The Metaphysics

Outline

The Metaphysics (4th century BCE) is a collection of Aristotle’s writings on what he called first philosophy, the study of being itself. It examines the nature of substance, the causes of things, form and matter, potential and actual existence, and the first cause of motion. The work was translated into Arabic and studied closely by Muslim philosophers, most notably Ibn Rushd, who wrote a major commentary on it.

• Aristotle calls the study of being itself first philosophy, the most basic inquiry into what exists.
• The book examines substance, the question of what a thing fundamentally is beneath its changing qualities.
• Aristotle looks at the causes of things, asking why anything is the way it is.
• Form and matter, and potential and actual existence, are tools for explaining how things change and come to be.
• The work points to a first cause of motion as the starting point of all movement.

Aristotle (384–322 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Plato, and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He founded the Lyceum in Athens and wrote on logic, ethics, politics, biology, and poetry. Known in the Arab philosophical tradition as the First Teacher, his other works include the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics.