Metaphysics: The Classic Readings

This volume is an essential collection of the most influential attempts to depict the fundamental nature of reality or being–from Spinoza’s doctrine of a single, indivisible substance to Russell’s “logical atomism” and from the Buddha’s account of a casual interrelated world to Leibniz’s one of causally independent “monads”. Among the metaphysical debates are those between monists and pluralist and materialist and idealist. The authors range in time from Lao Tzu and Plato to Heidegger and Whitehead. The selected texts include many classics from ‘the golden age’ of metaphysics in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. A comprehensive introduction by the editor, together with his preambles to each text, makes this an ideal volume for students on historically informed courses in metaphysics and the more speculative realms of philosophy.

Series Preface. Introduction. 1. Tao Te Ching, Selected Chapters. 2. Plato, Phaedrus 245–50: Plato. 3. Metaphysics Books VII–VIII (Selected Chapters): Aristotle. 4. (A) Sayings On ′Conditioned Genesis′. (B) Lalitavistara, XIII 95–117. (C) Nagarjuna, Madhyamaka–Karika, Dedication and Chapter 25: Gotama (The Buddha). 5. Brahmasutrabhasya (Selections): Samkara. 6. Principles of Philosophy Part I: René: Descartes. 7. Ethics Part I: Benedict De Spinoza. 8. An Essay Concernin g Human Understanding Book II, Chapters 8 and 23 (1–11): John Locke. 9. Monadology : G. W. Liebnitz. 10. The Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I: 1–37: George Berkeley. 11. Critique of Pure Reason Second Edition, Transcendental Aesthetic, 1–3, 8: Immanuel Kant. 12. The World As Will and Representation, Vol II, Chapter 18: Arthur Schopenhauer. 13. An Examination of Sir William Hamilton′s Philosophy, Chapter 11: John Stuart Mill. 14. Appearance and Reality, Chapters 13 and 14: F. H. Bradley. 15. ′The One and The Many′: William James. 16. The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, Lecture VIII: Bertrand Russell. 17. A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, Part I, Chapters 1 and 2 (Selected Sections): A. N. Whitehead. 18. Being and Time, 14–15, 19, 21: Martin Heidegger. Index.

David E. Cooper is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Durham. He is the author of a number of books including Metaphor (1986), Existentialism (1990, second edition 1999) and World Philosophies: An Historical Introduction (1996). He is also editor of A Companion to Aesthetics (1992), and three previous volumes in the series Philosophy: The Classic Readings – Aesthetics (1997), Ethics (1997) and Epistemology (1999). All of the above are published by Blackwell.