Metaphysics as a First Science, Again: How a Textbook on Metaphysics Is Possible. Book Review: Lowe E. J. The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time. Clarendon Press, 1998

Abstract

Jonathan Lowe believes that metaphysics should regain its central place in philosophy. It is an autonomous philosophical discipline, which task is to outline the realm of what is really possible by defining a system of fundamental ontological categories under which everything that exists falls, and relations of ontological dependence in which objects of various ontological categories are related to each other. Metaphysical categories are what gives meaning to our experience, however, unlike I. Kant, they are not the result of a priori constraints – on the contrary, they are subject to revision in the face of experience. The question of why there is something in the world rather than nothing, is solved with a non-Wittgensteinian understanding of what the world is (world is the sum of all existing objects because world as “the totality of facts” lacks determinate identity-conditions), as well as an understanding that universals must be actually instantiated in particulars. Far from being an easy textbook in the proper sense, this book is a brilliant example of the return of Aristotle to modern metaphysics.

Reflections on the book: Lowe E. J. The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time. Clarendon Press, 1998.