Od philosophia do tà meta tà physiká
From philosophia to tà meta tà physiká

Summary/Abstract: The article concentrates on a methodological status of philosophy as a science which differs from other disciplines. The author undertakes an attempt to indicate a moment when philosophy as a science came to life. He recalls Plato’s theory of ideas, showing that in Plato’s works there are several different meanings of the term philosophia that not always designate a science in its strict sense. Afterwards, the author presents a position of Aristotle who rejected the Platonian theory of ideas and replaced it by his theory of form that satisfies conditions of the scientific object. He underlines that Aristotle as a realist looked at philosophical problems in respect of their inferences to the reality, what caused that Platonian idealism turned out to be too schematic and dissent from the real world. Then, the author undertakes a problem of introducing and interpreting an objective name tà meta tà physiká. As he notices its interpretation evolved into three directions. They found their origins in Simplicius, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Alexander of Aphrodisias whose writings were most consistent with the spirit of Aristotle’s philosophy. The author indicates that the expression tà meta tà physiká is the name of a philosophy-science (a rational cognition) whose object (i.e. being) both transcends the natural, and embraces it. For the natural is a being, but not every being must be „natural”, as there are beings beyond these natural. Therefore, it is the most difficult science accessible to man which transcends natural sciences. The author remarks that metaphysics was a project of science that satisfied some determined criteria established by Stagirite himself, a project realized only in part.

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