Table of Contents

I God
Intorduction:
1: Derek Parfit: Why Anything? Why This?
2: Thomas Aquinas: The five ways
3: William Paley: Extract from Natural Theology
4: Anselm of Canterbury: Extract from Proslogion
5: G.W. Leibniz: Extract from Monadology
6: J.L. Mackie: Evil and omnipotence
II Realism and Idealism
Introduction
7: John Locke: Selection from Essay Concerning Human Understanding
8: George Berkeley: Selection from Three Dialogues
9: Immanuel Kant: Selection from Critique of Pure Reason
10: Selection from Matter and Sense
11: Michael Dummett: Realism
III Being
Introduction
12: Aristotle: Selection from Categories
13: John Locke: Selection from Essay Concerning Human Understanding
14: Robert Merrihew Adams: Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity
15: W.V. Quine: On what there is
16: Peter van Inwagen: Selection from Material Beings
17: Gareth Evans: Can there be vague objects?
18: David Lewis: Vague Identity: Evans misunderstood
Part IV Universals and Particulars
Introduction
19: Plato: Selections from Republic and Parmenides
20: D.M. Armstrong: Selection from Universals: An Opinionated Introduction
21: David Lewis: Selection from New work for a theory of universals
22: Donald C. Williams: On the Elements of Being: I
23: Sydney Shoemaker: Causality and Properties
Part V Necessity
Introduction
24: Saul Kripke: Selection from Naming and Necessity
25: David Lewis: Selection from On the Plurality of Worlds
26: Alvin Plantinga: Actualism and Possible Worlds
27: D.M. Armstrong: Selection from A Combinational Theory of Possibility
Part VI Causation
Introduction
28: Aristotle: Selection from Metaphysics
29: David Hume: Selection from Enquiy Concerning Human Understanding
30: David Lewis: Causation
31: Donald Davidson: Causal Relations
32: D.H. Mellor: Selections from The Faces of Causation
VII Time and Space
Introduction
33: Aristotle: Selection from Physics
34: J.M.E McTaggart: Selection from The Nature of Existence
35: Arthur N. Prior: Changes in Events and Changes in Things
36: Paul Horwich: Selection from Asymmetries in Time
37: Selection from The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence
38: J.J.C. Smart: The space-time world
39: David Lewis: The Paradoxes of Time Travel
Part VIII Identity
Introduction
40: Roderick M. Chisholm: Identity through Time
41: David Lewis: Selection from On the Plurality of Worlds
42: Derek Parfit: Personal Identity
43: P.F. Snowdon: Persons, Animals, and Ourselves
Part IX Mind and Body
Introduction
44: Rene Descartes: Selection from Meditations on First Philosophy
45: G.W. Leibniz: Selection from New System of the Nature of Substances
46: Gilbert Harman: Selections from Thought
47: David Lewis: Psychophysical and theoretical identifications
48: Donald Davidson: Selection from Thinking Causes
49: Thomas Nagel: What is it like to be a bat?
X Freedom and Determinism
Introduction
50: David Hume: Selection from Treatise of Human Nature
51: Harry Frankfurt: Freedom of the will and the concept of a person
52: Peter van Inwagen: The incompatibility of freewill and determinism
53: Barry Loewer: Freedom from Physics: Quantum Mechanics and Free Will
54: Roderick M. Chisholm: Human Freedom and the self

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About the Author

Tim Crane has taught philosophy at University College London since 1990. He took his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 1989. Katalin Farkas graduated in mathematics and philosophy from the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and she took her PhD in philosophy from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1998.

Reviews

This is the best anthology of metaphysics that I know of. It covers all the right topics with a good mix of classic and contemporary articles. Especially useful are the simple, elegant introductions to the various sections of the anthology Peter Menzies, Macquarie University An excellent volume. Impressive editorial skill is displayed in introducing the student to all of the venerable and central elements of metaphysics. Concise and elegant introductory essays for each theme guide the reader deftly through a judicious selection of over 50 classic readings. It is difficult to imagine a contemporary course in metaphysics that would not benefit from making substantial use of this most welcome resource John Divers, University of Sheffield