Open Discussion: What is Metaphysics?

This meeting will be a live discussion of the title topic. This sort of discussion can't be settled in any particular way, but remains relevant for beginners and initiates to philosophy.

Here are some questions and comments that may help guide the conversation (feel free to bring your own questions as well):

From Aristotle onwards, metaphysics has been defined in various ways and spirits. (Of course, metaphysics doesn't have to be seen as beginning with Aristotle.)

How do we understand metaphysics? How do we understand the various ways that metaphysics has been described? Tentative answers to these questions will modify all the following questions.

What problems does metaphysics address, or is metaphysics inherently an empty discipline?

What relevance does metaphysics have for us, or in various historical periods?

Some names are synonymous, or at least represent something adjacent to, metaphysics: first philosophy, ontology, epistemology, phenomenology, etc. How do we want to understand each of these?

Is the study of metaphysics peculiar to a "Western" way of viewing the world, or is it universal?