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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
First Philosophy Last Philosophy: Western Knowledge Between Metaphysics and the Sciences

First Philosophy Last Philosophy: Western Knowledge Between Metaphysics and the Sciences

Hanafi, Zakiya
Agamben, Giorgio

Paperback

Philosophy

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ISBN10: 1509560521
ISBN13: 9781509560523
Publisher: Polity Press
Published: Jun 25 2024
Pages: 160
Weight: 0.39
Height: 0.50 Width: 5.40 Depth: 8.40
Language: English

What is at stake in that form of inquiry that the western philosophical tradition has called first philosophy or metaphysics? Is it an abstract, now outmoded branch of philosophy, or does it address a problem that is still of great interest - namely the unity of western knowledge?

In fact, metaphysics is first only in relation to the other two sciences that Aristotle called theoretical the study of nature (phusikē) and mathematics. It is the strategic sense of this primacy that needs to be examined, because what is at issue here is nothing less than the relationship - of domination or subservience, conflict or harmony - between philosophy and science. The hypothesis of this book is that philosophy's attempt to use metaphysics as a way of securing primacy among the sciences has resulted instead in its subservience: philosophy, once handmaiden to theology (ancilla theologiae), has now become more or less consciously handmaiden to the sciences (ancilla scientiarum). So it is all the more urgent to explore the nature and limits of this primacy and subservience, which is what the present book does through an archaeological investigation of metaphysics.

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