Quotes About Metaphysics

Nothing exists; all is a dream. God—man—the world—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars—a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you!

This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and it's object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science.

We are too late for the gods and too early for Being.

To modern metaphysics, the Being of beings appears as will. But inasmuch as man, because of his nature as the thinking animal and by virtue of forming ideas, is related to beings in their Being, is thereby related to Being, and is thus determined by Being—therefore man's being, in keeping with this relatedness of Being (which now means, of the will) to human nature, must emphatically appear as a willing.

Sartre expresses the basic tenet of existentialism in this way: Existence precedes essence. In this statement he is taking existentia and essentia according to their metaphysical meaning, which from Plato's time on has said that essentia precedes existentia. Sartre reverses this statement. But the reversal of a metaphysical statement remains a metaphysical statement. With it he stays with metaphysics in oblivion of the truth of Being.

All metaphysics, including its opponent, positivism, speaks the language of Plato. The basic word of its thinking, that is, of its presentation of the Being of beings, is eidos, idea: the outward appearance in which beings as such show themselves. Outward appearance, however, is a manner of presence. No outward appearance without light – Plato already knew this. But there is no light and no brightness without the clearing. Even darkness needs it.

All future interpretation of Greek metaphysics, including Nietzsche's, is Christian.

Only by existing on the basis of metaphysics can science renew and fulfill its essential task, which is not to amass and classify bits of knowledge but to disclose, in ever fresh ways, the whole realm of truth in both nature and history.

Being is essentially different from a being, from beings.

Music is an unconscious exercise in metaphysics in which the mind does not know it is philosophizing.

To talk of rational beings apart from man is as if we attempted to talk of heavy beings apart from bodies.

It is for this reason that we find that co-existence, which could neither be in time alone, for time has no contiguity, nor in space alone, for space has no before, after, or now

The only freedom that exists is of a metaphysical character. In the physical world freedom is an impossibility.

The highest, i.e., the most general concepts, are the poorest; ultimately these are just empty shells, as, e.g., being, essence, thing, becoming, ect. - incidentally, whatever could philosophical systems produce when they are merely spun out of these same concepts and have as their matter only such empty shells of thought? They must be infinitely empty and poor, and therefore, turn out to be tedious and suffocating.

What is time? What is this entity consisting of mere movement without anything that moves? and, What is space, this omnipresent nothing out of which no thing can emerge without ceasing to be something? That time and space belong to the subject

Forma dat rei essentiam, materia existentiam.

In fact, the balance wheel which maintains in motion the watch of metaphysics that never runs down, is the clear knowledge that this world's non-existence is just as possible as its existence. ?from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Payne. In Two Volumes, Volume II, p. 171

Not merely that the world exists, but still more that it is such a miserable and melancholy world, is the tormenting problem of metaphysics.

To satisfy themselves with this, they gladly grasp at words, especially those which denote indefinite, very abstract, and unusual concepts difficult to explain, such, for example, as infinite and finite, sensuous and supersensuous, the Idea of being, Ideas of reason, the Absolute

La volontà, come cosa in sé, differisce completamente dalla sua manifestazione fenomenica ed è assolutamente indipendente dalle forme di quest'ultima, che essa assimila solo quando si manifesta, e che quindi concernono solo la sua estrinsecazione obiettiva, ma sono estranee alla volontà stessa.

we have found that the whole essence of matter lies in action, a i.e. in causality: as a result, matter must also unify space and time, that is, matter must possess the properties of both time and space simultaneously

The world is idea.

That which exists possesses identity; he could keep it out of existence by refusing to identify it.

If our actions in the world are to stem from an encounter with what is central in life, they must be unclouded by either dogma or prevarication. Agnosticism is no excuse for indecision. If anything, it is a catalyst for action; for in shifting concern away from a future life and back to the present, it demands an ethics of empathy rather than a metaphysics of fear and hope.