Metaphysics
Ta Meta ta Physika
There must be a science studying being simply as being, distinct from all the specialized sciences that study only a particular kind of being, and the deepest such inquiry culminates in an eternal, unmoved first cause that all things ultimately depend on.
- being qua being as its own science
- substance (ousia) as form and matter
- critique of Plato's separate Forms
- the unmoved mover as pure actuality
- foundation for later natural theology
Compiled, likely by later editors, from lecture material Aristotle produced across his career, the Metaphysics investigates being qua being, as opposed to the specialized sciences that each study only one restricted kind of being. Its central and most contested doctrine concerns substance (ousia), which Aristotle analyzes in terms of form and matter, arguing against both Plato's separately existing Forms and any purely materialist account. Book Lambda's argument for an eternal, immaterial, unmoved mover, a being of pure actuality that causes motion by being the object of the universe's desire and aspiration, became, filtered through later Islamic and Christian commentators, one of the most influential arguments in the history of natural theology.
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