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Metaphysics

The fundamental philosophical discipline of ultimate questions — God, freedom, the soul, the world as a whole. Kant examines whether it can ever become a science.

Metaphysics probably owes its name to the arrangement of Aristotle's works: Andronicus of Rhodes is said to have placed the relevant writings after the physics (“ta meta ta physika”). In substance it asks about what underlies all experience: being, God, the immortal soul, the freedom of the will, the world as a whole.

Kant counts as a central critic of metaphysics — yet he wanted to rescue it, not abolish it: metaphysical questioning is for him an ineradicable need of reason. But before reason asserts answers, it must critically examine its own capacity — which is exactly what the “Critique of Pure Reason” undertakes.

Where it appears

Source: Wikipedia: Metaphysics