What Is, and What Is In Itself

Robert Merrihew Adams got an AB in philosophy at Princeton University, 1955-59, a BA in theology at Oxford University, 1959-61, and a BD at Princeton Theological Seminary, 1961-62, following which he served as pastor of a Presbyterian church in Montauk at the eastern tip of Long Island, 1962-65. He got his PhD in Philosophy at Cornell University, 1965-69. He then taught Philosophy full time at the University of Michigan, 1968-72, at UCLA 1972-93, and at Yale 1999-2003. He became a non-stipendiary Senior Research Fellow and very part-time Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University 2004-09, and a part-time Professor of Philosophy at UNC Chapel Hill 2009-13 and at Rutgers 2013-16.

In this volume, Adams (emer., Yale Univ.) puts forth a very intense contribution to analytic metaphysics that is in dialogue with contemporary thinkers such as Peter van Inwagen, David Lewis, and Willard Van Orman Quine, and important early modern philosophers such as Descartes, Leibniz, and Malebranche.While the text is certainly dense and meant for higher-level students and scholars, it gives a skillful and necessary summary and analysis of modern metaphysical thought up to the present.

• Introduction and Overview 1: Actuality 2: Existence 3: Intentional Objects, Existent, and Nonexistent 4: Things and Properties 5: Intrinsic Reality, Relationality, and Consciousness 6: Reality and the Physical 7: The Epistemology of Being 8: Thisness 9: Identity, Time, and Self 10: God and the Causal Unity of the World 11: God and Possibilities