Van Inwagen and Philosophy:Van Inwagen’s metaphilosophy

Peter van Inwagen, despite of his influence in the contemporary philosophy, not in spare places, does argue and analysis contra to the accepted ways and jargon of the contemporary analytical philosophy. This has led him to adopt some unusual positions. For these perplexities we believe that his methodology and metaphilosophy need to be reconsidered. In this paper, we try to make clear his view about philosophy and its appropriate method. To do this, we will directly go through his philosophical works and try to spell out the components of his metaphilosophical puzzle: how to argue, how to define, how to analysis philosophical jargons, how to do metaphysics, what is the philosophical intuition, and metaontology. Putting all of these together will provide a complete picture of his metaphilosophy. Therefore, each section of this paper investigates one of these metaphilosophical questions. Without taking this picture to the consideration, we believe that will be impossible to understand his philosophy and its arguments properly.