Problems of Metaphysics

We cannot simply start "doing metaphysics." We first have to learn how to engage in this basic inquiry.We are forced to consider our past in order to learn how to make metaphysical questions once again iluminating in the present. Since metaphysics is subject to both controversy and a variety of approaches, we cannot even examine traditional metaphysical views until we have understood how metaphysics has been dealt with in the past and that with which metaphysics now deals. To attempt to explain metaphysics to someone else is inevitably to do it for oneself, and so my only hope is that the student will learn as much from the reading of this book as I have learned in the writing of it.