Metaphysics

Metaphysics

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Aristotle

c. 350 BC

The founding document of Western metaphysics, Aristotle's Metaphysics investigates being qua being — not the properties of things as physical or mathematical objects, but the fact that they exist at all and what it means for them to be what they are. Across fourteen books Aristotle establishes the science of first philosophy: examining substance as the primary category of being, identifying the four causes that explain any reality, and developing the celebrated doctrine of actuality and potentiality. The work culminates in the concept of the Unmoved Mover — a purely actual intelligence whose eternal self-contemplation moves the cosmos without itself being moved.