First philosophy
What Is Metaphysics?
Metaphysics is the philosophical study of reality’s most general features—what exists, what things are, and how they relate.
Short answer
It asks questions that ordinary sciences presuppose: What is a cause? What is a person? Is time fundamental? Are minds material? What does it mean for something to be possible?
Ontology and categories
Ontology inventories kinds of being—objects, properties, events, numbers, minds. Metaphysicians ask whether these categories are fundamental or useful fictions.
Mind, free will, and modality
Modern metaphysics includes philosophy of mind, debates on free will and determinism, and theories of possibility and necessity (modality). These topics migrated into metaphysics as natural philosophy specialized.
Metaphysics across traditions
Greek ousia, Indian debates on self and emptiness, Islamic falsafa, and Neo-Confucian li/qi cosmologies show that metaphysical questioning is not a European monopoly—even when vocabularies differ.
Frequently asked questions
What is metaphysics?
It is inquiry into the fundamental nature of reality: being, causation, time, mind, and related concepts.
Is metaphysics the same as physics?
No. Physics studies the natural world empirically; metaphysics asks more general questions about existence and categories, sometimes informed by science.
Why does metaphysics matter?
Assumptions about persons, causation, and possibility shape ethics, law, religion, and AI debates.
From the archive
Read alongside this guide
“It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.”
“The human good is activity of soul in accordance with virtue.”
“Virtues arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature; we are fitted by nature to receive them, and are brought to completion by habit.”