History of metaphysics

This article describes the history of metaphysics since the origins of philosophy until the 20th century.

Antiquity

Origins of metaphysics

See also: Origin of philosophy

It is difficult to in general separate the origins from the metaphysical of the origins of the Philosophie . Philosophy, such as it appears at the 6th century before J.C., is made initially abstract speculation. It concentrates more particularly on the problem of the principle of any thing. All presocratic philosophy can even be described of research and studies of the principles.

Parménide (fine of the Life century-medium of Ve century before J. - C.)

It is in the Eleatic school, located at Élée in current Italy of the south, that was the founder of the science of the to be as being (ontology, term forged at the 17th century starting from the Greek word ontos ): Parménide. The science of the to be as being is the ancestor and the common point of metaphysics modern Occident ale.

Among the philosophers Présocratiques, Parménide is that which raises the question of the to be with the most force.

Parménide did not dodge any the problems relative to a true thought of the to be ( ontos ), since, on the one hand, it identified to be and Pensée, and, on the other hand, it prohibits the true thought of another thing that what is, with the consequences Logique S that comprises:

the first way of research says that the to be is and that it is not possible that it is not. It is the way of the certainty, because it accompanies the Vérité. The other it is that the being is not and that the non-being is. This way is a narrow path where one can nothing learn.

Parménide opposed the to be, access road to the Vérité, and the Doxa, the confused Opinion. The concept of Doxa was taken again by certain modern philosophers.

Parménide is known to us by his treaty nature . It came to Athens towards the age 65 years and knew Socrate. The study of the to be was integrated thereafter in the philosophy of Aristote, in a more general form of substance (cf below).

The contribution of Parménide was determining on the Pensée modern Occident ale, in the field of the method.

Plato

See also: Theory of the Ideas

The second great moment in the evolution of Western metaphysics is undoubtedly Platonic metaphysics and more precisely theory of the Ideas celebrates it.

Aristote and the substance

See also: Substance (Aristote)

The fundamental question of the being, which was transmitted to us by Aristote, is that of the principles and the Cause S (with the philosophical direction) of the to be. It only reduces to the question of the ousia (category of the Substance ): this problem is thus for him with the base of the physical research, i.e. it also raises of the study of the Nature.

Aristote endeavors to distinguish different the direction from the word to be, to avoid the traps Logique S of the thought parménidienne. These analyzes precede the analytical thought and the attempts to exceed the Métaphysique ancient and medieval by the analysis of the language.

Aristote summarizes the whole of the questions relating on the Nature and the to be with the question: what the Substance ( ousia )? ( Metaphysical , delivers Z). One cannot speak about what is, in some order that it is, without knowing what is the Substance, which receives predicates following of necessary or accidental relations . These relations found the possibility of the Connaissance, science studying the relations necessary. The problem is then of knowing what is the Substance simpliciter , i.e. what it is as it is, in itself. In this direction, the metaphysical of Aristote, which will have a great influence with the Moyen-âge, is not absolutely different from philosophy to be it of Plato.

In the whole of its history, the Greek Pensée philosophical tried to work out rational and satisfactory answers taking into consideration shown or supposed criterion Discours ( logos ) and Raison. The to be is thus one of the fundamental categories of the ancient thought.

Hellenistic period: stoical

For the hellenistic period, metaphysics faces the decisive objections of the Scepticisme and the Nouvelle Academy; in fact the Stoïcien S (Épictète) will be the most remarkable defenders of the Substance, working out a design Logique of the Réalité which will be redécouverte only at the beginning of the 20th century (see Bertrand Russell for example).

The fight between Métaphysique and skepticism structure most of the Histoire of philosophy, and it is to overcome this tension that Kant will work out its critical philosophy.

medieval Period

Integration in civilizations Islamic, Jewish and Christian

This Greek thought of the Reality, which makes sometimes be, or even of beyond the being, the divine base of the world, was integrated by successive stages in the intellectual references of civilizations ic Islam, Jewish and Christian. It transformed considerably the bases intellectual strictly theological and resulting from different the Révélation S concerned, and structured the cultural and philosophical base of the occident.

One draws up the principal stages below of them.

Thought transference of Aristote to Islamic civilization

It was initially the Islamic Civilization which integrated the thought of Aristote, like that of Plato, at the 8th century, in the intellectual center of Baghdad, supporting the development of sciences which we know under the expression “golden age of civilization arabo-Moslem woman”. See Kalâm.

The Byzantine empire had also received this heritage. Because of the dissensions between occident and the East, in the top the Middle Ages, one knew only Plato, and not yet Aristote. The thought of Aristote started to arrive to occident only at the 10th century, via the exchanges with the Arabo-Moslems.

Beginning of the integration of the thought of Aristote in occident

The monk Gerbert d' Aurillac, become pope under the name of Sylvestre II, introduced elements of the thought of Aristote, a little before the An millet, in the urban schools of occident.

Then, at the 12th century (of 1120 with 1190), works of Aristote were systematically translated by teams including/understanding of the Musulman S, the Juif S, and the Christians, with Tolède and in four cities of the south of Italy. They were diffused in occident by the network of the Monastère S and the urban schools.

This time also corresponds to the apogee of the reading of the Holy Scriptures according to the four directions of the tradition Judaïque taken again at the 3rd century by Origène.

See also: the Middle Ages

Integration in the universities, Albert Large the, Thomas d' Aquin

Albert Large the played a very important part while introducing into the Université S of Europe, then in creation, sciences Greek and arabo-Moslem woman.

It was Thomas d' Aquin which, at the 13th century, undertook a complete reconciliation between the work of Aristote and the Christianisme. The denomination was taken again: metaphysics ( meta your physika , after physics).

The Philosophie first is for Thomas d' Aquin a Connaissance rational and natural, which precedes the Théologie chronologically, supernatural knowledge which exceeds the Raison without contradicting it.

Thomas distinguished the to be and the gasoline: God is, from his own gasoline, but the creature has the being.

The Encyclical Fides and Ratio (faith and reason) recalls in the broad outlines this process of reconciliation between the Christianisme and the thought of Aristote.

The metaphysical thought and the theological thought were thus indissociablement bound during all the period Scolastique, and formed the base of teaching in the Université S. This lesson were even most prestigious (the épisteme), compared to the scientific lesson (the techne).

The theological influence developed at least until Hegel and Schopenhauer, and was violently denounced by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Duns Scot

Modern period

16th century

At the 16th century, no notable change occurred in metaphysics: the lesson of this discipline remained those of the Scolastique, and was unchanged since the 13th century.

17th century

a new representation of the world

At the 17th century, a crisis started to settle in the field of the metaphysics, whose reason was due mainly to the change of Représentation of the world induced by the discovery of the Héliocentrisme.

These designs called into question good number of generally accepted ideas. Indeed, in one of the books of the philosophy first of Aristote, one considered that the Ground was fixed and that the Sun turned around the Earth. This theory took again the geocentric thesis of Ptolémée.

More serious, the news Théorie S called into question some passages of the Bible (for example, a line of the Psaume 92 (93) was written at that time in a geocentric direction : " You fixed the ground immobile" …).

At that time, the father Marin Mersenne, who was in the center of a correspondence between the philosophical and scientific great minds, published in 1623 Questions about the Genesis , which was more a diatribe against its contemporaries and an attack against the Christian Kabbale, that a true treaty, like showed it Robert Lenoble.

Such considerations on the reading of the passages Cosmologique S of the Old Testament called into question all science Scolastique founded on Aristote, for example the correspondence between the theory of the causes efficient Aristote with its corollary the movement, and the Concept S incipient from dynamics: speed and accelation.

These ambiguities Sémantique S could appear alleviating today, but, at the 17th century, they sapped actually the bases of metaphysics Scolastique, the most prestigious discipline taught in the universities, very related to the Church at that time. It discredited the Théologien S, called into question the fundamental texts themselves (the Bible), leading the intellectuals to the Scepticisme with respect to the Religion, and to the charge of Obscurantisme and Superstition.

Descartes and the Cogito

In the Discourse on Method (1637), first philosophical work written in French, Descartes described the Doute like method in order to re-examine its Connaissance S and to acquire a scientific certainty.

In the Meditations metaphysics (1641), written for a public more informed, therefore in Latin, it went much further: it introduced a doubt, which one can describe as hyperbolic: the main causes became, for Descartes, a principle first supported on the fact of thinking, the famous Cogito ergo sum. The cogito was already described in the Discourse on Method but the implications metaphysics of the cogito appear really only in the Méditations metaphysics . In fact, this philosophical design considered that doubtful knowledge is false, and must thus be rejected to lead to a certainty. The modern psychoanalysis gives this design a new vision: the individual is in the position of a prone which studies a Objet (philosophy), and not in a relation of subject on subject.

In the Principles of philosophy (1644), Descartes considered that knowledge is like a tree, of which the roots are metaphysics, the trunk the Physique, and branches others Science S (mechanical, medicine and Morale). It upset kind classification of knowledge defined by the Scolastique.

The Méditations metaphysics were thus more one critical of the position Scolastique, that a true revision of metaphysics. Many philosophers materialists of the 19th century amplified this criticism, in a form or another, drawing aside the metaphysics and the concept even of Main cause, therefore the Substance resulting from Aristote.

One started to see to clash the designs mechanists, and the designs finalists, which, in the spirit of the philosophy of Aristote, had only as an aim to provide a philosophical method for an ethical orientation of the existence.

Spinoza

Spinoza shared certain positions of Descartes. He insisted however more on the Perception and the Intuition in the process of knowledge.

He made a critical analysis of the Bible, and considered that it did not bring a sufficient metaphysical knowledge. It was seen indeed that, for example, the old formulation of the Psaume 92 (93) was not in conformity with the heliocentric theories .

Into its Thought metaphysics , Spinoza introduced a design of the metaphysics which differed appreciably from the design Scolastique, introducing a separation between the Foi and the knowledge of its time. The Pensées Metaphysics preserved nevertheless traditional division between metaphysical general and metaphysical special :

The first part of the treaty treats general metaphysical , i.e of the to be as being:

• it distinguishes from the types of to be: reality, of fiction, and reason;
• it distinguishes the to be gasoline, Existence, Idée;
• it treats methods of the to be: necessary, impossible, possible and contingent;
• finally, it treats duration, Temps, a, truth, well, etc

The milked second part of the special part of metaphysics :

• God, as a highest ens: eternity, unicity, immutability, simplicity, etc Of the understanding and the will of God;
• of the creation and the human Spirit.

Leibniz

The philosophy of Leibniz is definitely metaphysical as its analysis of the substance shows it

18th century

Taken autonomy of the Reason

The history of Western philosophy, of Descartes to Kant, is mainly the history of a catch of autonomy of the Raison, then of a criticism of the possibilities of this same reason: at the traditional age, Descartes sought to base a system of thought on a principle first, the Cogito, which, in its spirit, replaced the Main cause (the Substance). The direction of the to be then tended to depend primarily on an individual design of God, and the concept of Substance became null and void.

It was seen that Spinoza preserved essentially the concepts of Aristote. It was more moderate than Descartes on certain aspects of knowledge: Intuition, Perception.

Christian Wolf and ontology

In the Metaphysical of Christian Wolf ( Philosophia preceded sive Ontologia (1729)), the ontology is defined like a under-part of the Métaphysique, the most general part in opposition to the three disciplines of “special metaphysics”, the Théologie (God), the Psychologie (the Âme) and the Cosmologie (the Monde).

At one time when various sciences became scattered, Wolf had the merit to establish a coherent system of classification of sciences, which had much inflence in the movement of German Aufklärung. Kant was formed at this school.

The claims of Wolf to establish evidence of God by the rational deduction were badly accommodated by some of its contemporaries. Voltaire and the deism

Under the effect of the development of sciences, the social representations evolved/moved. The advances in knowledge let think that the world was controlled according to a universal law. God was compared with a large clock and watch maker controlling the world. One spoke about a supreme Being.

Voltaire was one of the propagators of the concept To be supreme, which one finds in the Déisme. This design was taken again by certain revolutionists (Robespierre) and developed until becoming a true worship during the most radical phases of the French revolution.

Kant and the criticism of the reason

It is with such a design of the reason that Emmanuel Kant wanted to be opposed.

In the Criticism of the pure reason , indeed, Emmanuel Kant wanted to show that metaphysics could not assert any more the statute of science to whole share, because it proceeded independently of the experiment and by philosophical Concept S which lost of their direction. For Kant, metaphysics thus became a science " analytique" , because one did not manage any more to define of them and to expose the fundamental concepts of them, and she did not manage any more to inform on what is independent of our significant Expérience. In particular, it was impossible to make be a predicate, since by definition the being has an absolute position, out of the range of our sensitivity.

On the other hand, one could know the constitution of our Connaissance, our understanding, and establish the limits of the speculative Raison pure: this Connaissance known as transcendantale allowed, according to Kant, of refonder a new metaphysics of the Nature and a metaphysics of manners (ethical Droit and ). Kant amorça thus the passage of the absolute to the transcendantal.

This design amounted ratifying separation between general metaphysics and special metaphysics (theology), making philosophy a Théorie of knowledge. It especially developed starting from 1870 in the Néo-kantisme.

Contemporary period

19th century

Rejection of metaphysics by the ideological systems

At the 19th century, after the French revolution, the Industrial revolution developed starting from the idea of Progrès technical and industrial.

The year 1825 was one pivotal year in the reflection on a total philosophical system. The systems which had the most success, in addition to different the Utopie S, were atheisms which generally took the form of Idéologie S. the majority of these systems had jointly to be unaware of, or to even fight violently, metaphysics. They criticized metaphysics on its bases.

See also: Ideology

Saint-Simon (count of) and Auguste Count

Saint-Simon developed a Utopie, which it called the “new Christianity”, and which was actually only a Idéologie Matérialiste: God was replaced according to him by the universal gravitation, and the human beings were connected between them by Réseau X physical (Philosophie of the networks). He was followed by all the current Saint-Simonian and influenced Marx, via some of his successors.

In the tread of the theories on the history of Saint-Simon, Auguste Count, founder of the Positivism, proclaimed the successor of Descartes, radicalizing the principle first Cartesian Cogito: he denied all Main cause. Count imagined that humanity followed a kind of law historical, that it called the Loi of the three states, which, according to him, would make pass the humanity of a theological state, dominated by God, in a metaphysical state, dominated by abstract forces, and finally in a positive state where all the Phénomène S (beings, things) would be exprimables in mathematical language. Humanity was for him a Large-Being, of which it was made the large priest. It developed an ideological design of the Sociologie, going until giving a turning pseudo-nun to its philosophy: the religious Positivism.

The Saint-Simonism and its prolongation the Positivism, had much success in France starting from the middle of the 19th century, and until the Second world war. They generated others Idéologie S in France and in the majority of the zones of the world: Continental Europe, Latin America, the United Kingdom (and the USA), Soviet Union,…

Various forms of Scientism, the Marxism, as well as the Nihilisme had also jointly to deny metaphysics.

Nietzsche

Nietzsche violently fought metaphysics on its theological aspects, which had not prevented it from drawing from a presocratic philosophy (Héraclite d' Éphèse).

See also: philosophical Athéisme#L' atheism

The encyclical Fides and Ratio recalls that philosophies which do not offer a metaphysical opening cannot allow the intelligence of the Révélation.

Hegel and Schopenhauer

These two philosophers continued to press the Métaphysique on theological bases .

Neo-Kantianism

The current of the Néo-kantisme developed starting from 1870, and developed the idea of transcendence.

One can consider that works of Georg Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schelling are among the last philosophical great systems which start from principles metaphysics founded rationally.

Work of interpretation

At the 19th century, the Protestant did an important work of Exégèse on the Old Testament. It was seen that, in particular, the formulation of the Psaume 92 (93) was re-examined in a not lending direction, a priori, with confusion.

Metaphysics at the 20th century until the IIe world war

There were at the 20th century several attempts of going beyond or deepening of metaphysics; it should be taken guard that this word of going beyond took many directions, of which in particular:

• direction of the pure and simple destruction of metaphysics;
• the direction of awakening of the limits of metaphysics.

The deepening was incarnated in France by the philosophy of the spirit and the philosophy of the values which used the reflexive method. One can go back the end to this tendency with the book of Gabriel Madinier, Conscience and Signification , in 1953: ultimate start of Madinier against the critic of the subject by Merleau-Ponty.

The revival of metaphysics in France

But the metaphysical will survive in particular in reaction the Positivisme, the scientism and the traumatism of the First World War.

This resistance will be also incarnated against a certain tradition complexed by the supremacy of sciences: it is necessary to note for example this astonishing effort of very catholic the Leon Ollé-Laprune in philosophy and time present which consisted in showing in what, also, philosophy can prove like science.

If these philosophers realize well of the ditch which separates the scientific method of the philosophical method, they hope that the Philosophie moves towards exactitude.

The metaphysical dispute will start by being incarnated in the Intuition nism of Henri Bergson

To the same time, the idealisms of Octave Hamelin and Leon Brunschvicg will also proceed of this resistance. Leon Brunschvicg will try to reconcile a reflection on the Esprit with the Progrès of sciences.

Some even, will pass initially by the epistemology and sciences before giving up it (by insatifaction of the Idéologie of the Progrès): it will be the case of Edouard Roy and Rene the Seine.

If Brunschvicg tries to reconcile metaphysical and Science, it leaves side what it holds only for one word and who constitutes the object par excellence metaphysics: the Being. To speculate, to develop a ontology is thing risked at that time.

Louis Lavelle and French spiritualism

If one however attends a revival of metaphysics at the 20th century in his higher majesty, it is with Louis Lavelle that we must. Isolated, this metaphysician will undertake a great dialectical epopee: to analyze our participation in the absolute, i.e. to find behind the contingent existence of the men what exceeds them, namely the spirit conceived like Acte. With Rene the Seine, Lavelle founds the collection " philosophy of the esprit" in the editor Sapwood and writes with him the introductory proclamation where they defend the cause of metaphysics.

Lavelle opens on large running of between two wars to France: the French Philosophy of the spirit. Those which can be attached to this tendency are Maurice Blondel (philosopher) (although former), Rene the Seine, Gabriel Madinier, Nicolas Berdiaev, Georges Gusdorf, Aimé Forest, Jean Nabert, Maurice Nédoncelle etc

The arrival of the Existentialisme will make disappear this dominant tendency which opens in particular on the revival of the philosophy of the values in France.

Nevertheless, philosophies known as existentialists (it is more correct of speaking about philosophies of the existence) such as those of Heidegger (although its research goes more on the Being as a horizon of direction; of source) and Sartre, will have the same combat as that of spiritualistic even if both " camps" did not really get along.

Moreover, metaphysics of Lavelle, Rene the Seine and Berdiaev make possible an eminent development of the human existence, the lived daily one as well as the anguish before the hour of phenomenologies existentialists.

Negation of metaphysics: the Circle of Vienna

The Circle of Vienna, or logical Positivism, had been fixed for goal to remove philosophy from metaphysics, while applying to very stated a vigorous positivism, sometimes lit, but too often fanatic: thus the negation of metaphysics logically results it in affirming that the Art does not have any direction, which is obviously absurd, as will point out it Popper.

From this point of view, very stated must be able to be analyzed and returned with something of reality, for example while answering questions such as:

• of which statement S is it deductible and which statements are deductible from S?
• how S does it have to be checked?

This logical critic, developed by Carnap for example, denounces inter alia, confusions of the vocabulary heideggérien. From this point of view, the Métaphysique is reduced to poetic lived, which expresses the feeling that one has of the existence, without never returning to something of scientifically attestable.

This position of positivism is very whole round towards a deductive Logique, eliminating any other form from knowledge (induction, Intuition…).

The legal Positivisme is also placed from the point of view which denies metaphysics.

Heidegger, existentialism

The question of the of being is with the base of the various forms of the Existentialisme and one of the philosophical works most influential of the 20th century, that of Heidegger, very whole is directed by this research. To this last, as to Sartre, the direction comes to be it only thanks to nothing, which perhaps thus finds a fundamental intuition of the first theologists (see Denys Aréopagite) and of the Mystique.

The arrival of the existentialism will make disappear this dominant tendency which opens in particular on the revival of the philosophy of the values in France.

Nevertheless, philosophies known as existentialists (it is more correct speech of philosophies of the existence) such as those of Heidegger (although its research goes more on the Being as a horizon of direction; of source) and Sartre, will have the same combat as that of spiritualistic even if both " camps" did not really get along.

Fundamental scientific discoveries

As he was said, the 20th century did not eliminate metaphysics, but he seriously called in question the reasons of distinguishing this one from the Physique. One will find of it an example in the reflections metaphysics of Michel Bitbol in connection with the Quantum physics in “Quantum physics, a philosophical introduction”.

Among the physicists who developed research posing this type of questions one can quote Louis-Victor de Broglie, Werner Heisenberg, max Planck, and Erwin Schrödinger.

Place de la metaphysics in analystic and continental philosophy

It seems that the design of metaphysics currently is rather different between the continental Philosophie and the analytical Philosophie (Anglo-Saxon). This is undoubtedly a heritage of the Histoire.

In continental philosophy, one is satisfied to study the consequences of the scientific evolutions on a intellectual level. In analytical philosophy, these consequences are analyzed on a level much more practical: descriptive metaphysics, Philosophy of the language, Philosophy of the spirit, and their relationship with the cognitive Sciences.

One finds in particular several metaphysicians outstanding in the Anglo-Saxon world, like Peter Strawson, David Lewis, or John F Wippel.

The French philosopher Jean-Pierre Dupuy was interested in the cognitive Sciences, in one of his recent works: at the origins of cognitive sciences (2005). This awakening is recent in continental philosophy.

Conclusion

The 20th century thus did not eliminate metaphysics, but it seriously called in question the reasons of distinguishing this one from the physical . One will find of it an example in the reflections metaphysics of Michel Bitbol in connection with physics Quantique in “Quantum physics, a philosophical introduction”.

See too

• Metaphysical

• Origin of philosophy
• Concepts metaphysics
• History of the method
• History of philosophy