Metaphysics - Philosophy of Be-ing For Today

The book is meant to provide answers to questions like: What is metaphysics? What is its nature, role and relevance? Is it really possible? How does metaphysics provide us with a larger view of life and reality? In our technological age, any dream of "going beyond" the findings of sense-experience, a variety of pragmatic inventions from spacecraft to pocket computers emerged, that are understandably dismissed as precisely, a foolish idle dream and nothing more.

In contrast to the clear and verifiable statements, measurements, and laws of science; metaphysics seems to offer a collection of high- flown words and phrases shot through with vagueness and uncertainty. Still, as human beings, we do need to ask bigger questions! We need to explore fundamental issues. This philosophical endeavor is a modest attempt to raise the "why" questions, which form the basis of our physical and natural world. It poses questions larger than life! It provides perspectives on life and shows the necessary connection between physical realities and those beyond it.

Cyril Desbruslais is an Indian Jesuit priest (Calcutta Province), Professor (Emeritus) of Philosophy at Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune, India, and an accomplished playwright. He has taught almost all the subjects in philosophy except Logic and Indian Philosophy for more than 40 years. He has been an animator of youth throughout his life. He initiated "Searching in Service and Unity" (SSU) in 1971 for the youths of Pune. He has staged more than 25 plays on socially relevant topics.

What is reality? What does it mean to exist? How are we to be? What is it to be? How do we make sense of the things that we encounter every day? How do we understand the world and make sense of it? What is the nature of the world? Why is there something, rather than nothing? These are some of the bigger questions that we face in our lives?

This book is a humble attempt to approach these fundamental questions that relate us to the larger reality! These metaphysical issues are taken up in this book, with a view to making it easily accessible to ordinary readers.

Metaphysics as the basis of philosophy:

The word metaphysics came to the vocabulary of classical Greek philosophy rather late. Plato knew of no such word and indeed, when it was first coined after an expression of an early editor of Aristotle, its meaning was extremely vague and general. The phrase ta meta ta physika was nothing but the collective and nondescript name given to the books of Aristotle that were placed after his treatise on Physics (Greek meta after, physika nature). This historical accident is not without significance for meta also has the connotations of "beyond" and whereas Aristotle's Physics could be summed up as a study of "nature" (the "physical" world), from the stand-point of the observable, which is the usual sand-point of the natural or physical sciences even today, metaphysics seeks to comprehend reality ("nature") at a deeper level and penetrate into its deeper depths, going beyond what mere sense-observation and experiment can reveal.

In this short book we give an introduction to metaphysics and deal with the what and how of it. Then we go on to study the transcendentals, which are qualities every being possesses because it is a being. Then we take up some general metaphysical issues like change, categories, causality and finally person.