Gile. Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the history of philosophy.

Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich, online at History of Philosophy.net.

Today's episode, Better Than Nothing, Metaphysics in the Second Scholastic.

What does a Metaphysician have in common with a British police inspector?

When they show up to work, both demand to know,

what's all this then?

Metaphysics is, after all, the study of quite literally everything,

from Ardvarks to xylophones. It's tempting to say that it is the study... literally everything

that exists, but even this might be too narrow.

Philosophers are often very interested in things that do not exist,

especially things that might exist but don't.

If it is true that my non-existent sister is a female human, then it is the metaphysician who could

tell us why this is true.

In fact, if it isn't true, it would be up to the metaphysician

to explain that also. Such speculations might seem idle, but as we just saw last time with the case of Molina

and his effort to accommodate human freedom and moral responsibility through the theory of middle

knowledge, unrealized possibilities turn out to be very significant for those of us who do wind up

existing. And mere possibilities aren't the only things that might interest the metaphysician, despite their failure to exist.

It would be worth thinking about impossible things too, like round squares or giraffes that can fly.

Then there is that category of the non-existent that we might call absence or privation.

If we are at the zoo and eagerly approach the giraffe

enclosure only to find it empty, it's the lack of a

...