Aristotle’s Metaphysics examines what can be asserted about any being insofar as it is and not because of any special qualities that it may possess. Three questions lie at the core of the book: What is existence, and what sorts of things exist in the world? How can things continue to exist, and yet undergo the change we see about us in the natural world? And how can this world be understood? The book also deals with different kinds of causation, form and matter, the existence of mathematical objects, and God as a prime-mover.

The text is concerned with issues that are in some sense the most fundamental, or exist at the highest level of generality. Aristotle makes a distinction between things that are “better known to us” and things that are “better known in themselves,” and maintains that one ought to begin any study of a given topic with things better known to us, and arrive ultimately at an understanding of things better known in themselves.