Introduction to Metaphysics

by Grondin, Jean

• ISBN13: 9780231148443
• ISBN10: 0231148445
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-12-16
• Publisher: Ingram Pub Services

Summary

Most texts claiming to trace the evolution of metaphysics do so according to the analytical tradition, which understands metaphysics as a reflection of different categories of reality. Incorporating the perspectives of Continental theory does little to expand this history, as the Continental tradition remains largely hostile to such metaphysical claims. The first history of metaphysics to respect both the analytical and Continental schools while also transcending the theoretical limitations of each, this compelling overview restores the value of metaphysics to contemporary audiences. Beginning with the Greeks and concluding with present day philosophers, Jean Grondin reviews seminal texts by the Presocratic Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Augustine. He follows the theological turn in metaphysical thought during the middle ages and reads Avicenna, Anselm, Aquinas, and Duns Scot. Grondin revisits Descartes and the cogito; Spinoza and Leibniz's rationalist approaches; Kant's reclaiming of the metaphysical tradition; and postkantian practice up to Hegel. He engages with the twentieth-century innovations that shook the discipline, particularly Heidegger's notion of Being and the rediscovery of the metaphysics of existence (Sartre and the Existentialists), language (Gadamer and Derrida), and transcendence (Levinas). Metaphysics is often dismissed as a form or epoch of philosophy that must be overcome, yet a full understanding of its platform and processes reveal a cogent approach to reality, and its reasoning has been foundational to modern philosophy and science. Grondin reacquaints readers with the rich currents and countercurrents of metaphysical thinking and muses on where it may be headed in the twenty-first century.

Author Biography

Jean Grondin is professor of philosophy at the University of Montreal. His books have been translated into fourteen languages, and in English they include Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics and Sources of Hermeneutics.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xv
Introduction	p. xix
Toward a Concept of Metaphysics	p. xix
Its Origins	p. xxii
Parmenides: The Evidence of Being	p. 1
The Fragmentary and Almost Incomprehensible Character of Pre-Platonic Thought	p. 1
The Context of Presocratic Thinking on Nature	p. 3
An Oral, Therefore Poetic, Culture	p. 6
A Goddess's Revelation	p. 7
The Enigma of Being	p. 10
The Legacy of Parmenides' Onto-Theology	p. 15
The Sophistic Crisis: Human Discourse Left to Its Own Devices	p. 17
Plato: The Hypothesis of the Idea	p. 21
The Indirect Character of Plato's Writings	p. 21
Parmenides' Legacy	p. 24
Being Attentive to the Eidos	p. 25
The Separation of the Ideas	p. 27
An Effort at Reminiscence	p. 30
Dialectics, or Minding Being Itself	p. 33
The Exemplary Ideality of Mathematics	p. 35
The "Metaphysical" Separation of the Line: Republic VI	p. 35
The Idea of the Good's Supereminence	p. 38
The Demiurge's Cosmos: The Same and the Different	p. 42
The Principle of the One in Plato's Academy	p. 43
Aristotle: The Horizons of First Philosophy	p. 46
The Text and Object of Metaphysics	p. 46
A Science of First Principles	p. 48
The Theory of Causes	p. 49
It Is a Science of Being as Being	p. 53
The Onto-Theological Perspective of Metaphysics E, 1	p. 55
The Many Meanings of Being	p. 57
First Philosophy as Ousiology: Metaphysics Z	p. 60
The Theology of Metaphysics ¿	p. 63
The Last Summit of Classical Metaphysics: The Neoplatonic Eruption	p. 67
Plotinus's Metaphysics of the One	p. 68
Augustine's Christianization of Metaphysics	p. 73
Metaphysics and Theology in the Middle Ages	p. 80
A "Metaphysical" Era?	p. 80
The Importance of Pistis	p. 83
Anselm and the Ontological Argument	p. 85
Avicenna: The Metaphysics of the Shifa	p. 89
Averroes's Critique of Avicenna	p. 94
The Object of Metaphysics According to Thomas Aquinas	p. 95
Whether God Exists? The Five Ways	p. 98
The Idea of a Scienria Transcendens in Scholastic Thought from Duns Scotus to Suarez: The Origin of Ontology	p. 102
Descartes: First Philosophy According to the Cogito	p. 107
Is There a Cartesian Metaphysics?	p. 107
First Meditation: What Can Be Called Into Doubt, or Classical Metaphysics Brought Into Question	p. 110
Second Meditation: I Think, I Am-the Metaphysics of the Cogito	p. 112
Third Meditation: Concerning God, That He Exists-the Return to the Metaphysics of Divinity	p. 116
The Legacy of Descartes's Double Metaphysics	p. 120
Spinoza and Leibniz: The Metaphysics of Simplicity and Integral Rationality	p. 122
Ethical Metaphysics: Spinoza	p. 122
Leibniz and the Search for the Metaphysics of Substantial Forms	p. 126
Kant: Metaphysics Turned Critical	p. 131
Natural Metaphysics	p. 132
Is Metaphysics Possible as Science?	p. 133
Kant and the Ancients' Transcendental Philosophy: Phenomena and the Things in Themselves	p. 137
Critique and Metaphysics	p. 139
The Metaphysics of Freedom	p. 142
The "Metaphysics" of the Highest Good	p. 144
Can the Existence of God Be Demonstrated?	p. 148
The Future of Metaphysics After Kant	p. 150
Metaphysics After Kant?	p. 153
Was There Any Metaphysics After Kant?	p. 153
Science and System in Kant	p. 156
The Idealist Dismissal of the Metaphysics of the Thing-in-Itself	p. 159
Reinhold's First Philosophy	p. 161
Fichte and the Metaphysics of the I	p. 163
Schelling's Metaphysics of Identity	p. 170
The Later Schelling's Metaphysics	p. 176
Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit	p. 182
Post-Hegelian Metaphysics: A Primitive State or an Artistic Affair	p. 194
Heidegger: The Resurrection of the Question of Being in the Name of Overcoming Metaphysics	p. 201
The Project of a Destruction of the History of Ontology	p. 201
The Twofold Priority of the Question of Being	p. 203
Metaphysics: The Experience of Our Being Par Excellence (1929)	p. 208
The Onto-Theo-Logical Constitution of Metaphysics	p. 213
The Technological and Nihilist Completion of Metaphysics	p. 217
The Unsettling of the Principle of Reason	p. 219
The Theological Scope of Heidegger's Overcoming of Metaphysics	p. 220
A Secretly Metaphysical Philosophy?	p. 222
On Metaphysics Since Heidegger	p. 225
The Rediscovery of the History of Metaphysics	p. 225
The Rediscovery of the Metaphysics of Existence: From Gilson to Sartre	p. 228
The Rediscovery of the Metaphysics of Language: From Gadamer to Derrick	p. 234
The Rediscovery of the Metaphysics of Transcendence: Levinas	p. 243
Conclusion	p. 247
Abbreviations	p. 257
Notes	p. 259
Further Reading	p. 317
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