Metaphysics and Its Task

Jorge J. E. Gracia is Samuel P. Capen Chair and SUNY Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, State University of New York at Buffalo. He has published extensively, and is the author of, among others, Texts: Ontological Status, Identity, Author, Audience; A Theory of Textuality: The Logic and Epistemology; Philosophy and Its History: Issues in Philosophical Historiography; and Individuality: An Essay on the Foundations of Metaphysics, all published by SUNY Press. He has edited many books for SUNY Press, including Individuation in Scholasticism: The Later Middle Ages and the Counter-Reformation, 1150-1650; Individuation and Identity in Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant (with Kenneth F. Barber); and Philosophy and Literature in Latin America: A Critical Assessment of the Current Situation (with Mireye Camurati).

• Preface 1Introduction 2Generic and Specific Conditions 3Object 4Method 5Aim 6Propositions 7Definition 8Reduction 9Realism, Conceptualism, Nominalism 10Conclusion Bibliography Author Index Subject Index

"This is an outstanding book. As a contemporary introduction to the problems of metaphysics there is nothing like it. Its combination of classical perspective and awareness of the contemporary situation is unique. I myself would welcome having it as a teaching tool." — Nicholas Rescher, author of Process Metaphysics"As an elenchic defense of metaphysics, Metaphysics and Its Task is superb." — Review of Metaphysics"Gracia not only defends metaphysics, which has come under much criticism in the twentieth century, but shows it to be the fundamental philosophical enterprise at the base of all human understanding. I learned a good bit from the book and want to study it more closely." — Eugene Long, University of South Carolina