The discussion about whether change...

The discussion about whether change, alteration, perishability and dependency are implications of being, in other words whether there is a stable, fixed, imperishable and independent existent, is a discussion whose positive resolution leads to a classification of existents into the material and the immaterial, the stable and changing, the Necessary Existence and contingent existence, etc..

Until this sort of problem is solved, for example, until necessary existence and immaterial existences are established, sciences such as theology, philosophical psychology and the like will have no basis or foundation.

It is not only the solution to such problems which requires rational argument, but if one wishes to disprove these matters this also requires the employment of rational methods, for just as sensation and experience by themselves are unable to prove these things, they are also unable to disprove or deny them.

In this way, it has become clear that there is a series of important and basic problems for man which cannot be answered by any of the specific sciences, not even by the specific philosophical sciences. There must be another science by which to inquire into them, and this is metaphysics, the general science, first philosophy whose subject is not specific to a kind of existent or determined and particular essence.

Inevitably, its subject must be the most universal concept which is applicable to all real and objective things, and this is the term “existent”. Of course, what is meant is not existent in that respect in which it is material, and not in that respect in which it is immaterial, but rather in that respect in which it is an existent, that is, the absolute existent, or existent in so far as it is an existent. Such a science has the position of being what is called “the mother of the sciences”.

The Principles of Philosophy In the previous lesson it was said that before beginning to solve the problems of any science, one should recognize the principles of that science.

So, we may now ask, “What are the principles of philosophy?” “And in what science should these be determined?” The answer is that the recognition of the conceptual principles of the sciences, that is, the knowledge of the concept and essence of the subject of the science, and the concepts of the subjects of the problems of the science usually are obtained in that very science itself.