Object and definition of Philosophy. Philosophy as metaphysics. /part 2/

In Aristotle, metaphysics is equivalent to philosophy in general, because within its scope are included all the basic prerequisites of knowledge and of being, all the most general problems in the circle of man studying. It is particularly noteworthy that, on the one hand, no distinction is made between the field of the given and the field of evaluation. On the other hand, metaphysics explores both the foundations and the last essence of the matter itself, the visible sensual world, and the last of the above-mentioned, supersensible questions, such as the origin and the meaning, the purpose of being. Metaphysics is defined as a rational search and study of the last foundations and essence of being in order to obtain a complete, complete worldview.

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From now on, the whole history of philosophy - from a theological point of view - is primarily a history of metaphysics as a science of supersensible, transcendent, ultimate principles and principles, and of the essence of the world. Plato and Aristotle, Demokritus and Epicurus, Heraclitus and Empedocles, Anaxagorus and Parmenides, Thomas Aquinas, Fr.Backen, Descartes, B. Spinoza, G. Leibniz and Kr. Wolf, Berkeley, Kant, Fichte and Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer, N. Hartmann and Lotts, Paulsen and Wundt, Bergson and James - to catch up with only some of the greatest philosophers over the centuries - all were metaphysicians in the full sense of the word , despite the main differences in their perceptions: some are dialectics, others are not; some are monks, other pluralists; some are rationalists, other empirics. All of them have studied the world as a whole, seeking to determine the place and importance of the person in this whole, helping them to orient their behavior accordingly to their worldview.

Indeed, depending on their own worldview, they defined the tasks themselves and the essence of metaphysics differently, but because of the differences they did not lose sight of the basic and the general. It is enough to take some of today's most famous insights into philosophy or metaphysics, and we will be immediately confident about how much metaphysics is identical to philosophy itself, and on the other hand we will be able to observe curious differences in determining its essence; this will help us to clarify her top-level. For example, Fr. Paulsen defines metaphysics as an attempt to grasp the sum of our knowledge of things in a common view of the nature of reality. As its own internal task is: to unite the spiritual and physical world, or - which is the same - to explain the causal and meaningful meaning of reality. . . The task of metaphysics is to act against the sinking of scientific research into quetishism. "2 /. Osvald Kulpe calls metaphysics an attempt to build a worldview with the help of scientific means to determine the essence of reality." 3 /. V. Wundt in his "Introduction to Philosophy," as well as in his other writings, defines metaphysics as "building an unmistakable worldview that unites all singular knowledge. Its main task is to logically round the knowledge by advancing from what is given immediately in the experience of not giving in experience but logically obligatory until it comes to the last unity, in which experience itself is only a subordinate part. In a negative sense, the task of metaphysics is to analyze all the general prerequisites of individual sciences, and the positive and the task is to justify and supplement these prerequisites.

part 1