What is metaphysics?

Since this book is called An Introduction to Metaphysics, it makes sense to begin with a short, simple, and clear definition of the word ‘metaphysics’. If only it were that easy.

Part of the problem is that it's practically impossible to get any two philosophers to agree on a single definition of ‘metaphysics’. (And the book is, after all, written by two philosophers.) But there are also issues relating to the strange etymology of the term ‘metaphysics’, and further complications arising from the fact that ‘metaphysics’ has one meaning in ordinary English and another meaning within (academic) philosophy. Nevertheless, we'll do our best in this section to offer the reader what we take to be a reasonable characterization of the field of metaphysics. In fact, we'll offer three different but mutually compatible characterizations.

Let's start with what metaphysics is not. Metaphysics – as we are using the term – is not the study of the occult. Nor is it the study of mysticism, or auras, or the power of pyramids. Although the word ‘metaphysics’ may indeed have all of those connotations in ordinary English, the word is used within academic philosophy in an entirely different way. And this book, as it happens, is meant to be an introduction to the branch of academic philosophy that is known as metaphysics.