Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction

Citation

Loux, M. J., & Crisp, T. M. (2017). Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (4th ed.). Routledge.

Chapter Summary

The fourth edition runs to roughly 360–370 pages (Routledge gives 372; Google Books 356) in the Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy series. It opens with prefaces to all four editions and an introduction, continues through eleven chapters, and ends with a bibliography and an index. The publisher describes a "user-friendly format": chapter overviews summarising the main topics, concrete examples for difficult concepts, annotated further reading and endnotes. The summaries below follow the chapter titles and the publisher's description; the table of contents lists no sections within chapters.

Chapters 1–2: The Problem of Universals I: Metaphysical Realism; The Problem of Universals II: Nominalism

The book starts with the problem of universals, the first topic in the publisher's list, and gives it two chapters. The first presents the realist side and the second the nominalist side, so the pair is organised as a debate. The publisher adds that the authors relate contemporary views to their classical sources wherever possible.

Chapter 3: Concrete Particulars I: Substrata, Bundles, and Substances

The focus moves from universals to ordinary individual things. The title names three accounts of what a concrete particular is: a substratum that has properties, a bundle of properties, or a substance. It corresponds to the publisher's "problem of individuation", the question of what makes a particular thing the individual it is.

Chapter 4: Propositions and Their Neighbors

The chapter deals with propositions and related abstract entities, connecting to the publisher's topic "the nature of abstract entities". The phrase "and their neighbors" suggests that it also considers other items of the same kind.

Chapters 5–7: The Necessary and the Possible; Causation; The Nature of Time

Three topics are grouped here: the nature of modality (necessity and possibility), causation, and time. The publisher lists modality and time among the topics covered and treats time as a separate subject from identity through time. Causation is a chapter of its own.

Chapters 8–9: Concrete Particulars II: Persistence through Time; Concrete Particulars III: Parts and Wholes

Two further chapters return to concrete particulars. The first asks how an object persists through time, which the publisher calls "identity through time", and the second concerns parts and wholes. The parts-and-wholes chapter is new in the fourth edition, according to the publisher.

Chapter 10: Metaphysical Indeterminacy

This is the second chapter new to the fourth edition. The publisher describes the topic as metaphysical indeterminacy, or vagueness.

Chapter 11: The Challenge of Anti-Realism

The final chapter turns to the realism versus anti-realism debate. The title casts anti-realism as a challenge to the realist positions developed earlier.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–4

• Universals: the problem of whether properties and kinds exist as items shared by many things (named in Chapters 1–2).
• Realism and nominalism: the two opposed answers around which the first pair of chapters is organised.
• Substratum, bundle and substance: the three accounts of the nature of a concrete particular named in Chapter 3.
• Propositions: the abstract bearers of truth and falsity treated in Chapter 4.

Chapters 5–10

• Modality: necessity and possibility as a subject in its own right (Chapter 5).
• Causation: the relation between causes and effects (Chapter 6).
• Persistence through time: how one object can remain the same across change (Chapter 8).
• Parts and wholes: the relation of composition (Chapter 9, new in this edition).
• Metaphysical indeterminacy: whether vagueness belongs to the world itself (Chapter 10, new in this edition).

Chapter 11

• Realism and anti-realism: whether the world exists independently of our thought and language about it.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Debate-based structure. Several chapters are paired or sequenced so that opposed positions meet: realism and nominalism in Chapters 1–2, and, by the title of Chapter 3, three accounts of concrete particulars set side by side. This helps a student see metaphysics as competing answers to a shared problem.
• Pedagogical apparatus. Chapter overviews, concrete examples for difficult concepts, annotated further reading, endnotes and a full bibliography are listed by the publisher.
• Links to the history of philosophy. The publisher says the authors relate contemporary views to their classical sources wherever possible, which helps a reader who has already studied some of the history.
• Reception. Dana Delibovi, reviewing the book in Teaching Philosophy (quoted on the publisher's page), judged the fourth edition a valuable text for graduate students and advanced undergraduates. This is a single review excerpt supplied by the publisher.

Limitations

• Presupposes some philosophy. The publisher says the book is for students who have already completed an introductory philosophy course, so it is not a first book.
• Topic coverage is selective. The publisher's list gives universals, abstract entities, individuation, modality, time, parts and wholes, indeterminacy and realism versus anti-realism. Topics that other metaphysics books treat, such as free will, personal identity or the existence of God, do not appear in the contents.
• Thin independent evidence of reception. The only published review excerpt on the publisher's page is the one quoted above, so claims about how the book performs in the classroom rest on a single source and the publisher's own description.

Where It Fits in the Course

Loux and Crisp is a survey of the core problems of analytic metaphysics at the level between an introduction and the specialist literature. Stephen Mumford's Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction and Earl Conee and Theodore Sider's Riddles of Existence are easier first books: Mumford asks simple questions about everyday things, and Conee and Sider work through puzzles on topics from personal identity to universals and necessity. Peter van Inwagen's Metaphysics also assumes no philosophy, and it argues for definite positions across a different range of questions, including the existence of God, the nature of rational beings and free will, where Loux and Crisp is more concerned with the structure of things and with ontology and modality.

For further study, Chapter 5's treatment of necessity and possibility leads towards two advanced works in this course: Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity and David Lewis's On the Plurality of Worlds. The former concerns rigid designation and a posteriori necessity, the latter a defence of modal realism.

How to Use This Book

The book suits students who have finished an introductory philosophy course and want a systematic account of metaphysics, and graduate students who want an overview of the field. The publisher states no prerequisite beyond that course.

A reasonable one-semester plan is to work through the chapters in order, since the first two chapters on universals supply vocabulary (properties, kinds, realism and nominalism) that later chapters assume. Chapters 3 and 8–9 form a natural cluster on objects, persistence and composition and can be read together. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 are largely self-standing and can be reordered to match a syllabus. Chapter 11 is best read last, since it revisits the realism question across the book.

Read each chapter overview first, then the chapter, then the annotated further reading for the topics that interest you. Instructors who need a shorter course can treat Chapters 9 and 10, the two new chapters, as optional.