Metaphysics is the study of the world beyond nature. More specifically, it is an outlook that sees things as isolated and static. It is the opposite of dialectics. Metaphysicists believe that everything in the universe has always been the same for as long as it has existed. The feudal aristocracy promoted idealist metaphysics and the early bourgeoisie promoted mechanical materialism, a metaphysical form of materialism distinct from dialectical materialism.[1]
Etymology
The word meta means beyond in Greek, and is today usually used to mean something on something. Physics originally referred to the study of nature in Ancient Greece, which can be understood as the natural world, i.e. the physical, material world in which we live.
Metaphysics, therefore, would refer to the "nature of nature" or something "beyond nature". In other words, metaphysics is the study of everything which exists beyond the material world. As dialectics prove that nature is always in movement and never exactly twice the same, any world beyond nature would be something that is not dialectical, and thus immutable and static. It can also be called the supernatural world (super meaning above in Latin: above the natural world).
Historically, especially to Aristotle, metaphysics was the study of the being which is found beyond nature.
References
- ↑ Mao Zedong (1937). On Contradiction: 'The Two World Outlooks'. [MIA]