Abstract
Aristotle talks about “the first philosophy” throughout Metaphysics — and it is metaphysics that Aristotle considers to be the first philosophy — but he never makes it entirely clear what first philosophy consists of. What he does make clear is that the first philosophy is not to be understood as a collection of topics that should be studied in advance of any other topics. In fact, Aristotle seems to have thought that the topics of Metaphysics are to be studied after those in Physics (Cohen 2009). In what sense could metaphysics be the first philosophy? Let me take the liberty of applying the technical jargon of contemporary metaphysics to answer: The first philosophy is an account of what is, or what it means to be, fundamental. Things that are the most fundamental are not grounded in anything more fundamental, they are ontologically independent. This does not necessarily mean that first philosophy attempts to list the most fundamental things, although this could be a part of the discipline. Rather, the study of fundamentality focuses on giving an account of what it is for something to be fundamental. So, first philosophy studies a certain type of being — the fundamental type, and it may also involve an account of which (kind of) things are, or could be, fundamental.
And there are as many parts of philosophy as there are kinds of substance, so that there must necessarily be among them a first philosophy and one which follows this.
(Meta. 1004a4–6.)
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
J. Barnes (ed.) 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle, The Revised Oxford Translation (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
I. Bodnar. 2012. “Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/aristotle-natphil/.
R. Bolton. 1976. “Essentialism and Semantic Theory in Aristotle,” The Philosophical Review 85 (4): 514–44.
D. Charles. 2000. Aristotle on Meaning and Essence (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
S. M. Cohen (2009) “Aristotle’s Metaphysics,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/.
P. Corkum. 2008. “Aristotle on Ontological Dependence,” Phronesis 53: 65–92.
— forthcoming. “Substance and Independence in Aristotle,” in B. Schnieder, A. Steinberg and M. Hoeltje (eds), Ontological Dependence, Supervenience, and Response-Dependence, Basic Philosophical Concepts Series (Munich: Philosophia Verlag).
F. Correia and B. Schnieder. (eds.) 2012. Metaphysical Grounding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
S. Dasgupta (ms.) “The Status of Ground,” draft of November 2011.
D. Demoss and D. Devereux. 1988. “Essence, Existence, and Nominal Definition in Aristotle’s ‘Posterior Analytics’ II 8–10”, Phronesis 33: 133–54.
T. Dumsday. 2010. “Natural Kinds and the Problem of Complex Essences,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (4): 619–34.
M.T. Ferejohn. 2003. “Logical and Physical Inquiries in Aristotle’s Metaphysics,” The Modern Schoolman LXXX, 325–50.
K. Fine. 1994. “Essence and Modality,” Philosophical Perspectives 8 (Logic and Language), 1–16.
— 1995a. “Ontological Dependence,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 95: 269–90.
— 1995b. “Senses of Essence,” in W. Sinnott-Armstrong, D. Raffman and N. Asher (eds), Modality, Morality, and Belief, Essays in Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). pp. 53–73.
— 1995c. “The Logic of Essence,” Journal of Philosophical Logic 24: 241–73.
— 2012. “What is Metaphysics?” in T. E. Tahko (ed.) Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 8–25.
G. Klima. 2002. “Contemporary ‘Essentialism’ vs. Aristotelian Essentialism” in J. Haldane (ed.) Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in the Thomistic and Analytical Traditions (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press), pp. 175–94.
K. Koslicki. 2012a. “Essence, Necessity and Explanation” in T. E. Tahko (ed.) Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 187–206.
— 2012b. “Varieties of Ontological Dependence” in F. Correia and B. Schnieder (eds), Metaphysical Grounding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
— this volume. “Substance, Independence and Unity.”
E. J. Lowe. 2008. “Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence,” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements 83 (62): 23–48.
— 2011. “Locke on Real Essence and Water as a Natural Kind: A Qualified Defence,” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 85 (1), 1–19.
— forthcoming. “Grasp of Essences versus Intuitions: An Unequal Contest,” in T. Booth and D. Rowbottom (eds), Intuitions (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
D. Oderberg. 2007. Real Essentialism (London and New York: Routledge).
— 2011. “Essence and Properties,” Erkenntnis 75: 85–111.
M. Peramatzis. 2011. Priority in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
T. Scaltsas. 1994. Substances and Universals in Aristotle’s “Metaphysics” (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press).
J. Schaffer. 2009. “On What Grounds What,” in D. Manley, D. J. Chalmers, and R. Wasserman (eds), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology (Oxford University Press), pp. 347–83.
T. Sider. 2011. Writing the Book of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
T. E. Tahko. 2012. “In Defence of Aristotelian Metaphysics,” in T. E. Tahko (ed.) Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 26–43.
— (ms. A) “The Epistemology of Essence,” URL = http://www.ttatiko.net/papers/ epistofessence.pdf.
— (ms. B) “Euclidean Geometry and the A Priori,” URL = http://www.ttahko.net/papers/euclid.pdf.
R. L. Tierney. 2004. “The Scope of Aristotle’s Essentialism in the Posterior Analytics,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 42 (1): 1–20.
M. V. Wedin. 2000. Aristotle’s Theory of Substance (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
C. Witt. 1989. Substance and Essence in Aristotle (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press).
J. Yu. 2003. The Structure of Being in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Dordrecht: Kluwer).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 Tuomas E. Tahko
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tahko, T.E. (2013). Metaphysics as the First Philosophy. In: Feser, E. (eds) Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics. Philosophers in Depth. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137367907_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137367907_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-34815-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-36790-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)