Reality: Fundamental Topics is Metaphysics, Edition 2

Peter Loptson

oct 2010 · University of Ottawa Press

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In Reality: Fundamental Topics in Metaphysics, Peter Loptson argues for a conception of metaphysics as the most general or comprehensive method of inquiry. Working from a broadly analytic and naturalist perspective, he confronts positions that claim metaphysics to be impossible, as advanced in ancient, Kantian, post-Kantian, and contemporary philosophy, showing them to be unsuccessful. He draws the topics of his selective investigation of metaphysics partly from the work of Kant, whom he conceives as a primary guide to what metaphysical enquiry seeks to know. Loptson provides accounts of basic categories of what is real and outlines major historical metaphysical systems. He then goes on to explore aspects of existence, essence, substance, universals, space, time, causality, mind, freedom, and other topics. This important contribution to metaphysics offers both sustained arguments on all aspects of the subject and important insights into the major metaphysical systems from the history of philosophy.

The first edition of Reality appeared in 2001 to great acclaim. For this new edition the author has augmented the work's original arguments and extensively enlarged its scope and engagement with current stances and debates.

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Peter Loptson is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Guelph. He is the author or editor of several books, including Theories of Human Nature (Broadview, 2004), Philosophy, History, and Myth (University Press of America, 2002), and Freedom, Nature, and World (University of Ottawa Press, 2007).