The Idea of Philosophy and its Historical Origin

Abstract

The term “First Philosophy,” as is well known, was originally introduced by Aristotle as the name of a philosophical discipline but has, in the time since Aristotle, been displaced by the term “Metaphysics,” which itself came into use quite accidentally. In reviving the term in its Aristotelian sense, I derive from the fact that it has 15 fallen out of common usage the highly welcome advantage that it arouses in us only its literal meaning, and not the various sediments of historical tradition, which, as the vague concepts of metaphysics, allow memories of the manifold metaphysical systems of earlier times to become confusedly intermingled with one another