Form and Reason: Essays in Metaphysics

This book uses the study of philosophical texts to raise and explore metaphysical issues. On one level, each essay addresses a scholarly issue in a classical text, often a text of Aristotle's. On a deeper level, the issues Halper considers are metaphysical. However, unlike thinkers who have brought linguistic analysis and contemporary metaphysical notions to these texts, Halper approaches them to find their formulations of issues and their strategies of pursuit. Halper is not concerned with the defense of metaphysical commitments but with finding and exploring paths of metaphysical inquiry.

The essays in this volume are exploratory and exegetical rather than decisive. Their contribution to metaphysics lies in the issues they raise, the methods they explore, and their conception of metaphysics as a discipline rooted in philosophical problems.

Edward Halper is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Georgia, Athens.