Metaphysics (Aristotle)
Metaphysics (Greek: τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά, "those after the physics"; Latin: Metaphysica[1]) is one of the principal works of Aristotle, in which he develops the doctrine that he calls First Philosophy.[a] The work is a compilation of various texts treating abstract subjects, notably substance theory, different kinds of causation, form and matter, the existence of mathematical objects and the cosmos, which together constitute much of the branch of philosophy later known as metaphysics.
Date, style and composition[edit]
Many of Aristotle's works are extremely compressed, and many scholars believe that in their current form, they are likely lecture notes.[2] Subsequent to the arrangement of Aristotle's works by Andronicus of Rhodes in the first century BC, a number of his treatises were referred to as the writings "after ("meta") the Physics"[b], the origin of the current title for the collection Metaphysics. Some have interpreted the expression "meta" to imply that the subject of the work goes "beyond" that of Aristotle's Physics or that it is metatheoretical in relation to the Physics. But others believe that "meta" referred simply to the work's place in the canonical arrangement of Aristotle's writings, which is at least as old as Andronicus of Rhodes or even Hermippus of Smyrna.[3] In other surviving works of Aristotle, the metaphysical treatises are referred to as "the [writings] concerning first philosophy";[c] which was the term Aristotle used for metaphysics.[d]
It is notoriously difficult to specify the date at which Aristotle wrote these treatises as a whole or even individually, especially because the Metaphysics is, in Jonathan Barnes' words, "a farrago, a hotch-potch", and more generally because of the difficulty of dating any of Aristotle's writings.[5] The order in which the books were written is not known; their arrangement is due to later editors. In the manuscripts, books are referred to by Greek letters. For many scholars, it is customary to refer to the books by their letter names. Book 1 is called Alpha (Α); 2, little alpha (α);[e] 3, Beta (Β); 4, Gamma (Γ); 5, Delta (Δ); 6, Epsilon (Ε); 7, Zeta (Ζ); 8, Eta (Η); 9, Theta (Θ); 10, Iota (Ι); 11, Kappa (Κ); 12, Lambda (Λ); 13, Mu (Μ); 14, Nu (Ν).
Textual criticism[edit]
In the 19th century, with the rise of textual criticism, the Metaphysics was examined anew. Critics, noting the wide variety of topics and the seemingly illogical order of the books, concluded that it was actually a collection of shorter works thrown together haphazardly. In the 20th century two general editions have been produced by W. D. Ross (1924) and by W. Jaeger (1957). Based on a careful study of the content and of the cross-references within them, W. D. Ross concluded that books A, B, Γ, E, Z, H, Θ, M, N, and I "form a more or less continuous work", while the remaining books α, Δ, Κ and Λ were inserted into their present locations by later editors. However, Ross cautions that books A, B, Γ, E, Z, H, Θ, M, N, and I — with or without the insertion of the others — do not constitute "a complete work".[19] Werner Jaeger further maintained that the different books were taken from different periods of Aristotle's life. Everyman's Library, for their 1000th volume, published the Metaphysics in a rearranged order that was intended to make the work easier for readers.
Editing the Metaphysics has become an open issue in works and studies of the new millennium. New critical editions have been produced of books Gamma,[20] Alpha,[21] and Lambda.[22] Differences from the more-familiar 20th Century critical editions of Ross and Jaeger mainly depend on the stemma codicum of Aristotle's Metaphysics, of which different versions have been proposed since 1970.[23][24][25]
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