Introduction to metaphysics : from Parmenides to Levinas / Jean Grondin ; translated by Lukas Soderstrom.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grondin, Jean.

Standardized Title:

Introduction à la métaphysique. English

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Metaphysics--History.

Metaphysics.

History.

Physical Description:

xxv, 323 pages ; 18 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2012]

Summary:

Jean Grondin's history of metaphysics respects both the analytical and the Continental schools while transcending the theoretical limitations of each. He reviews seminal texts by Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Augustine. He follows the theological turn in the metaphysical thought of Avicenna, Anselm, Aquinas, and Duns Scotus, and he revisits Descartes and the cogito; Spinoza and Leibniz's rationalist approaches; Kant's reclaiming of the metaphysical tradition; and post-Kantian practice up to Hegel. He engages with twentieth-century innovations that upended the discipline, particularly Heidegger's revival of the question of Being and the rediscovery of the metaphysics of existence by Sartre and the Existentialists, language by Gadamer and Derrida, and transcendence by Levinas. Metaphysics is often dismissed as a form or epoch of philosophy that must be overcome, vet by promoting a full understanding of its platform and processes. Grondin reveals its cogent approach to reality and foundational influence on modern philosophy and science. By restoring the value of metaphysics for contemporary audiences, Grondin showcases the rich currents and countercurrents of metaphysical thought and its future possibilities. Book jacket.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Parmenides: The Evidence of Being 1

The Fragmentary and Almost Incomprehensible Character of Pre-Platonic Thought 1

The Context of Presocratic Thinking on Nature 3

An Oral, Therefore Poetic, Culture 6

A Goddess's Revelation 7

The Enigma of Being 10

The Legacy of Parmenides' Onto-Theology 15

The Sophistic Crisis: Human Discourse Left to Its Own Devices 17

Chapter 2 Plato: The Hypothesis of the Idea 21

The Indirect Character of Plato's Writings 21

Parmenides' Legacy 24

Being Attentive to the Eidos 25

The Separation of the Ideas 27

An Effort at Reminiscence 30

Dialectics, or Minding Being Itself 33

The Exemplary Ideality of Mathematics 35

The "Metaphysical" Separation of the Line: Republic VI 35

The Idea of the Good's Supereminence 38

The Demiurge's Cosmos: The Same and the Different 42

The Principle of the One in Plato's Academy 43

Chapter 3 Aristotle: The Horizons of First Philosophy 46

The Text and Object of Metaphysics 46

A Science of First Principles 48

The Theory of Causes 49

It Is a Science of Being as Being 53

The Onto-Theological Perspective of Metaphysics E, 1 55

The Many Meanings of Being 57

First Philosophy as Ousiology: Metaphysics Z 60

The Theology of Metaphysics Λ 63

Chapter 4 The Last Summit of Classical Metaphysics: The Neoplatonic Eruption 67

Plotinus's Metaphysics of the One 68

Augustine's Christianization of Metaphysics 73

Chapter 5 Metaphysics and Theology in the Middle Ages 80

A "Metaphysical" Era? 80

The Importance of Pistis 83

Anselm and the Ontological Argument 85

Avicenna: The Metaphysics of the Shifa 89

Averroes's Critique of Avicenna 94

The Object of Metaphysics According to Thomas Aquinas 95

Whether God Exists? The Five Ways 98

The Idea of a Scienria Transcendens in Scholastic Thought from Duns Scotus to Suarez: The Origin of Ontology 102

Chapter 6 Descartes: First Philosophy According to the Cogito 107

Is There a Cartesian Metaphysics? 107

First Meditation: What Can Be Called Into Doubt, or Classical Metaphysics Brought Into Question 110

Second Meditation: I Think, I Am-the Metaphysics of the Cogito 112

Third Meditation: Concerning God, That He Exists-the Return to the Metaphysics of Divinity 116

The Legacy of Descartes's Double Metaphysics 120

Chapter 7 Spinoza and Leibniz: The Metaphysics of Simplicity and Integral Rationality 122

Ethical Metaphysics: Spinoza 122

Leibniz and the Search for the Metaphysics of Substantial Forms 126

Chapter 8 Kant: Metaphysics Turned Critical 131

Natural Metaphysics 132

Is Metaphysics Possible as Science? 133

Kant and the Ancients' Transcendental Philosophy: Phenomena and the Things in Themselves 137

Critique and Metaphysics 139

The Metaphysics of Freedom 142

The "Metaphysics" of the Highest Good 144

Can the Existence of God Be Demonstrated? 148

The Future of Metaphysics After Kant 150

Chapter 9 Metaphysics After Kant? 153

Was There Any Metaphysics After Kant? 153

Science and System in Kant 156

The Idealist Dismissal of the Metaphysics of the Thing-in-Itself 159

Reinhold's First Philosophy 161

Fichte and the Metaphysics of the I 163

Schelling's Metaphysics of Identity 170

The Later Schelling's Metaphysics 176

Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit 182

Post-Hegelian Metaphysics: A Primitive State or an Artistic Affair 194

Chapter 10 Heidegger: The Resurrection of the Question of Being in the Name of Overcoming Metaphysics 201

The Project of a Destruction of the History of Ontology 201

The Twofold Priority of the Question of Being 203

Metaphysics: The Experience of Our Being Par Excellence (1929) 208

The Onto-Theo-Logical Constitution of Metaphysics 213

The Technological and Nihilist Completion of Metaphysics 217

The Unsettling of the Principle of Reason 219

The Theological Scope of Heidegger's Overcoming of Metaphysics 220

A Secretly Metaphysical Philosophy? 222

Chapter 11 On Metaphysics Since Heidegger 225

The Rediscovery of the History of Metaphysics 225

The Rediscovery of the Metaphysics of Existence: From Gilson to Sartre 228

The Rediscovery of the Metaphysics of Language: From Gadamer to Derrick 234

The Rediscovery of the Metaphysics of Transcendence: Levinas 243.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780231148450

0231148453

9780231148443

0231148445

9780231527231

0231527233

OCLC:

708762969