Category: Society and people's livelihood

Problem description:

Any category, broad sense, narrow sense, eclectic sense.

Analysis:

Metaphysics is a worldview and methodology that is opposed to dialectics. It is characterized by viewing the world from an isolated, one-sided and static point of view, and viewing everything in the world as forever isolated from each other and never changing; if there is any change, it is only an increase or decrease in quantity and a change in location. , and the reason for this increase, decrease, and change is not inside the thing but outside the thing, that is, due to the promotion of external forces.

"Metaphysics" as a philosophical term has two meanings: (1) Starting from Hegel, it is used as a synonym for anti-dialectics, but it is Marxist philosophy that truly reveals its essence. (2) Refers to a philosophy that studies what is beyond the reach of the senses, that is, what is beyond experience. This usage has appeared in philosophical works before Marxism and is still popular among Western philosophers.

Modern idealists (such as Machists) often use the word "metaphysics" to attack materialism, saying that the materialist view of matter is a super-sensory and super-experience fiction. In the history of philosophy, due to different historical conditions, metaphysics is sometimes combined with materialism and sometimes with idealism. But in essence, metaphysics is closely related to idealism.

Metaphysics is one of the key words in Western philosophy, which mainly refers to the core department that dominated Western philosophy from ancient Greek philosophy to Hegelian philosophy around 2500 (seeing metaphysics as a kind of dialectics) Relative methods, not the main usage, can be ignored).

But this concept has a very interesting formation process.

"Metaphysics" was originally a philosophical work by Aristotle, but the name of this work was not given by Aristotle. It turned out to be Aristotle's "First Philosophy" Philosophy" Lecture Notes. After Aristotle's "hasty escape" from Athens, the manuscript disappeared without a trace. More than 100 years later, it was found in a cellar. After many wanderings, it finally fell into the hands of a librarian in the Roman Library. He was Andronikos. Known as the Aristotle Academy - the eleventh director of the Lyceum Academy, in fact there was no Lyceum at that time, but he was indeed a disciple of a single lineage of Aristotle's school. So he began editing the complete works of Aristotle. After editing Physics (phusike), I began to edit the manuscript of Aristotle's First Philosophy, but I couldn't find a suitable title, so I called it "ta meta ta phusika", which means "the books after physics". roll". Later it was shortened to metaphusike. Interestingly, meta in Greek not only means "after", but also means "element" and "transcendence", and this meaning is exactly in line with the meaning of first philosophy. Therefore, metaphysics is not "after physics" but "before physics".

It is said that Yan Fu translated metaphysics as metaphysics based on the "Book of Changes" that "metaphysicians call it Tao, and those who follow the metaphysics call it tools".

Physics actually means natural science in Greek, nature-phusis, natural science-phusike. In Aristotle, metaphysics should be "the basis of natural science." For example, his famous saying: "There is a science that specializes in studying existence as existence, that is, existence itself." What he means is that general scientific research focuses on certain attributes and aspects of existence, and they will not study these attributes and aspects. The basic premise of "existence itself" is "existence itself", so there should be a discipline dedicated to the study of existence itself. If the attributes and aspects of existence are predicated on existence, then the first philosophy (metaphysics) that studies existence itself is the foundation and premise of all science. This is the origin of "philosophy = science of science".