Metaphysics is essentially the language of the intellect, capable of articulating in an ultimate way — through transparency to itself (Borella) — the first principles and the relations between the Absolute and the relative.
The intellect is a mirror in which the Ideas (in the Platonic sense) are reflected: a meeting of intelligibility between intelligible reality and the intellect.
Thus, it is through the intellect — metaphysical by nature — that the human being knows Reality beyond the intelligible, because it relinquishes the intelligible for the sake of the Real: it renounces the concept in favor of the object, of which the concept is only an image.
Yet this is not all: the intellect is reception; what matters most is the emitted and the Emitter.
The logoi are that which is emitted and proceeds from the Logos, the Word in Christian language.
This metaphysical experience is made by every person, often without knowing it: it occurs when the intellect accepts to close its eyes (Dionysius the Areopagite) before that which is, in any case, above the eyes (Malebranche).
More precisely
Etymologically, “metaphysics” (τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά) means “what comes after physics” — not in time, but in dignity: what lies beyond the consideration of the physical world.
Metaphysics is thus the science of being as being, of its principles, modes, and hierarchy.
It concerns primarily:
— the Absolute (Principle),
— the degrees of manifestation,
— the relation between essence and existence,
— the intellect as supra-discursive faculty.
True metaphysics is neither sterile abstraction nor conceptual construction.
It requires direct intellectual knowledge — that is, intuition — which discursive thought can only express secondarily.
What the concept points to, intuition sees.
In antiquity, metaphysics is the noetic science: the science of Intellect (νοῦς).
In Plato and Plotinus, to know is to participate in the Forms or the One.
In Thomas Aquinas, metaphysics becomes the science of ens, ordered to the Pure Act (God).
Metaphysics recognizes the intellect as an unconditioned faculty:
it surpasses discursive reason, which proceeds step by step, and opens to a unitive knowledge of the Real.
It is therefore not one science among others but the science of sciences, because only metaphysics indicates the principle, meaning, and end of all knowledge.
Without it, the sciences collapse into the mere measurement of the measurable, blind to Being.
Across traditions, metaphysics is inseparable from symbolism, the language through which supra-sensible realities become knowable.
The symbol is revelatory, not decorative.
For further reading
- Plato, Republic; Parmenides; Symposium — On Intellect, Forms, and dialectical ascent.
- Aristotle, Metaphysics — Science of being as being and first principles.
- Plotinus, Enneads — Hierarchy of the Real: One, Intellect, Soul.
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae — On being, essence, and Pure Act.
- Dionysius the Areopagite, Mystical Theology — On the apophatic way and divine transcendence.
- Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité — On vision in God.
- Jean Borella, Amour et Vérité (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2011) — On symbol, intellectual intuition, and the transparency of intelligence.
- Bruno Bérard, Metaphysics for Everyone (Angelico Press);
— fr. Métaphysique pour tous (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2022)
— it. Sui sentieri della metafisica
— es. ¿Qué es la metafísica?
— de. Was ist Metaphysik?
Overview: intellect, logoi, Absolute and relative, symbolism, hierarchy of reality.