ABSTRACT
Whereas the other great divisions of philosophy (logic, physics, ethics, etc.) are defined in relation to a clearly identifiable object or field of study, metaphysics owes its name to a book, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, whose title refers to the treatises placed after the Physics in the collection of his works. Moreover, the proper subject-matter of that book is largely problematic: unlike the Physics, for instance, which studies the material world of generation and decay, the bulk of the Metaphysics is devoted to looking for its subject matter and trying to define it. An important consequence of this is that for a long time metaphysical writings mostly assumed the form of commentaries on the founding text of Aristotle. The existence of a metaphysical reflection in Islam is thus closely dependent on the availability of translations of that work, although other sources were also used. A nearly complete translation of Aristole’s work (some books seem never to have been translated at all) was made by a certain Ustāt (Eustathius?) about the time of al-Kindī and is preserved in the commentary of Ibn Rushd (Averroes). Several other translations followed, all fragmentary. 1 Owing to the difficulty of the text, the Muslim philosophers often preferred to use paraphrases and summaries, among which those by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius were especially appreciated. 2
