The contemporary research on "meta-function", closely associated with names as Breton, Ricoeur, Greisch, is located in continuity with the traditional question on metaphysics, which metaphysics itself has posed in its historical development starting from Aristotle, followed by the exegetical readings in the late antiquity, in the Arabic philosophy and in the Scholasticism. The analysis of meta-function as peculiar character of metaphysics highlights the double movement of transcendence and immanence, of going beyond and coming back. It shows how metaphysics overcomes physis (...) to rediscover it in a formal way on a deeper ontological level by posing the question about "being as being", which is not a natural object. In this way metaphysics displays its eidetical nature according to which metaphysics and phenomenology no longer appear as opposed in front of phenomena. (shrink)