Aristotle was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology and the arts. As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science.
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality. This includes the first principles of: being or existence, identity, change, space and time, cause and effect, necessity, actuality, and possibility.
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being. It investigates what types of entities exist, how they are grouped into categories, and how they are related to one another on the most fundamental level. Ontologists often try to determine what the categories or highest kinds are and how they form a system of categories that encompasses the classification of all entities. Commonly proposed categories include substances, properties, relations, states of affairs, and events. These categories are characterized by fundamental ontological concepts, including particularity and universality, abstractness and concreteness, or possibility and necessity. Of special interest is the concept of ontological dependence, which determines whether the entities of a category exist on the most fundamental level. Disagreements within ontology are often about whether entities belonging to a certain category exist and, if so, how they are related to other entities.
The problem of universals is an ancient question from metaphysics that has inspired a range of philosophical topics and disputes: "Should the properties an object has in common with other objects, such as color and shape, be considered to exist beyond those objects? And if a property exists separately from objects, what is the nature of that existence?"
Aristotelianism is a philosophical tradition inspired by the work of Aristotle, usually characterized by deductive logic and an analytic inductive method in the study of natural philosophy and metaphysics. It covers the treatment of the social sciences under a system of natural law. It answers why-questions by a scheme of four causes, including purpose or teleology, and emphasizes virtue ethics. Aristotle and his school wrote tractates on physics, biology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, and government. Any school of thought that takes one of Aristotle's distinctive positions as its starting point can be considered "Aristotelian" in the widest sense. This means that different Aristotelian theories may not have much in common as far as their actual content is concerned besides their shared reference to Aristotle.
The Ionian school of Pre-Socratic philosophy refers to Ancient Greek philosophers, or a school of thought, in Ionia in the 6th century B.C, the first in the Western tradition.
Daniel Nicholas Robinson was an American psychologist who was a professor of psychology at Georgetown University and later in his life became a fellow of the faculty of philosophy at Oxford University.
The unmoved mover or prime mover is a concept advanced by Aristotle as a primary cause or "mover" of all the motion in the universe. As is implicit in the name, the unmoved mover moves other things, but is not itself moved by any prior action. In Book 12 of his Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the unmoved mover as being perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the perfect contemplation: self-contemplation. He equates this concept also with the active intellect. This Aristotelian concept had its roots in cosmological speculations of the earliest Greek pre-Socratic philosophers and became highly influential and widely drawn upon in medieval philosophy and theology. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, elaborated on the unmoved mover in the Quinque viae.
The transcendentals are "properties of being", nowadays commonly considered to be truth, unity, beauty, and goodness. The concept arose from medieval scholasticism, but originated with Plato, Augustine, and Aristotle in the West. It is believed to be prefigured in the Bhagavadgita, which is an Eastern classic. Viewed ontologically, the transcendentals are understood to be what is common to all beings/things/identities, and all things that exist can be judged, or appraised, or may be said to be or possess the innate qualities and characteristics which we consider or deem True, Beautiful (Aesthetic/Experiential) and Good. From a cognitive and "first principles" horizon, going all the way back to Aristotle, they are the "first" concepts, since they cannot be logically or deductively traced back to "a prior metaphysics" preceding their Rational unfoldment and display.
The four causes or four explanations are, in Aristotelian thought, four fundamental types of answer to the question "why?" in analysis of change or movement in nature: the material, the formal, the efficient, and the final. Aristotle wrote that "we do not have knowledge of a thing until we have grasped its why, that is to say, its cause." While there are cases in which classifying a "cause" is difficult, or in which "causes" might merge, Aristotle held that his four "causes" provided an analytical scheme of general applicability.
Allan Stanley Gotthelf was an American philosopher. He was a scholar of the philosophies of both Aristotle and Ayn Rand.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to metaphysics:
Professor David Simon Oderberg is an Australian philosopher of metaphysics and ethics based in Britain since 1987. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading. He describes himself as a non-consequentialist or a traditionalist in his works. Broadly speaking, Oderberg places himself in opposition to Peter Singer and other utilitarian or consequentialist thinkers. He has published over thirty academic papers and has authored six books: The Metaphysics of Good and Evil, Opting Out: Conscience and Cooperation in a Pluralistic Society, Real Essentialism, Applied Ethics, Moral Theory, and The Metaphysics of Identity over Time. Professor Oderberg is an alumnus of the Universities of Melbourne, where he completed his first degrees, and Oxford where he gained his D.Phil.
James Francis Ross was an American philosopher. James Ross, a creative thinker in philosophy of religion, law, metaphysics and philosophy of mind, was a member of the Philosophy Department at the University of Pennsylvania from 1962 until his death. He published widely.
Ousia is a philosophical and theological term, originally used in ancient Greek philosophy, then later in Christian theology. It was used by various ancient Greek philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle, as a primary designation for philosophical concepts of essence or substance. In contemporary philosophy, it is analogous to English concepts of being and ontic. In Christian theology, the concept of θεία ουσία is one of the most important doctrinal concepts, central to the development of trinitarian doctrine.
Charlotte Witt is a professor of philosophy and humanities at the University of New Hampshire.
Edward Charles Feser is an American Catholic philosopher. He is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California.
John Michael Rist is a British scholar of ancient philosophy, classics, and early Christian philosophy and theology, known mainly for his contributions to the history of metaphysics and ethics. He is the author of monographs on Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicurus, Plotinus, the dating of the Gospels, and Augustine. Rist is Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Toronto and part-time Visiting Professor at the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum in Rome, held the Father Kurt Pritzl, O.P., Chair in Philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and is a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. During his lengthy academic career he has been Regius Professor of Classics at the University of Aberdeen (1980-1983), Professor of Classics and Philosophy at the University of Toronto (1983–1996), and the Lady Davis Visiting Professor in Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1995).
Michael Peter Davis is an American philosopher and educator. He is a professor of philosophy at Sarah Lawrence College.
Jude Patrick Dougherty was an American philosopher, Dean Emeritus of the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America, and Editor-in-Chief for 44 years of The Review of Metaphysics.
