ABSTRACT
In the first two chapters of the Metaphysics, Aristotle asks what metaphysics is. His aim here is to give an initial general characterization of metaphysics. He will argue that metaphysics is a kind of knowledge, namely, explanatory knowledge (epistēmē)—or what we may call science. By ‘science’ we will mean simply and generally: some kind of explanatory knowledge. This must be distinguished from a more narrow use of the term ‘science’, which is perhaps more common today, to mean the empirical or the exact sciences. But Aristotle thinks that there are different kinds of explanatory knowledge, different sciences, and he argues that metaphysics is one of them; it is the science of the first explanations and the first principles of all things. Later (in book IV, chapter 1) he will characterize metaphysics as the science of being qua being; it is the science that investigates things that are, and investigates them simply in so far as they are. Later again (in IV. 2, but especially in book VII) he will characterize metaphysics as the science of primary being (prōtē ousia, often simply ousia). But first let us consider Aristotle’s characterization of metaphysics as the science of the first explanations and the first principles of all things, before we ask how this is related to the other two characterizations.
