• E.J.Lowe is a leading contemporary metaphysician making this a well-informed and reliable guide to important recent developments in the subject
• Offers comprehensive coverage of the subject and will serve well as the single core text for almost any metaphysics course
• The survey is fully up-to-date with emphasis on contemporary views and issues enabling students to engage effectively with the latest literature on the subject
• Provides an extensive bibliography of publications, most of which are recent, making this a very useful reference for further study

Readership: A core text for students studying Metaphysics, or Logic and Metaphysics, or Metaphysics and Epistemology. Supplementary on Philosophy of Science courses.

E. J. Lowe, Professor of Philosophy, University of Durham

"'E. J. Lowe, one of the UK's leading metaphysicians, has written a superb introduction to metaphysics. ... Lowe's book is the best introduction to metaphysics available.' THES"

1: Introduction: The nature of metaphysics
Part IIdentity and Change
2: Identity over time and change of composition
3: Qualitative change and the doctrine of temporal parts
4: Substantial change and spatiotemporal coincidence
Part IINecessity, Essence, and Possible Worlds
5: Necessity and identity
6: Essentialism
7: Possible worlds
Part IIICausation and Conditionals
8: Conterfactual conditionals
9: Causes and conditions
10: Conterfactuals and event causation
Part IVActions and Events
11: Event causation and agent causation
12: Actions and Events
13: Events, things, and space-time
Part VSpace and Time
14: Absolutism versus relationalism
15: Incongruent conterparts and the nature of space
16: The paradoxes of motion and the possibility of change
17: Tense and the reality of time
18: Causation and the direction of time
Part VIUniversals and Particulars
19: Realism versus nominalism
20: The abstract and the concrete