 act of being in creatures, and in the doctrine of the agent intellect as a faculty of the individual person. Both theses were bitterly opposed both by the theologizing metaphysics of the Augustinian school and by AVERROISM (v.), which remained loyal to reason alone.
The endless controversies of the medieval schools were directed in particular against Thomistic metaphysics, and the disciples of the Angelic Doctor did their best to resist; nevertheless, some of them seem to have yielded to the temptation of taking over problems and terms in the field of metaphysics that indicate a certain weakening in the understanding of its basic principles, and perhaps were not without influence if, from the 16th century onward, Thomism steadily narrowed its ranks (cf. C. Fabro, *Per una storia del tomismo*, in *Sapienza*, 4 [1951], pp. 27 ff.).
The most distinguished work that gathers into a synthesis the results of this fragmentation of Thomistic metaphysics is represented by the *Disputationes metaphysicae* of F. SUÁREZ, which enjoyed a very wide following not only in Catholic schools—also as a consequence of the dominance exercised by Spain over Europe in the 17th century—but also among the most eminent representatives of modern thought, e.g., in LEIBNIZ and from him down to WOLFF, BAUMGARTEN, MEIER, and KANT, who channelled Protestant philosophical Enlightenment of Lutheran inspiration (cf. P. Mesnard, *Leibniz dans le sillage de Suarez*, in *Archives de philosophie*, 18 [1949], pp. 22 ff.).
In modern thought metaphysics achieved notable success with the rationalism of DESCARTES, MALEBRANCHE, SPINOZA, LEIBNIZ, and their direct followers down to KANT: the truth of being is conceived as the perfect coherence of reason, and the content of being is given by the structures that reason gives to 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 feeling (*feeling*) or belief (*belief*) in the reality of existence. Shaken by Hume, Kant declared metaphysics impossible, since the human mind lacks pure intuition of the “thing-in-itself,” so that the sphere of the objects of metaphysics (existence of God, creation of the world, freedom and immortality of the soul) is only “postulated” by practical reason.
Transcendental idealism, by bringing the “thing-in-itself” back into consciousness, erects subjectivity itself as Absolute: FICHTE in creative practical activity, SCHELLING in the intuition of the Absolute in nature, HEGEL in the unfolding of Reason as absolute Idea in nature and history. The passage from critical philosophy to idealist metaphysics takes place through the following stages: “there is no knowledge without categories” (KANT); “There are no categories without a self-consciousness (v.) that produces them; but a productive self-consciousness must be absolute” (FICHTE); “self-consciousness is not absolute unless it is identity of nature and spirit” (SCHELLING); “this identity (Reason) cannot be conscious unless it is self-conscious Reason, i.e., Spirit (Geist), which represents the concording principle of the world” (K. FISCHER, *Logik und Metaphysik oder Wissenschaftslehre*, Stuttgart 1852, p. XIV ff.). With the rapid collapse of idealism, metaphysics fell into oblivion, first through the agency of positivism (v.) and then of neo-Kantianism in the second half of the 19th century; even Italian and English neo-idealism admitted no metaphysics, and to the Absolute in itself (retained by HEGEL) they substituted the dialectic (v.) of facts (idealist phenomenalism and historicism) or of Pure Act (GENTILE).
In contemporary philosophy—with the exception of MARXISM (v.), which tends to dissolve philosophy into the natural sciences (ZHDANOV)—a “rebirth of metaphysics” is witnessed, especially through the agency of “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 the existent in essence” (*als die Teilhabe eines Seienden am Sosein*: cf. *Vom Ewigen im Menschen*, Leipzig 1923, I, 1, pp. 91 ff.). N. HARTMANN has devoted himself to the elaboration of a “critical ontology” of Aristotelian inspiration, but independent of any ultimate metaphysical, or rather theological, concern.
In existentialism metaphysics returns as phenomenological ontology (v.) or as 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 irretrievably split into the two branches of consciousness (*pour-soi*) and world (*en-soi*), and the attempt to approach it is declared an “intellectual passion” (*L’être et le néant*, Paris 1943, p. 706). For JASPERS, who takes up the doctrine of the Kantian noumenon (*das Umgreifende*), the absolute truth of being is infinitely deferred, and man must confine himself to his “situation” and at most envisage with “philosophical faith” the totality of being (cf. *Der philosophische Glaube*, Munich 1947, pp. 17 ff.).
The problem of a radically new foundation for metaphysics has been undertaken by HEIDEGGER, according to whom all Western philosophy, both ancient, medieval, and modern, is a “philosophy of essence” and thus has resolved itself into a “metaphysics of subjectivity.” Its error is to have taken as the object of metaphysics the entity as entity and to have reduced the entity to essence, whereas the task is to bring the entity 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 is no longer in the “conformity” (*ἐλευθερία*, adaequatio) between subject and object (v.) but consists in the primitive “making-present” (this would be the original meaning of the *lógos* of being itself (cf. especially *Was ist Metaphysik*, Frankfurt a.M. 1949, *Introduction*).
A resolute opponent of metaphysics today is the neo-positivism (v.) of the Vienna and Prague Circles, according to which only what is accessible to experience and can be treated with the symbols of logistic is “real”; hence all the questions and terms of metaphysics are “meaningless” (cf. R. CARNAP, *Wissenschaft und Metaphysik*, French trans., Paris 1934, pp. 10 ff., 26 ff.: critique of Heidegger).
V. CONOSCENZA; ENTE; SOSTANZA.