ABSTRACT
In philosophy, in sensu stricto, a proper definition of terms can only come at the end, and never at the beginning of an inquiry. That is why it may be that the great prefaces in philosophy, as Kant's two prefaces to the two editions of his first Critique, Hegel's preface to his Phenomenology of the Spirit and Merleau-Ponty's preface to his Phenomenology of Perception, were written after they wrote their books. Why a definition can only come at the end, and not at the beginning of an inquiry is itself a metaphysical issue, and one which it would be important to consider. In popular language, metaphysics normally connotes a concern with spiritualism, or the realm of the occult. The origin of the word is familiar to philosophers as a term invented as a title by an editor of Aristotle's lecture notes as taken down by students that followed upon his writings on physics, hence, metaphysics, or literally, after the physics.
