Philosophical Topics

Volume 43, Issue 1/2, Spring/Fall 2015

The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics

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I am enormously grateful to everyone who has contributed to this double issue of Philosophical Topics, to Manuel Dries and Joseph Schear for conceiving the issue and initiating the process of inviting contributions, and to Ed Minar and Jack Lyons, former editor and current editor of the journal respectively, for their excellent work in bringing the issue into existence. Each contribution displays a level of engagement with my book1 that would have been gratifying even if the contribution had been confined exclusively to the chapter that is its immediate focus. What I have found most gratifying, however, is the sensitivity that the contributors have shown to the broader project of the book and to the various connections and patterns that I try to trace across chapters. I thank them warmly for this. In the preface to my book I comment on the fact that I am a philosophical generalist, and I go on to apologize to “all those whose expertise I may have propagated without acknowledgement, or mangled, or worst of all ignored” (MST, xix). That certainly includes the present contributors. I take this opportunity to repeat the apology to them, an apology whose need I feel all the more keenly having read their contributions.