ABSTRACT

The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics is an outstanding, comprehensive and accessible guide to the major themes, thinkers, and issues in metaphysics. The Companion features over fifty specially commissioned chapters from international scholars which are organized into three clear parts:

  • History of Metaphysics
  • Ontology
  • Metaphysics and Science.

Each section features an introduction which places the range of essays in context, while an extensive glossary allows easy reference to key terms and definitions. The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics is essential reading for students of philosophy and anyone interested in surveying the central topics and problems in metaphysics from causation to vagueness and from Plato and Aristotle to the present-day.

part I|218 pages

History of Metaphysics

chapter |5 pages

Introduction to Part I

Millennia of metaphysics

chapter 1|10 pages

Presocratic Themes

Being, not-being and mind

chapter 2|11 pages

Plato

Arguments for forms

chapter 3|10 pages

Aristotle

Form, matter and substance

chapter 4|9 pages

Aristotle

Time and change

chapter 5|10 pages

Medieval Metaphysics I

The problem of universals

chapter 6|10 pages

Medieval Metaphysics II

Things, non-things, God and time

chapter 7|9 pages

Descartes

The real distinction

chapter 8|11 pages

Hobbes

Matter, motion and cause

chapter 9|10 pages

Spinoza

Substance, attribute and mode

chapter 10|11 pages

Locke

The primary and secondary quality distinction

chapter 11|10 pages

Leibniz

Mind–body causation and pre-established harmony

chapter 12|12 pages

Berkeley

Arguments for idealism

chapter 13|11 pages

Hume

Necessary connections and distinct existences

chapter 14|10 pages

Kant

The possibility of metaphysics

chapter 15|9 pages

Hegel and Schopenhauer

Reason and will

chapter 16|10 pages

Anti-Metaphysics I

Nietzsche

chapter 17|10 pages

Bradley

The supra-relational Absolute

chapter 18|10 pages

Whitehead

Process and cosmology

chapter 19|10 pages

Heidegger

The question of Being

chapter 20|8 pages

Anti-Metaphysics II

Verificationism and kindred views

chapter 21|10 pages

Metaphysics Revivified

part II|193 pages

Ontology

chapter |4 pages

Introduction to Part II

Being and related matters

chapter 22|9 pages

To be

chapter 23|12 pages

Not to be

chapter 24|10 pages

Razor Arguments

chapter 25|9 pages

Substance

chapter 27|10 pages

Universals

The contemporary debate

chapter 28|10 pages

Particulars

chapter 30|12 pages

Relations

chapter 31|13 pages

Events, Facts and States of Affairs

chapter 32|11 pages

Possible Worlds and Possibilia

chapter 33|11 pages

Mathematical Entities

chapter 34|13 pages

Fictional Objects

chapter 35|12 pages

Vagueness

chapter 36|7 pages

Minor Entities

Surfaces, holes and shadows

chapter 37|12 pages

Truthmakers and Truthbearers

chapter 38|11 pages

Values

part III|165 pages

Metaphysics and Science

chapter |5 pages

Introduction to Part III

The study of nature

chapter 39|10 pages

Space, Absolute and Relational

chapter 40|10 pages

Infinity and Metaphysics

chapter 41|9 pages

The Passage of Time

chapter 42|10 pages

The Direction of Time

chapter 43|12 pages

Causation

chapter 44|9 pages

Laws and Dispositions

chapter 45|17 pages

Determinism and Probability

chapter 46|10 pages

Essences and Natural Kinds

chapter 47|10 pages

Metaphysics and Relativity

chapter 48|10 pages

Metaphysics and Quantum Physics

chapter 50|8 pages

Biometaphysics

chapter 51|10 pages

Social Entities

chapter 52|14 pages

The Mental and the Physical

chapter 53|9 pages

The Self