Metaphysics and the Intellect

1. Basic Explanation of Metaphysics
Physics is the study of all that appertains to the domain of nature; metaphysics, on the other hand, is the study of what lies beyond nature. MXO5

2. Physics was for the Ancient Greeks by no means the kind of science, which has now been chosen for this name, except that it was a collective concept for the knowledge of the world in its entirety, or when referring to the microcosmos, for the knowledge of the individual – not just regarding the corporal, but also the spiritual or the subtle dimension. GD19

3. The metaphysical principle, which is the direct origin of the corporal-spiritual is called the pure intellect (intellectus purus – acc. to the scholastics of the Middle Ages in direct connection with Aristotle).

□ comment: In Islamic epistemology intellect is `aql, as understanding, ratio, reflection, + importantly that what goes beyond rational consideration and does not contradict it.
– Intellect and revelation as sources of knowledge

And according to Master Eckehart who said: ”There is something in the soul, which is uncreated and cannot to be created[fn1] (increatum et increabile); if the whole soul had been such, it had been uncreated and not to be created; and this is the Intellect.”

Nowadays the word intellect is synonymous with ’understanding’, ratio, and this shift in meaning is an indication for the enormous gap, which separates our way of looking at things from pre-modern times. GD20

If we hold on to the meaning of intellect (intellectus as Eckehart uses it), one can say that for the spiritual elite of the Middle Ages ”the Beyond” was an intellectual endeavour of the highest degree. GD20u

Related:
– Metaphysics
– Quotes on Oriental Metaphysics, R G

Quoted and slightly edited from Swedish ”Den glömda dimensionen” (The forgotten dimension), Kurt Almqvist – except for the comment. Booklist: MXO, GD

fn1: uncreated and not to be created: by no one, except by the One, Who creates and sustains everything in existence.