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Literary notes about metaphysical (AI summary)

The term “metaphysical” in literature frequently serves as a bridge between concrete experience and abstract reasoning, designating realms or questions that extend beyond empirical evidence. Authors such as Kant use it to signal an exposition of ideas that must be understood prior to experience, as seen in his detailed treatments [1, 2, 3], while others like William James and Schopenhauer employ it to highlight areas where theological and ethical beliefs converge or conflict with reason [4, 5]. In various works, metaphysical language not only underscores the nonphysical, a priori nature of certain judgments [6, 7] but also functions as a critical tool for discussing the limits of sensory perception and empirical knowledge [8, 9]. Even when used with irony or skepticism (as in references to metaphysical professors or paradoxical cosmic justifications [10, 11]), the term consistently invites readers to engage with a realm of inquiry that transcends the immediately observable world.
  1. Metaphysical Exposition of this Conception. § 6.
    — from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
  2. Metaphysical Exposition of this Conception.
    — from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
  3. Metaphysical Exposition of this Conception. § 3.
    — from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
  4. The chief of all the reasons why concrete ethics cannot be final is that they have to wait on metaphysical and theological beliefs.
    — from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James
  5. I am not referring here to the physical connection between these two things lying in the realm of experience; my meaning is metaphysical.
    — from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism by Arthur Schopenhauer
  6. —The peculiarity of its sources demands that metaphysical cognition must consist of nothing but a priori judgments.
    — from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant
  7. First, as concerns the sources of metaphysical cognition, its very concept implies that they cannot be empirical.
    — from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant
  8. You are at the end of your metaphysical quest.
    — from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James
  9. We must distinguish judgments pertaining to metaphysics from metaphysical judgments properly so called.
    — from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant
  10. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor.
    — from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville
  11. The deus ex machina took the place of metaphysical comfort.
    — from The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

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