The Metaphysics

Aristotle

may 2004 · Penguin UK

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The Metaphysics presents Aristotle's mature rejection of both the Platonic theory that what we perceive is just a pale reflection of reality and the hardheaded view that all processes are ultimately material. He argued instead that the reality or substance of things lies in their concrete forms, and in so doing he probed some of the deepest questions of philosophy: What is existence? How is change possible? And are there certain things that must exist for anything else to exist at all? The seminal notions discussed in The Metaphysics - of 'substance' and associated concepts of matter and form, essence and accident, potentiality and actuality - have had a profound and enduring influence, and laid the foundations for one of the central branches of Western philosophy.

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ARISTOTLE (384-322 BC) studied at the Academy of Plato for 20 years and then established his own school and research institute 'The Lyceum'. His writings, which were of extraordinary range, profoundly affected the whole course of ancient and medieval philosophy and are still eagerly studied and debated by philosophers today.
HUGH LAWSON-TANCRED was born in 1955, and went to Balliol College, Oxford. He is now a departmental Fellow of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, London.