Preface

This is the second of two volumes dealing with the history of philosophy, especially of metaphysics. The first, Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers, discusses some thirty European philosophers, from Democritus to Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty. In both volumes I try to learn and teach truth about reality by arguing, in a fashion, with those who in the past have sought such truth. Admittedly, the other party to the argument is in most cases not there to reply; but scholarly care and imagination can to some extent give him a voice. I try to avoid the straw-man fallacy. My models here are Peirce and Whitehead. They did not, as some do, waste their own and their readers' time by attacking never existent (often rather stupid) opponents. They objected to views that had really been held by intelligent people. I try to do likewise, without, however, always documenting my sources. These books are written to show not my learning but my understanding, the understanding of a reflective student for more than sixty years of speculative philosophy through its twenty-five centuries in the West (and to some extent in Asia also). I believe one cannot do justice to metaphysical issues by considering only one's contemporaries. There are gains in the history of philosophy, but also losses. Changes in intellectual fashions have their capricious aspects. Intellectual history serves as storehouse of old ideas and laboratory for testing what seem to us new ones, as we try to imagine what earlier thinkers might have said about them.

This book can be read independently but will gain in significance if read in connection with its more comprehensive predecessor, which gives a background for it. Neither book is merely historical or merely systematic. My effort throughout my career has been to think about philosophical, that is, essentially a priori or metaphysical, issues, using the history of ideas as a primary resource.