Pasnau on category realism: author Meets Critics, Robert Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671

Abstract

From the perspective of a contemporary metaphysician, Metaphysical Themes 1274�1671 is a fantastic book. It is an impressively rich, detailed, and thorough examination of a multitude of important metaphysical puzzles and arguments, written in a clear, engaging, lively, funny, and even on one occasion vulgar manner. The number of topics covered is astonishing: substance, attribute, form, matter, the metaphysics of predication, parts and wholes, the metaphysics of extension across space, persistence over time, the distinction between primary�secondary qualities, and many others. One of the disconcerting but exciting things about reading Pasnau�s book was both the familiarity of so many of the metaphysical topics the medieval philosophers pursued as well as well as their divergent inclinations on how best to pursue them. This book is a metaphysical thriller, and I highly recommend it. In what follows, I will engage as a metaphysician with Pasnau and through him some of the figures he discu ...