Nature of Metaphysics
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The issue is whether it is possible to construct a metaphysics as an accomplishing discipline of thought, meaning a metaphysics that would be more than a mental ad philosophical exercise and that would instead serve to offer a real framework for living and for understanding the world in which we live. Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality and the relationships between such elements as mind and matter, substance and attribute. It includes both ontology and cosmology. Metaphysics is the most abstract division of philosophy and addresses issues of ultimate reality. Metaphysics is concerned with what really exists and what it is that makes reality possible. The exact nature of metaphysics has long been argued, which brings into question its validity and usefulness. Metaphysics asks the big questions, the questions that we may want answered but that at some point we may have to admit can never be answered. Metaphysics is in some sense an attempt to know the unknowable, and this brings its validity into question--can we ever overcome the unknowability of reality so that metaphysics is more than a mental exercise? Certainly metaphysics has ben an important part of the history of philosophy and has engaged the minds of philosophers since the time of the Greeks. The Greeks developed over time a massive and complex mythology that explained in animistic, anthropomorphic terms many of the natural phenomena seen in the world around them and at
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ession of philosophy:
To reveal the true nature of reality, its contents and structure, to place man within the cosmos in his relation to other kinds of things and to his creator, to determine man's duty to himself and to God, and the true route to happiness--these are common enough ambitions, exhibited in the works of Plato, Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Bradley and so on. No wonder its advocates have exalted the metaphysical pursuit! (Carr 1).
Of course, to exalt the metaphysical pursuit is not the same as to exalt metaphysics as a discipline--the search for answers to these questions may in itself be justified while one might downgrade metaphysics itself because it never provides final answers.
In truth, in the modern world we most often compare the supposed uncertainties of metaphysics with the supposed certainties of science, the first being about the cause of the natural world, which perhaps we can never know, and the second being about the natural world itself, which can be explained in terms of operation without recourse to a first cause. Yet the question of why things are as they are will persist, and we need a methodology for addressing such questions. Metaphysics provides this even if the method cannot reach a fina
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1572
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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