Metaphysics category: 2011 books

Once thought to be the task of metaphysics, the synthesis of knowledge has been discounted by many philosophers today. Benedict Ashley, a leading Thomistic scholar, argues that it remains a valid and intellectually fruitful pursuit by situating metaphysics as an endeavor that must cross disciplinary...

The Metaphysics of Perfect Beings addresses the problems an Anselmian perfect being faces in contexts involving unlimited options. Recent advances in the theory of vagueness, the metaphysics of multiverses and hyperspace, the theory of dynamic or sequential choice, the logic of moral and rational...

Metaphysics of History indicates two major tendencies. Analyzed at small distances of space and time, human history appears like the consequence of leaders decisions and peoples interactions. At a large scale of space and time, history shows that people have achieved without understanding the superior...

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.   "The motive which inspires Aristotle throughout the Metaphysics is the wish to acquire that form of knowledge which is most worthy of the name of wisdom." -- W. D. Ross Many of the great and...

Chance and Temporal Asymmetry presents a collection of cutting-edge research papers in the metaphysics of science, tackling the perplexing philosophical problems raised by recent progress in the physics and metaphysics of chance and time. How do the probabilities found in fundamental physics and the...

Kant divided his course of lectures on metaphysics into six parts: a section entitled 'prolegomena' followed by chapters on ontology, cosmology, empirical psychology, rational psychology, and natural theology. This volume's ten chapters, written by leading Kant scholars, constitute the most comprehensive...

This book introduces the underlying ideas which have created the constellation of thought commonly referred to as Speculative Realism (SR). In a non-technical style Speculative Realism: An Epitome explores the thought of three contemporary philosophers: Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, and Iain...

Metaphysics (Greek: τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά; Latin: Metaphysica) is one of the principal works of Aristotle and the first major work of the branch of philosophy with the same name. The principal subject is "being qua being", or being understood as being. It examines what can be...

The final published book by Nobel Prize-winning author and philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941), La pensée et le mouvant (translated here as The Creative Mind), is a masterly autobiography of his philosophical method. Through essays and lectures written between 1903 and 1923, Bergson retraces...

Metaphysics is one of the traditional four main branches of philosophy, alongside ethics, logic and epistemology. It is also an area that continues to attract and hold a fascination for many people yet it is associated with being complex and abstract. For some it is associated with the mystical or...

Toward a Metaphysics of Culture provides an initial, minimal, and original analysis of the concept of uniquely enlanguaged cultures of the human world and of the distinctive metaphysical features of whatever belongs to the things of that world: preeminently, persons, language, actions, artworks, products,...

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.  Immanuel Kant’s Prolegomena is an indispensable guide through the obscure and convoluted tangle of his “critical philosophy.” It has inestimable value as an introduction to the revolutionary doctrine that he...

Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is one of the most important works in modern moral philosophy. It belongs beside Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Hobbes. Here Kant sets out to articulate and defend the Categorical Imperative - the fundamental principle that underlies moral reasoning - and to lay the foundation for a comprehensive account of justice and human virtues.

This volume focuses on contemporary issues in the philosophy of religion through an engagement with Eleonore Stump’s seminal work in the field. Topics covered include: the metaphysics of the divine nature (e.g., divine simplicity and eternity); the nature of love and God’s relation to human happiness; and the issue of human agency (e.g., the nature of the human soul and hell).