Why is metaphysics so difficult to comprehend?

Where can one start at a basic level and then continue to develop understanding and love for the subject?

Thank you, Nazzarene Zen, for such a heuristic question.

In one sense, I cannot answer the question, because “difficult to comprehend” is very personal, as is the development of love. But I will offer some general thoughts on metaphysics and possible obstructions to understanding it.

“Metaphysics” can denote many things. One way to delineate (“define” might be too much to ask) metaphysics is through its topics. Even here, one might claim that there are no such topics and that metaphysics is entirely empty; that it is not only pointless, but also meaningless, which would make it not just hard, but impossible to comprehend. But let’s not be so harsh.

In what later came to be known as his “Metaphysics”, Aristotle treats several issues, among them the highest principles of, well, everything: he discusses the law of non-contradiction, god, substance, the nature of numbers, and, famously, being qua being. Let’s stay with the latter: What does ‘being qua being’ even mean?

We normally consider things more concretely: I consider my desk to be slightly dusty, but basically aesthetically pleasing. I could also think of it economically, about its market value. Or sociologically, about how a cluttered desk implies class-membership. But I can also look at it ontologically, ponder what and how it is, about the way it exists in space-time, in a causal web (as opposed to, say, numbers). Yet this way of looking at things is so far removed from our usual topics and ways of thinking, so abstract, in a sense, that metaphysics might initially appear utterly alien – both useless and dark. And the fact that many attempts to elucidate such primal structures or concepts as “being” use highly technical language (be it modal logic or Heidegger’s fundamental ontology) probably does not help.

Take space and time, for another example. We usually consider things spatially and temporally or within space and time: Is there enough space to fit the desk through the door? How much time will it take to move? But we rarely reflect on what we mean by “space” or “time”. And to treat them like spatial and temporal objects themselves leads to regresses and paradoxes: if space (or spatiality) itself were like my desk, it would have to be in another (bigger) space, etc.

Like many disciplines in philosophy, metaphysics covers structures or concepts that are not in the foreground of our thinking because they in fact form the very background. Or they appear to be self-evident, but on reflection we don’t know what to say (as Augustine put it in regard to time).

If you – like me – think that this is where the fun begins and that analysing fundamental principles, concepts and structures is totally worth the effort, I’d choose the “metaphysical” topic you’re most curious about (perhaps from the entry on metaphysics in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) and slowly start reading original texts on it, rather than focusing on metaphysics in general – let’s be concrete about even the most fundamental.

What do you think? What makes metaphysics so confusing? Let us know in the comments.

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Image: The Song of Love, by Giorgio de Chirico (1914)

Website | Armchair Opinions

I received my PhD in philosophy in 2017; my dissertation was called “Plato's Bastard” (published as “Phenomenology as Platonism” [Phänomenologie als Platonismus]). My areas of interest are phenomenology, metaphysics and their overlap; but I dabble in whatever field I feel like – and with whoever's up for it. Philosophy to me means questioning our presuppositions, which fascinates me because it is something we can do whenever anyone says anything about anything and it never gets boring or old; it's also something that's painfully absent from public discourse, but easily learned. Enter: public philosophy!

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John Ibekwe
John Ibekwe
13 October 2021 03:30

Metaphysics is abstract in the sense that the concepts of spirit, being, soul remain not physically tangible and therefore difficult to understand. If one reads the works of St. Thomas Aquinas or the works of St. Augustine, one can understand that these books are difficult to understand

Thomas Arnold
Thomas Arnold
13 October 2021 07:49
Reply to  John Ibekwe

But intangibility itself does not necessarily make things hard to understand: 1+1=2 – that’s also a truth about intangibles. Or take emotions and atmospheres: we understand them intuitively (if we aren’t inhibited in some way), even though we cannot touch them. On the other hand, while I can touch my phone, I have no idea which quantum magic makes silicone remember stuff (put bluntly), even though I might even know a bit of coding. So intangibility does not seem to be quite enough as an explanation.

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