Tuesday, October 11, 2011

What is your metaphysics?

Metaphysics* is defined as:

1. The knowledge of beings which lie beyond sense experience. (Descartes)
2. The knowledge of what beings are in themselves, in opposition to their appearances. (Schopenhauer)
3. The knowledge of moral truths, of the 'ought,' the ideal, considered as an order of reality which is superior to the order of facts and contains the ontological ground of the order of facts. (Liard)
4. Knowledge of pure reason. (Kant)
5. Absolute knowledge through direct intuition, in opposition to discursive thought. (Bergson)
6. Knowledge of that through which whatever is has meaning. (Jolivet)
7. The attempt to comprehend from within the 'human condition' in its totality. (Sartre)
8. Placing oneself, in one's totality, before the totality of the world.  (De Beauvoir)
9. The stubborn attempt to think clearly and coherently. (James)
10. The knowledge of nature, considered as being in a state of rest, immobility, stagnation and immutability. (Stalin)

*Excerpt from Luijpen's "Phenomenology and Metaphysics" - 1965