PHL 4030 - Metaphysics

Credits: 4

“All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare” -Spinoza. Metaphysics is devoted to some of the rarest, most excellent, and certainly most difficult philosophical texts ever written. In studying writings by Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger (or philosophers of equivalent importance), we shall encounter radically different answers to the question “What is being?”: being is substance (and pre-eminently the highest substance, God); it is the necessary ground for human thought; it is the ultimate resolution of all contradictions inherent in thought; it is that which we approach through our questions but never reach. But even apart from their answers, the philosophers chosen reveal their greatness as thinkers by the variety of ways in which they understand and approach the question of being.
Prerequisite(s): PHL 1000 and another course in Philosophy or the permission of the professor.