Metaphysics, Part 1: The Origin of the Term, Metametaphysics, and a Complex History
Let's get meta.
I get the sense that, for many, it’s not clear what goes on in the field of metaphysics: other than talk of substance and properties, what is metaphysics, and does it have any value?
So let’s talk about metaphysics. Along the way I’ll mention a few theological implications of some topics and figures within the field, but my primary purpose will be merely to cover some of the questions that have received a lot of attention within the field, rather than to connect all the theological dots.
As we consider and evaluate metaphysics as a whole, we find ourselves in a sub-field of metaphysics called metametaphysics. Why all the “meta”? Before I get into what metametaphysics is, here is a good summary by Peter van Inwagen of where the term “metaphysics” comes from:
The word ‘metaphysics’ is derived from a collective title of the fourteen books by Aristotle that we currently think of as making up Aristotle's Metaphysics. Aristotle himself did not know the word. (He had four names for the branch of philosophy that is the subject-matter of Metaphysics: ‘first philosophy’, ‘first science’, ‘wisdom’, and ‘theology’.) At least one hundred years after Aristotle's death, an editor of his works (in all probability, Andronicus of Rhodes) titled those fourteen books “Ta meta ta phusika”—“the after the physicals” or “the ones after the physical ones”—the “physical ones” being the books contained in what we now call Aristotle's Physics.
Originally, the “meta” or after part referred simply to the order of books in Aristotle’s canon, but after a few millennia “meta” in philosophy now indicates (roughly) a perspective from outside whatever word is attached to it: metaphilosophy examines and evaluates the way we do philosophy generally; conceptual ethics/conceptual engineering might be one example of a metaphilosophical approach. Metaethics considers which ethical theory (utilitarianism, virtue theory, etc.) is best in some way, whether there is some kind of objective morality, and so on. Metaepistemology “takes a step back from particular substantive debates in epistemology in order to inquire into the assumptions and commitments made by those who engage in these debates”. And relevant to the topic here, metametaphysics also evaluates various metaphysical theories and methodology, and inquires into their assumptions and commitments.1
So, for example, someone writing a paper that defends a particular view on essence is pretty clearly doing work in the field of metaphysics. And someone who compares different metaphysical systems or figures, like someone who defends the view that Aristotelian metaphysics (whatever that includes) is in some sense better than Platonic metaphysics (whatever that includes), is making a metametaphysical point. I’m going to be writing from the perspective of analytic metaphysics, but you should know that there is a flourishing world of continental metaphysics that includes works like Heidegger’s Being and Time, to name one obvious example. (Here’s one excellent take on the differences between analytic philosophy and continental philosophy more broadly.) I’m not as familiar with the continental philosophy world, so I won’t say much about it, but there is quite a bit of overlap between analytic metaphysics and continental metaphysics within the field of the history of philosophy, which traces the history of philosophical figures and ideas, including the history of figures and topics within metaphysics. On the topic of the history of metaphysics, particularly the topic of Platonism vs. Aristotelianism mentioned above, let me make a few opinionated comments.
Properly evaluating the thought of a historical figure in philosophy assumes careful attention to interpreting that figure, which in many cases can be quite difficult, especially when interpreting works within ancient philosophy. Careful interpretation should occur prior to careful evaluation, especially when comparing and evaluating the particular ideas or methodologies of more than one historical figure, like comparing Aristotle and Plato. You might think that when evaluating various schools of thought on metaphysics there is some system or total set of metaphysical claims we can attribute to Aristotle, and some system or total set of metaphysical claims we can attribute to Plato, and that we can further evaluate and compare each of those systems as a whole. But (at least in analytic metaphysics) philosophers rarely argue for the truth of some individual’s philosophical claims in their entirety. I’m sure such arguments happen on occasion, but there are many good reasons to avoid claiming to be an “Aristotelian” full stop, or a “Platonist”, with disregard to which views of Plato one endorses. I’ll use Aristotle again as an example of why that sweeping approach is usually not a great idea.
A few years ago I took a PhD seminar at the University of Virginia that was entirely dedicated to studying Aristotle’s metaphysics. It was taught by Daniel Devereux, a brilliant and refreshingly kind philosopher who had taught at UVA since 1972, and who specialized in ancient philosophy. We combed through chapters 1-5 of Aristotle’s Categories, Books I and II of his Physics, and Books Zeta and Eta of the Metaphysics. We covered the matter-form distinction, essence and definition, substratum, primary and secondary substance, and other topics. There is a good case to be made that Aristotle was the most intelligent non-divine man who has ever walked the earth. He basically invented logic, and his impact on the sciences and the liberal arts up to the present day is unparalleled. But most Aristotle scholars will be the first to tell you that he wasn’t entirely consistent throughout his enormous amount of writings. On some points, Aristotle differed with Aristotle, sometimes knowingly and sometimes unknowingly. For example, Aristotle talks about primary and secondary substances in the Categories, but drops the distinction in his later writings. And on Aristotle’s metaphysical theory of persons, here’s what Devereux had to say:
[For Aristotle], if the soul of an individual living thing is a primary substance, it must be an ultimate subject of predicates; in other words, it is not predicable of any underlying subject, and in particular it is not predicable of the individual’s body. This marks an interesting difference between the Categories, on the one hand, and the Physics, De Anima, and Metaphysics, on the other; in these works, as we’ll see, the soul—as the form of a living thing—is predicable of the underlying matter (or body). It is also worth noting that, according to the Categories, the soul of a living thing is—as one might expect—a particular entity, not a universal. And, like other primary substances, it is ‘individual’ (atomon), one in number…the view of the Categories that both soul and body are ultimate underlying subjects is not the view we find in the Physics and De Anima; in these works, the body is still regarded as an ultimate underlying subject but the soul is not—the soul is predicated of the body as underlying subject.
The details here are less important and are subject to historical interpretation, and I’m sure there are those who would quibble with the interpretation in the quote. The point is that if one claims to be an Aristotelian when it comes to the metaphysics of persons, the natural follow-up question is, “Which of Aristotle’s views on personhood?” We are left then to evaluate the different metaphysical views on personhood that Aristotle put forward based on historical interpretation that in some cases gives us multiple, sometimes inconsistent views from the same person. If we then want to compare Aristotelian metaphysics with Platonic metaphysics, it gets even more complicated, especially if we also want to compare (as Aristotle did!) the metaphysics of Socrates to the metaphysics of Plato. It’s unfortunate that in the theological world claiming to be an Aristotelian or a Platonist can often score academic clout points with an unsuspecting broad audience, when in many cases such claims indicate a lack of awareness of how messy and inconsistent the works of a historical figure can be.
For now I only wanted to touch on where the term “metaphysics” came from, what metametaphysics is about, and why attaching your entire metaphysical view to one historical person might not be a great idea. We need the history of philosophy, for the same reasons we need the history of any discipline, but we need more than just borrowing fancy terms, or theologically baptizing historical figures and their philosophical systems. Careful attention to primary sources in philosophy is necessary for understanding that complex history, but it is not sufficient. I want to give a hearty “amen” to the slogan ad fontes, but there is also a massive, centuries-long history of interpretation of figures like Aristotle and Plato, and we would do well to pay attention to those interpretive theories alongside the primary sources so we don’t make the same interpretive mistakes over and over. To know what Aristotle thought requires reading his works alongside those who have already spent a lifetime reading his works as well.
Now that we have some understanding of the etymology and origins of metaphysics, in Part Two I’ll introduce a few fundamental issues and topics within the discipline, like what counts as an object. (It’s not as obvious as you might think.)
It isn’t clear why the Facebook parent company decided to call themselves “Meta”, but they may mistakenly think of their virtual “metaverse” as somehow outside and separate from the regular universe. It isn’t, but the topic of the metaphysics of virtual objects is for another day.