Introduction to Metaphysics: From Parmenides to Levinas

INTRODUCTION TO METAPHYSICS

JEAN GRONDIN

TRANSLATED BY LUKAS SODERSTROM

INTRODUCTION TO METAPHYSICS

From Parmenides to Levinas

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Introduction à la métaphysique © 2004 by Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal

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Grondin, Jean.

[Introduction à la métaphysique. English]

Introduction to metaphysics : from Parmenides to Levinas / Jean Grondin ; translated by Lukas Soderstrom.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p.).

ISBN 978-0-231-14845-0 (cloth : alk. paper)–ISBN 978-0-231-14844-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)– ISBN 978-0-231-52723-1 (ebook)

1. Metaphysics—History. I. Title.

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To all my students

There is a science which investigates Being as Being.

ARISTOTLE, METAPHYSICS, IV, 1

Thus, all philosophy is like a tree, of which Metaphysics is the root, Physics the trunk, and all the other sciences the branches that grow out of this trunk, which are reduced to three principal, namely, Medicine, Mechanics, and Ethics.

RENÉ DESCARTES, PREFACE TO THE PRINCIPLES OF PHILOSOPHY

Metaphysics is without a doubt the most difficult of all things into which man has insight.

But so far no metaphysics has ever been written.

IMMANUEL KANT, INQUIRY CONCERNING THE DISTINCTNESS OF THE PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL THEOLOGY AND MORALITY

A people without any metaphysics is like a temple without a Holy of Holies.

G. W. F. HEGEL, PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC

Metaphysics belongs to human nature. It is neither a division of academic philosophy nor a field of arbitrary notions. Metaphysics is the fundamental event of our existence. It is our existence itself.

MARTIN HEIDEGGER, WHAT IS METAPHYSICS?

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

Toward a Concept of Metaphysics

Its Origins

Chapter 1. Parmenides: The Evidence of Being

The Fragmentary and Almost Incomprehensible Character of Pre-Platonic Thought

The Context of Presocratic Thinking on Nature

An Oral, Therefore Poetic, Culture

A Goddess’s Revelation

The Enigma of Being

The Legacy of Parmenides’ Onto-Theology

The Sophistic Crisis: Human Discourse Left to Its Own Devices

Chapter 2. Plato: The Hypothesis of the Idea

The Indirect Character of Plato’s Writings

Parmenides’ Legacy

Being Attentive to the Eidos

The Separation of the Ideas

An Effort at Reminiscence

Dialectics, or Minding Being Itself

The Exemplary Ideality of Mathematics

The Metaphysical Separation of the Line: Republic VI

The Idea of the Good’s Supereminence

The Demiurge’s Cosmos: The Same and the Different

The Principle of the One in Plato’s Academy

Chapter 3. Aristotle: The Horizons of First Philosophy

The Text and Object of Metaphysics

A Science of First Principles

The Theory of Causes

It Is a Science of Being as Being

The Onto-Theological Perspective of Metaphysics E, I

The Many Meanings of Being

First Philosophy as Ousiology: Metaphysics Z

The Theology of Metaphysics Λ

Chapter 4. The Last Summit of Classical Metaphysics: The Neoplatonic Eruption

Plotinus’s Metaphysics of the One

Augustine’s Christianization of Metaphysics

Chapter 5. Metaphysics and Theology in the Middle Ages

A Metaphysical Era?

The Importance of Pistis

Anselm and the Ontological Argument

Avicenna: The Metaphysics of the Shifa

Averroes’s Critique of Avicenna

The Object of Metaphysics According to Thomas Aquinas

Whether God Exists? The Five Ways

The Idea of a Scientia Transcendens in Scholastic Thought from Duns Scotus to Suarez: The Origin of Ontology

Chapter 6. Descartes: First Philosophy According to the Cogito

Is There a Cartesian Metaphysics?

First Meditation: What Can Be Called Into Doubt, or Classical Metaphysics Brought Into Question

Second Meditation: I Think, I Am—the Metaphysics of the Cogito

Third Meditation: Concerning God, That He Exists—the Return to the Metaphysics of Divinity

The Legacy of Descartes’s Double Metaphysics

Chapter 7. Spinoza and Leibniz: The Metaphysics of Simplicity and Integral Rationality

Ethical Metaphysics: Spinoza

Leibniz and the Search for the Metaphysics of Substantial Forms

Chapter 8. Kant: Metaphysics Turned Critical

Natural Metaphysics

Is Metaphysics Possible as Science?

Kant and the Ancients’ Transcendental Philosophy: Phenomena and the Things in Themselves

Critique and Metaphysics

The Metaphysics of Freedom

The Metaphysics of the Highest Good

Can the Existence of God Be Demonstrated?

The Future of Metaphysics After Kant

Chapter 9. Metaphysics After Kant?

Was There Any Metaphysics After Kant?

Science and System in Kant

The Idealist Dismissal of the Metaphysics of the Thing-in-Itself

Reinhold’s First Philosophy

Fichte and the Metaphysics of the I

Schelling’s Metaphysics of Identity

The Later Schelling’s Metaphysics

Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit

Post-Hegelian Metaphysics: A Primitive State or an Artistic Affair

Chapter 10. Heidegger: The Resurrection of the Question of Being in the Name of Overcoming Metaphysics

The Project of a Destruction of the History of Ontology

The Twofold Priority of the Question of Being

Metaphysics: The Experience of Our Being Par Excellence (1929)

The Onto-Theo-Logical Constitution of Metaphysics

The Technological and Nihilist Completion of Metaphysics

The Unsettling of the Principle of Reason

The Theological Scope of Heidegger’s Overcoming of Metaphysics

A Secretly Metaphysical Philosophy?

Chapter 11. On Metaphysics Since Heidegger

The Rediscovery of the History of Metaphysics

The Rediscovery of the Metaphysics of Existence: From Gilson to Sartre

The Rediscovery of the Metaphysics of Language: From Gadamer to Derrida

The Rediscovery of the Metaphysics of Transcendence: Levinas 3

CONCLUSION

ABBREVIATIONS

NOTES

FURTHER READING

PREFACE

This book hopes to introduce the reader to the intellectual discipline called metaphysics. If quotation marks are called for, it is because metaphysics is not a science that is taught today in any significant way. Even though some once considered it to be the queen of the sciences, there are no faculties of metaphysics like there are, say, departments of physics, mathematics, or theology. In fact, there never were any such faculties or departments. Nowadays, and for quite some time now, metaphysics is more often than not used as a foil for so-called postmetaphysical thought as though being nonmetaphysical were some kind of philosophical virtue. Indeed, most major trends in contemporary philosophy—phenomenology, analytic philosophy, and deconstruction—generally agree on the urgency of overcoming metaphysics. But what is thereby overcome? Is it always known? And, are these new postmetaphysical trends even thinkable without the insights of their metaphysical forbearers?

The author of this book belongs to a generation that was not schooled in metaphysics and was taught instead that it represented an illusory, inherently repressive, and even tyrannical form of thought from which one had to be freed. This was proclaimed, and quite autocratically at that, in the name of the philosophies of Heidegger and Kant. But as any impartial reader will not fail to notice, both Kant and Heidegger’s philosophical projects were not only profoundly influenced by metaphysics, they were metaphysical to the core. To be sure, Kant faulted traditional metaphysics for laying claim to a form of knowledge that would go beyond experience, but he himself laid the groundwork of a metaphysics of nature and a metaphysics of morals, which culminated in a proof of the existence of God and of the immortality of the soul. Quite a feat for a gravedigger of metaphysics. As for Heidegger, he stigmatized metaphysics because it aimed at a rational, theological and totalizing account of Being. But he was himself seeking a new understanding of Being (for which he unearthed indicative names, like Ereignis or Seyn), obviously set forth reasons and arguments for doing so, and did so in the hope of preparing a new experience of the divine in a modern world which has been abandoned by the gods. As with Kant, all his basic terms (Being, essence, truth, existence, ground, foundation, identity) were borrowed from the metaphysical tradition, to which his major interlocutors (Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schelling, and Nietzsche) belonged. Indeed, one does not need an advanced degree to know that Kant’s ultimate goal was to make metaphysics possible and Heidegger’s was to reawaken the question of Being, which is undoubtedly one the most important themes of all metaphysics. Why was this overlooked in the rush to overcome metaphysics?

Moreover, when did metaphysics ever exert its purported hegemony? Certainly not during Antiquity. Since the term metaphysics was not coined until the twelfth century, the Ancients can hardly be called metaphysicians.¹ Now the thinking of Being and its reasons we call metaphysics did indeed first appear during Greek Antiquity, and it may be considered one of the greatest achievements of classical thought. But it only appeared in highly elliptical and difficult texts of authors like Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle, who ceaselessly emphasized the fact they were leaving behind the well-beaten paths of mortal discourse when they spoke of Being. And their new way of thinking always and immediately raised the same problem: What was the real object of their new discourse? What did they mean by Being, the Ideas, or Being as Being? So even as early as Antiquity any explanation of the world oriented by the question of Being has been met with puzzlement. Thus the immobility of Parmenides’ Being was countered by the evidence of movement. And Aristotle famously stigmatized the Platonic theory of ideas for its useless metaphysics (in which he saw a vain duplication of our world with little or no practical use), despite having himself put forth the idea of an enigmatic first philosophy, which would later come to be identified with metaphysics. In fact, metaphysical thought was of so little importance during Antiquity that neither the post-Aristotelian Hellenistic schools (Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism) nor the Romans really prolonged its first halting steps in any meaningful fashion (at least until Neo-Platonism).

What about the Middle Ages? The image of a Middle Ages completely beholden to metaphysics is an unfortunate myth. Since the medieval world encountered metaphysical thought rather belatedly and, since it strongly relied on a revelation which came from another source than feeble human reason, metaphysics was never dominant or uncontested. In fact, the average reader will be hard-pressed to name even a single medieval author who presented his own thought as metaphysics.

As for modernity, it has, since Descartes, sought to oppose and overcome metaphysics in the name of another first philosophy, but it has only done so on the basis of a more rigorous conception of reality and a better account of Being, its principles, and reasons. But this new attempt to better explain the Being of things, and thus to go beyond the inherited and erroneous discourses, reiterated the fundamental hope of metaphysical thought—that is, that of an accurate account of Being and its reasons. It is indeed very difficult to overcome metaphysics without presupposing it or putting it into practice.

Thus this book wishes to recall, against all odds, that metaphysics is the insurmountable presupposition of all thought insofar as it carried and supported the project of a universal understanding of the world that inquires into the Being and reason for things.

For some time now, I have deplored the absence of a historical introduction to metaphysics in English. Those that do exist are either old or thomistic, in an outdated and caricatured understanding of the term. It is true that metaphysics has long been the affair of Thomists. In this tradition, which is really more Scotist than Thomist, general metaphysics, also called ontology, was viewed as the fundamental discipline of philosophy to the extent that it pertained to Being as Being, and relegated the study of its specificities (Being as this or that) to the other parts of philosophy. This conception of philosophy is perhaps old-fashioned, but its logic has not been superseded (Heidegger certainly adopted it in Being and Time).

The need for an introduction to metaphysics has not disappeared, however. In fact, it may be even more pressing now that metaphysics is regarded with such suspicion, but also with a certain degree of ignorance. It is a most common occurrence to run into an undergraduate student, or even the holder of a chair at a prestigious university, who will readily equate metaphysics with an outdated form of thought, if not with violence altogether.² Is metaphysics really violent? If that were the case, it should be prohibited by law and our declarations of human rights. It could be that one falls prey here to a very ineffectual understanding of violence. Violence occurs when someone invades your country or your home, rapes your children, murders, harms or robs someone, but where is the violence when someone like Parmenides or Plato writes a poem or dialogue about Being? Are the sermons of Meister Eckhart or the lectures of Plotinus or Schelling particularly brutal? Isn’t it this equation between violence and metaphysics which is in itself quite violent, in the precise sense that it does not do justice to what metaphysics has been?

Some allege it is the thinking about Being that would be inherently violent. Really? But if that is the case, it is an argument one has to leave to those who defend it. What else should one be thinking of? In any case, it would have to be another being (say, alterity, society, the good, the human being, the earth, linguistic structures) which one holds to be more fundamental and worthy of attention. But this claim must be justified, and it can only be justified by arguing that this or that reality (or Being) is more fundamental than this one. Whether one likes it or not, this is a metaphysical claim.

Metaphysics, with its universal breadth, is often faulted in recent times for having disregarded alterity and difference, an argument made by Lévinas, Derrida, and their many followers. But is that true? As such, the notion of alterity is one about which many metaphysical thinkers have spoken, such as Plato in his Sophists, Hegel in his Logic or even Lévinas in Totalité et infini (a book generally hostile to ontology, but, lest one forget, amenable to metaphysics). Yet most of these authors recognized that alterity was a concept of relation: An alterity is always the other of something else. This is why it is arduous to praise it as such. The alterity of peace is war, that of the good is the bad, and one doesn’t readily see why one should put a premium on them. The issue is not whether alterity should be exalted, but which alterity and why. And if Levinas praises the alterity which shines in the face of the other, it is certainly because this other is endowed with a certain metaphysical distinction.

This book will argue that it is thus impossible to surpass metaphysics without presupposing it. Since they are largely forgotten, its immediate aim will be to recall the important moments and principal steps in the somewhat subterranean history of metaphysics. This book’s goal is not to review metaphysics’ great systems in all their incommensurable diversity. Rather, through its diversity, it hopes to bring to light the continuity of a question and a discipline of thought that is perhaps constitutive of philosophy itself. One need not adopt a particular doctrine (like one joins a political party or a religion) to practice metaphysics. One simply needs to realize what one is doing when one attempts to understand our world and the meaning of one’s experiences.

INTRODUCTION

Toward a Concept of Metaphysics

Metaphysics has today lost much of its former luster. The term is often only understood in a pejorative sense, of which there are two varieties. In the first instance, metaphysical is used to describe empty reflections having little to do with the concrete facts of life. Metaphysical here is synonymous with the abstract, nebulous, or abstruse. Although this is a quite common understanding of metaphysics, and of philosophy as well, it has no place in this book, which will never discuss abstruse, obscure, or useless things. On the contrary, it will deal with the best of our metaphysical heritage and recall how it is impossible to think without abstraction. Even all that is called concrete must be thought of as part of a more general perspective, one which the concrete seeks to illustrate.

The second pejorative sense of metaphysics, although related to the first, is more precise. Metaphysical, in the second widespread usage, designates what lies beyond the physical, or what is separate from the sensible and perceptible material world. In addition to the physical world that surrounds and stifles us but in which we live, there is what Nietzsche derisively called a metaphysical backcountry (Hinterwelten), a world inhabited, it would seem, by nonphysical beings such as gods, angels, souls, and thinking beings. In this second sense, metaphysical is synonymous with transcendent, theological, and supernatural.

But is this the world to which this book is an introduction? No, or, rather, not directly. The main topic here is Western metaphysical thought, whose foundation is indeed metaphysical but is not necessarily related to thinking about the supersensible or to nebulous reflection. Such distinctions are indeed possible, sometimes even necessary, but most often excluded yet later reintroduced in other guises. That said, metaphysics will only be used here to designate the undercurrent of western philosophy that has from the time of Ancient Greece until now inquired into that which is—that is, into Being and its reasons. Such an inquiry need not be nebulous since Being is perhaps what is most immediate and visible. Nor must it necessarily focus on the supernatural because precisely what metaphysics does is to inquire into that which is: Being, such as it is given. Nevertheless, metaphysics is aware of its association with some form of transcendence. As its prefix meta suggests, metaphysics endeavors to overcome both overly particular perspectives and too restrictive ones, in order to consider Being in general, as a whole, thus developing an understanding of it that goes beyond any particular perspective.

As Parmenides’ fourth century BCE discourse on Being demonstrates, philosophical thought, and with it scientific thought, began with Being. Plato and Aristotle carried on this tradition in extraordinarily halting texts where they argued that true Being (Plato) or Being as Being (Aristotle) had to be the favored object of knowledge. This inquiry into Being was perceived as universal and therefore as the most rational of inquiries. It was to bear on the most substantial Being—the most being, as Plato put it—and therefore the most fundamental of all. This hope of a universal and fundamental discourse on Being is the basis of the philosophical discipline called metaphysics.

Aristotle, writing before the invention of the term metaphysics, named the discipline first philosophy because its object, Being, was to be considered first, and more importantly, because to discuss Being was also to inquire into the underlying principle of all that is. Since then, all really significant philosophical thought has been defined by an understanding of Being and its foundation, and can only be considered philosophy in this regard. Even though Being is not always the main theme—thank goodness!—all philosophical thought is necessarily metaphysical insofar as it discusses a being, a subject or an object it considers more important than all others (nature, reason, God, the subject, values, history, humanity, happiness, justice, meaning).

The philosophical importance of the question of Being is therefore greater than its place in the history of thought. This question has been important since the Greeks because Being, in one single word, defines the universe as a whole along with our own ephemeral existence in it. Fragile and fortuitous as it is, Being, including our own, might well have never come into existence. Yet Being is and we are, at least for a time. It is this mystery and our perplexed relation to it—to us—that is the origin of philosophy, of metaphysics—that is, of the thought of Being.

There are two noteworthy, but not necessarily exclusive, reactions to this mystery. The first attempts to explain why there is something—such as ourselves for example—rather than nothing. This is the meaning of a principle of reason in the works of philosophers such as Leibniz who sought reasons explaining why things are as they are.¹ This principle, or faith in rationality, has been the single most important impetus to scientific inquiry, which has been understood since Plato—and even since Parmenides—as a rational discourse (logos) on what is (the on, or beings).

The second reaction has, since Parmenides, always accompanied this attempt at understanding. This second attitude towards Being attempts to go beyond the explanatory approach of reason, which can never be discarded, and marvels at the fact there is something rather than nothing. Although it may appear irrational, this second position in relation to Being is no less rigorous than the first. Indeed, it observes that all explanations can only explain Being from Being. Although one may derive Being from another principle, the ensuing explanation does not really explain why there is something rather than nothing. Thus the following paradox: Being, which calls for an explanation, in a way resists all meaning and explanation. Even philosophy, which in its most scientific vein always seeks explanations, can be astonished at the immensity of all that is. Both Plato and Aristotle in fact claimed that philosophy was born out of astonishment, even admiration. It may be that the great works of philosophy, like those of art, are born of this astonishment, unceasingly renewing itself for more than two millennia.

While it embodies one of the most rigorous manifestations of metaphysics, the astonishment before the immensity of Being also renders the metaphysical project—the rational discourse on Being—all the more difficult. Indeed, what can be said about Being? Can a discourse on Being be anything other than halting and uncertain? Can it ever be a scientific discourse? Can philosophy ever measure up to what it wishes to express? Philosophy’s embarrassed perplexity has at times led to skepticism (nothing certain can be said about Being) and to mysticism (Being is ineffable). It has also led to the clear and resolute rejection of the question of Being (it is not an object worthy of attention). If nothing can be said of Being because it is too general a concept, one must settle for predictable and explainable things. Nevertheless, such a resigned dismissal of the question of Being is itself the result of a metaphysical decision. One should be aware that all three of these attitudes towards Being (skepticism, mysticism and the rejection of the question of Being) are coherent and real attempts at philosophy despite the fact that Being is scientifically ineffable and its elusiveness can be somewhat exasperating. A philosophy devoid of mysticism and skepticism would not live up to its name because it would not measure up to the mystery of Being itself. One is tempted to respond to all these objections with Galileo’s words: eppur si muove! but it moves! Being is indeed moving: it emerges and moves us. We never cease speaking of it and we are of it. To inquire metaphysically is therefore to strive to express Being which embraces and envelops us.

Its Origins

As we have just seen, the thought of Being began with Parmenides, of whom we know very little. In the three pages of contiguous text of his that remain, Being is held to be the favored, even sole, object of knowledge. Parmenides merely says, albeit tautologically, that Being is and Nonbeing is not. A rather simplistic claim, one may say, but the theme of Being emerged along with rational thought which seeks to overcome idle talk or unfounded opinions and can only grasp Being as something permanent that has not become. Plato would later be the first to call the thinking of a permanent and fundamental Being philosophia.

The term metaphysics appeared much later, however. Although usually dated to the twelfth century CE, it was coined in the first century BCE when Adronicus of Rhodes sought a title for fourteen short unclassifiable studies attributed to Aristotle. According to a possibly fictional account,² Aristotle’s manuscripts rotted away in a cellar for almost two centuries after his death until they were edited by Adronicus, the tenth scholarch of the Peripatetic school founded by Aristotle. Andronicus began by arranging the rediscovered manuscripts according to specific headings, which corresponded to a doctrinal curriculum. Drawing his inspiration from the Stoic division of philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics, Andronicus organized Aristotle’s manuscripts into four groups:³

1.   Logical writings (later called the Organon)

2.   Ethical, political, and rhetorical writings (including the Poetics)

3.   Physical writings (including what we would today call biology and psychology)

4.   Metaphysical writings

His use of the term metaphysics seems to designate that which comes after the physics (meta ta physika,) and would therefore only have had a bibliographical function. But it also indicates a problem that Andronicus faced. As he could not include the fourteen small and dissimilar treatises under any of the other headings because they were neither logical, ethical nor physical in the limited sense of the terms, he called them metaphysical.

Yet the term metaphysics may also designate their content. It would then astutely include everything that is situated beyond the physical. It is tempting here to cite Kant’s well-known text on the origin of the term metaphysics:

As for the name metaphysics, it is hard to believe that it was born out of chance since it fits this science so well: if we call nature phusis and if we can only arrive at the concepts of nature by experience, then the science that follows after it is called metaphysics (from meta, trans, and physica). It is, in a way, a science that is beyond the physical realm.⁴

In fact, this conception of metaphysics as a science of the supersensible corresponds much more to Kant’s own understanding of metaphysics (which, to be possible, had to justify its claim to supernatural knowledge), than to the subject of Aristotle’s texts. Indeed, the texts of the Metaphysics do not solely discuss things beyond the physical, nor do they give such matters any priority. Book V, for example, is a compendium of definitions that could have been classified along with the logical writings. Books VII, VIII, and IX all deal with substance in general and not in any metaphysical sense of the term. Nonetheless, some of the manuscripts do evoke the project of a universal science, or first philosophy. This science would pertain to what Aristotle called Being as Being. Although the meaning of the expression is far from obvious, its main idea—that of distinguishing a universal reflection on Being from the topics of the individualized sciences concerned with particular objects—is easier to understand. Aristotle makes this distinction in the opening of Book IV of the compilation of his so-called metaphysical texts:

There is a science which investigates Being as Being and the attributes which belong to this in virtue of its own nature. Now this is not the same as any of the so-called special sciences; for none of these others treats universally of Being as Being. They cut off a part of Being and investigate the attribute of this part, this is what the mathematical sciences for instance do.⁵

Any introduction to metaphysics must start from this important passage taken from Aristotle’s Metaphysics. It defines the science that considers Being as Being by its claim to universality. While the other sciences deal with well-delimited domains of objects, there could be another more encompassing science, which Aristotle left nameless. To use the more recent terminology, of Husserl and Heidegger, one could say that all the sciences are ontic insofar as they pertain to one of the already determined beings or an object. Philosophy alone would be ontological in that it is centered on the consideration of Being itself, or Being as Being. The expression remains obviously enigmatic, and all the more so since Aristotle never explained it straightforwardly. It does imply, however, that metaphysics’ subject, if one may speak of such a thing, is not only more universal than that of the other sciences, but is also more fundamental. A reflection on Being and its essential traits must seemingly precede the special sciences in which Being is specifically understood as being such and such, mathematical, physical, or the like. Although this conception may today appear hierarchical and accordingly obsolete, it remains essential to philosophy, if the latter must be credibly differentiated from the individual sciences and their specific objects. It is certainly possible to define philosophy without any recourse to the question of Being, but it would be difficult for it to remain what it is were it to forsake the universal and fundamental questions that are of no concern to the individual sciences. This is the level of inquiry the expression used in Metaphysics IV uncovers and reveals.

The history of metaphysics can be read as the history of Aristotle’s expression, which was itself oriented by questions that Parmenides and Plato had raised. As we shall see, an important part of late medieval thought developed under the sway of the Aristotelian idea of a first philosophy tied to the problem of Being, understood in an un-Hellenic fashion as the creation of Being as a whole. Although modern philosophy called into question parts of the foundation of classical metaphysics, it did so in the name of a new metaphysical discourse. Indeed Descartes, in his Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), opened modernity to philosophical reflection, which abandoned the question of Being for a more universal and fundamental subject it found in thought itself. This redefinition of philosophy was but a reorientation of metaphysics, understood as a universal and fundamental discourse on what is. Authors such as Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger attempted to redefine its topic, but always in the name of a new and more radical conception of Being.

The most serious misinterpretation would be to turn metaphysics into a reflection on the most dignified and important object of all. The metaphysical tradition has always been aware that all meditation on Being must be accompanied by a conversion of one’s perspective. Plato spoke of metanoia, of metamorphosis, or epimeleia, a concern of the soul. To consider Being is always to question oneself as to the meaning, or lack of meaning (the one presupposes the other), in our experience of Being. Even as early as Parmenides, the thought of Being was associated with an elevation and transformation of the mind. Plato then carried on this motif and incited the soul to turn away from shadows and idle chatter (doxa) that enchant the multitude, in order to better turn towards more fundamental realities. This is the first meaning we can give to metaphysical transcendence.

Although obvious to ancient thinkers and not forgotten by all moderns, it was Pierre Hadot who rediscovered the idea that philosophy aspires less to a theoretical or doctrinal form of discourse, than to introspective deliberation and its actualization of a way of life worthy of the name wisdom.⁶ The term conversion (metanoia) may have become obsolete, but the urgency of a concern of the soul (epimeleia) will never cease to be important as long as humans ponder the meaning of their short and accidental sojourn in Being.

Metaphysics is thus driven by ethical or existential concern. But the question of the priority of ethics over metaphysics, or of the latter over the former, need not be asked here. All ethics presupposes metaphysics or ontology—that is, some understanding of who we are. And all metaphysics is aware that it is directed by an ethical questioning into the meaning and possibilities of our existence. Does not Hamlet’s famous ethical question to be or not to be? use the vocabulary of Being?

An introduction to metaphysics is thus our reintroduction to the fact one is always an enigma to oneself, or to use Augustine’s expression: quæstio mihi factus sum.⁷ Since it springs from this question, metaphysics is a reminder of this fundamental concern that is the root of all understanding. And although essential, this question is also one that ordinary existence tries to avoid, as Heidegger recalled. To cite Plato: All philosophy is reminiscence.

The following introduction is meant as a reminder of the important periods that have formed the core of metaphysics. Although the author has not chosen one over the other, the philosophies that are discussed here are those that have made the most rigorous contributions, both conceptually and historically, towards defining metaphysics. My only hope is that the choices made appear to be neither too arbitrary nor overly determined by a canon that others may regard—as is their right—as less constraining. It is, as we have just stated, up to each of us to introduce ourselves to metaphysics.

CHAPTER 1

PARMENIDES

The Evidence of Being

The Fragmentary and Almost Incomprehensible Character of Pre-Platonic Thought

Just as we usually know very little about beginnings, we know very little about the beginning of the thought of Being. Since what we know about something is always based on its relation to something else, a point of departure or a previously known principle, what follows thereafter appears as its consequence. So how are we to understand the beginning itself? It is with this perplexity, which need not be dispelled, that we encounter Parmenides’ Poem. Since it is easier to understand what follows from it, the beginning itself remains unprecedented and consequently unexplainable. As we shall see, Parmenides likens his discourse on Being to a revelation, and it thus squares awkwardly with what we already know, or claim to know. A warning is thus given to all those who hope to understand Parmenides through his context.

Points of reference do exist, however. It is generally agreed that Parmenides lived between 515 and 440 BCE, founded a school at Elea in the south of the Italian peninsula, and belonged to what is called the Presocratics. And yet, this classification, which has existed only since the nineteenth century, does not contribute to our understanding in any significant way since it characterizes a group of philosophers through reference to another philosopher, in this case Socrates (470–399 BCE) who did not write anything (one increasingly uses the term pre-Platonic to designate thinkers from the Greek archaic period, as if it made more sense). The other major characteristic of the Presocratics is that we only know about them through the remaining fragments of their texts and thought. But even the term fragment is overly generous. The only reason we are aware of these texts is because they were cited, invoked, and used by later authors, and they are accordingly always tainted by those who quoted them. In some cases, this can be quite obvious as when we easily recognize the telltale traces of the person who quoted them. But sometimes it is less obvious, especially when we unconsciously ascribe to them the use of now familiar concepts. Generally such concepts—or translations, which amounts to the same—are those of recent commentators whose use of modern terminology in their reading of the Presocratics is not always forthright. Such is the case when, for example, they use terms like theory of knowledge, cosmology, or speak of Presocratic thought or philosophy. If one is to speak of the Presocratics, or quote them, in any rigorous way, one should always use double quotation marks. The first pair to indicate that the texts are already quotations, and the second to remind the reader that the terms employed should be used with the utmost caution. One cannot really hope to understand their archaic and tragically lost writings without a critique or a destruction of the available sources—in the positive sense of the term, that is, an explication of the prejudices belonging to the sources that made our knowledge of the Presocratics possible. Ingratitude is, in a way, the prerequisite to the study of the Classics.

The complete Presocratic fragments—those that are judged to be authentic—would probably fit into a hundred-page book, and even then not all are of equal importance. For example, aside for some unverifiable anecdotes, all we know about Thales is that (according to Aristotle) he claimed water was the principle of all things (but the term [archè] cannot be the term Thales himself used). As for Heraclitus, whose ideas appear diametrically opposed to those of Parmenides, whom he may have never met, only a collection of some 130 insightful aphorisms remain, which easily lend themselves to a modern but inaccurate reading. As a point of comparison, let us consider a hypothetical situation where all the philosophical works of the last two centuries disappear after a nuclear catastrophe. All that is left of the knowledge of the last two centuries is an anthology of heterogeneous fragments that is passed on from generation to generation. After two millennia, all that remains of our civilization are a page from Einstein, three from Nietzsche, and twenty pages from Lenin’s commentary on Hegel’s Logic. All sorts of associations would then be made between Lenin and Einstein, questions of whether one had borrowed the other’s terminology would be raised, and arguments would be made about the real object of Hegel’s Logic. We are in a similar situation when it comes to the Presocratics: We have some strikingly interesting fragments that are nevertheless difficult to understand and others that are completely insipid.

In Parmenides’ case though, the sources are better. Although we only have some eight or nine pages of his, he is the only Presocratic author of whom we have an authentic text with a relatively continuous line of argumentation. We owe the text to a sixth-century CE commentary on Aristotle written by Simplicius, in which he quoted the first 148 verses of Parmenides’ Poem in their entirety. The circumstances of Simplicius’s commentary are noteworthy. The quoted text appears in his commentary on Aristotle’s On the Heavens, which discusses the Eleatics’ purported argument against the possibility of generation and corruption.¹ Then, noticing that the original text was already hard to find, Simplicius had the happy idea, and the patience, to include large excerpts of Parmenides’ text along with his commentary. All of this took place in the sixth century, a millennium after Parmenides. Yet, Parmenides’ text was itself never discussed directly after the sixth century. So had we not conserved Simplicius’s commentary on Aristotle, we would know little about Parmenides (or at least very little since we do have other sources, but these are even less complete than the one handed down to us by Simplicius).

The Context of Presocratic Thinking on Nature

What do we know of the general character of Presocratic thought? According to a widely accepted reading, Presocratic thought was characterized by reflections on nature and an inquiry into its principles. That may be, but one would be hard pressed to find this sort of reflection in the texts of its two greatest representatives—Heraclitus and Parmenides. This conception of pre-Platonic thought is not unsubstantiated, however. It comes from Aristotle, who was not only the first historian of philosophy, but also one of our main sources on the Presocratics. Nevertheless, while Aristotle is an invaluable source, it is well known that he tended to present his predecessors as so many steps leading to his own philosophy and its most important concepts. Aristotle’s real intention in claiming that all thinkers concentrated on seeking the principles of nature until Socrates turned philosophy’s attention to human affairs,² was simply to show how their search for principles led to the ambitious synthesis he proposed in his Physics.

Aristotle’s presentation makes sense in light of our understanding of knowledge that associates science with an attempt to explain nature and discover the laws that make it comprehensible and predictable. According to Aristotle, the first thinkers initially sought a material principle of nature because it is both a basic principle, and because they were themselves rather primitive. Although this characterization is widespread, one must not forget that the notions principle ( / archè) and matter ( λ / hulè) are themselves Aristotelian notions and were probably not used in any philosophical sense by Presocratic authors.

It is true though that the Presocratics’ material principles appear quite rudimentary. This is the case of Thales of Miletus, the founder of the Ionian school and the first philosopher, according to Aristotle who says that Thales identified water as the principle of all things. Although it may appear primitive to us, the principle is nevertheless philosophically significant insofar as it brings all things back to some primordial source. We do not know what led Thales to this idea. Was he a forerunner of modern biology and perceived that all forms of life on earth require water to survive? Aristotle does seem to suggest this when he says:

He perhaps came to acquire this belief from seeing that the nourishment of everything is moist and that heat itself comes from this and lives by this (for that from which anything comes into being is its first principle)—he came to his belief both for this reason and because the seeds of everything have a moist nature, and water is the natural principle of moist things.³

It may be difficult to say what is thereby explained, but it was a beginning. Aristotle also tells us that the main point of disagreement in the Milesian school was precisely about the nature of this beginning.⁴ Anaximander of Miletus, the first author of whose writings we still have a conserved sentence fragment,⁵ and which should accordingly be quoted in its entirety, claimed that the principle is the infinite (or the undefined, / apeiron):

Of those who hold that the first principle is one, moving, and infinite, Anaximander, son of Praxiades, a Milesian, who was a successor and pupil of Thales, said that the infinite [apeiron] is principle and element of the things that exist. He was the first to introduce this word principle. He says that it is neither