What is Metaphysics?

Breaking up that word into 'meta' and 'physics', Metaphysics is any study that takes you beyond 'physics'. Except that the 'physics' in question comes from the Greek physis which involved a somewhat wider domain of knowledge than is encompassed today by that term. Nevertheless, how does one 'go beyond physics'?

One way of doing this is to think in terms of questioning the axioms that lie at the basis of our beliefs. Here is a dialogue between A and B :

A : I want to go away from London.

B : Why?

A : Because it is too crowded, and I do not feel good here.

B : Why?

A : Because I do not feel that I have enough 'space' for myself, and I wish to be in a place where I can roam around freely.

B : Why?

A : So that I can be happy.

B : But why? Why do you want to be happy?

Snap. The line snaps under the weight of that final question. Perhaps, then, that question is 'metaphysical'.

Here is another conversation.

A : The computer I am typing on right now exists.

B : Why?

A : Because the million parts that it is comprised of exist.

B : Why?

A : Because the subatomic particles that constitute each of these parts exist.

B : Why?

A : Because something exists. The world we live in is something, and it exists. Hence something exists.

B : But why? Why does anything exist at all? Why could there not have been simply absolute nothingness?

Another snap. Perhaps the primary aim of the 'metaphysical' is not so much to answer 'questions' (assuming that they can even be formulated) but to produce a sense of awe when faced by such questions. For some people, this may very well be a sign that someone has sunk into irrationality and has shrunk away from the frontiers of thought. For others, though, this may be a humble acknowledgement that when one has arrived at the very horizons within which thought is possible, one should perhaps learn to speak through silence. This is not, however, to still the mind into a numbing inactivity; indeed, it is to realise/fulfil its true potential which is activated only after it has arrived at, and accepted, the boundaries of its thought.

It takes but a school education to learn that there is, perhaps, nothing like the joy of receiving a 'straight' answer to a 'straight' question. It might, however, be necessary to go through a painful process of unlearning to know that even after all such 'straight' answers have been tabulated, the most interesting questions are the 'non-straight' ones.