What is Metaphysics all about?  Metaphysical Inquiry  Aim of Metaphysics  Possibility of Metaphysics  Root and ground of Metaphysical Inquiry Introduction: What is Metaphysics all about?

intellectual questioning Multiplicity and diversity What is metaphysics? WHAT GOES ON IN “METAPHYSICAL INQUIRY”? Metaphysical inquiry is found wherever the human being extends his intellectual questioning to embrace the whole of reality, seeking somehow to pull together all the obvious multiplicity and diversity into some kind of intelligible unity, with the inquiry subjected to and guided by the critical testing of the thinker’s own personal intelligence according to the evidence available to him, with the results articulated in some sort of systematic way. (1) intellectual questioning Multiplicity and diversity Intelligible unity Whole of reality Systematic way

The difference that makes the difference - What distinguishes the metaphysician within philosophical inquiry is his thrust toward ARTICULATING A VISION OF REALITY AS A WHOLE, not just some part of it like the human being, or nature, or society. (1)

i.e., the ultimate laws of intelligibility of being as being! What is the Aim of Metaphysics? TRUTH?  We focus our inquiry explicitly on the ultimate context of all experience, that of reality or being itself, as such - rather than on any particular part of it.  To discover the essential, universal properties and structures of all beings as real, their ultimate principles of intelligibility, and their interrelationships to form an intelligible whole. i.e., the ultimate laws of intelligibility of being as being!

Is this metaphysics possible at all? ♦ It is impossible to study all beings at once, because being is not some distinguishing trait, is perfectly empty conceptually and tells us nothing in particular! ♦ Metaphysics may not have a distinctive subject matter, but it does have a distinctive point of view; it considers only the most general all-embracing laws of all things, precisely as REAL, as existing. Metaphysics tries to draw out into the explicit light of reflection what all other human thought leaves implicit and takes for granted - existence itself. But it can be done only by reflective insight and analysis. Is this metaphysics possible at all?

Capax totius entis (St. Thomas). In other words - Although metaphysics in its thrust or intention, sometimes even in its flashes of insight or intuition, can be universal and absolute, its expression will always be limited, incomplete, in a word, perspectival, from within a given culture and limited framework of thinking, speaking, imagining, feeling, within human history. Every human intellect is thus a finite, perspectival vision-of-the-whole. Capax totius entis (St. Thomas). ♦ Metaphysics is impossible because the human being is finite and only a small part within the whole of reality. Hence she can never know or talk about reality as a whole, for she would have to be outside it or the source of it to do so; she would have to be God, which she is not. This is the paradox of the human mind: it is at once only finite, yet by its unrestricted drive to know all that there is to know about all that there is, by its infinite, inexhaustible capacity to know, its limitless horizon of inquiry, precisely as intellect (whose formal object or defining horizon is being itself), the human intellect is also mysteriously co-equal with the whole universe, a part that is also a whole embracing all wholes, at least by thrust and intention, though vaguely and imperfectly in its own finite way. Is this metaphysics possible at all?

Principle of Intelligibility Root and Ground of all Metaphysical Inquiry This radical dynamism of the human spirit is innate, the a priori con-dition of our being able to carry on any inquiry into the intelligibility and meaning of things at all. This is the unrestricted drive to know all that there is to know about all that there is, i.e., to know being itself or the whole of reality. Its hor-izon of inquiry, of interest, is nothing less than the totality of being. It involves a lived, at least implicit, commitment to the intelligibility in principle of all being, even for the human intellect to some degree, even though I may not in fact achieve this myself, and a radical desire to achieve it as a fundamental good for me as human.

Important Implication . . . If the search for the ultimate intelligibility of all things is to make sense and the human being is not to be a monstrous living absurdity, BEING or the real must in principle be intelligible, that the quest for intelligibility is not futile, that being itself is not radically unintelligible, absurd, opaque, to intelligence. the inquiry of metaphysics implies the commitment, at least implicit and in hope, to the radical intelligibility of all being.

Method of Metaphysics Descriptive: involves the discovery and description of the basic properties and categories of being by comparative reductive analysis (search for basic common properties and irreducible modes of being) and reflective insight. Explanatory: is the search for ultimate explanatory hypotheses which render intelligible the finite changing realities of our experience which are shown to be not adequately intelligible by themselves (do not contain their own sufficient reason within themselves).