Individual: On the Metaphysics of Description

Author: Strauss
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: The significance and importance of this book are extraordinary. It has the potential to greatly influence future philosophical discussions on the same and related topics, making it worth reading and rereading by every person interested in philosophy. The author primarily elaborates on a descriptive metaphysics, which holds that metaphysics should be content with describing the structure of our thoughts about the world, studying the universal and necessary characteristics of the world and humanity, which are part of the world and somehow related to it. He demolishes what he calls the "revised metaphysics," which posits that reality is more ultimate than the phenomenal world, arguing that only things that meet certain standards are real, thereby leading to the distinction between different domains of phenomena and reality. Amidst the anti-metaphysical clamor raised by logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy, this book re-establishes metaphysics as a respected intellectual discipline. Logic, language, and metaphysics are combined and explored together, many previously abandoned topics become central to analytical philosophy; the "metaphysics" course re-emerges as a compulsory subject in university philosophy departments.