Southwestern Journal of Theology
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 62, No. 1 – Fall 2019
Managing Editor: W. Madison Grace II
By Robert C. Koons and Timothy H. Pickavance. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017. 699 pages. Hardcover, $195.00
Following on the heels of their previous slim introduction to contemporary metaphysics (Metaphysics: the Fundamentals), Robert Koons and Timothy Pickavance offer The Atlas of Reality: A Comprehensive Guide to Metaphysics as an encyclopedic guide to a host of issues in contemporary analytic metaphysics. The Atlas of Reality is nothing less than 654 pages of philosophical red meat. The book is exhaustive and encyclopedic in that it aims, to use the author’s own words, “to explore, as completely as possible, the ‘logical space’ of metaphysics: to say at least something about every possible theory on the important questions in metaphysics” (9). The book is divided into twenty-nine chapters that are distributed across the following eight general sections: Foundations, Dispositions, Universals and Particulars, The Nature of Reality, Modality, Space and Time, Unity, and Causation. The topics addressed in the work range from the relationship between truth and reality (truthmaker theory), properties and universals, modality/essence/ and possible worlds, laws of nature, substance, composition, and the nature of time. Koons and Pickavance aim to survey the best arguments for and against each major view on the contemporary scene. While the authors clearly favor a broad Aristotelian position on many of the issues throughout the volume (substance, properties, modality, modal knowledge, time, composition, etc.), they are evenhanded and charitably interact with opposing views.
Let me highlight two particular ways the book stands out from competing titles. First, the authors helpfully weave together four broad packages of views in metaphysics, each consisting of a web of interrelated positions on the topics of truth-making, substance, properties, time, and modality. The authors identify the following packages of positions in contemporary metaphysics: neo-Humean, neo-Aristotelian, Fortibrachian, and Quietism (624–32). This is extremely helpful to the reader as the individual areas in metaphysics are very often treated in an atomistic fashion, without regard to how they mutually inform and are organically related to one another. Second, the volume includes two Appendices that outline a comprehensive list of metaphysical axioms and principles that are developed and defended throughout the volume.
Koons and Pickavance provide a helpful introduction that addresses the all too pervasive pragmatic challenge to the study of metaphysics: why devote time to studying metaphysics when there are more pressing philosophical areas that demand our attention, such as ethics and political philosophy (questions pertaining to the good, the right, and how to justly order a political community)? Here I’ll unpack the reasons Koons and Pickavance offer in response to the pragmatic challenge, and then go on to offer an additional reason that may be of particular interest to Christian theologians and to the readers of this journal.
First, following Aristotle, Koons and Pickavance argue that metaphysics (as with all philosophical inquiry) begins with a reflective wonder and deep desire to understand reality. This reflective wonder naturally pertains to questions of a distinctive metaphysical variety: what kinds of things exist, and how do these things relate to one another? As rational animals, human beings alone strive to rightly understand the natures of things, for the purpose of rightly orienting their lives to reality. Second, the authors argue that metaphysics is both foundational and unavoidable; core issues in philosophy of science and moral and political philosophy crucially depend on prior metaphysical assumptions. For example, one’s views about human flourishing (both individually and collectively in society) will largely depend on one’s views concerning the nature of a human being, what a human being is fundamentally. Does human nature have intrinsic and objective ends or teloi, the fulfillment of which constitutes human flourishing? Or is human nature merely socially constructed, and thereby susceptible to the collective preferences of each subsequent generation? Are human beings nothing more than immaterial minds or selves, or is the material body a real constituent of human beings and thus an integral part of their moral flourishing? These are distinctively metaphysical issues that inevitably shape (often tacitly) contemporary issues in moral and political philosophy (e.g. sexual ethics, human dignity and natural rights).
Let me add a third reason why Christian theologians and readers of this journal might consider taking up the task of studying metaphysics. Theologians Michael Allen and Scott Swain define “dogmatic theology” as a “conceptual representation of scriptural teaching about God and all things in relation to God” (Series Preface to Zondervan’s New Studies in Dogmatics). The question here is not whether one conceptually represents the biblical teaching concerning the nature and activity of God and his redemptive work in the person of the God-man, Jesus Christ. Rather, the question is how one will conceptually represent such teaching; which conceptual categories will one put to use in explicating, clarifying, and framing the biblical teaching concerning the nature of God and the person of Christ? Of course, the church fathers at both the council of Nicaea (325 CE) and the council of Chalcedon (451 CE) consciously employed the existing metaphysical categories of substance or essence (ousia; homoousion) as well as person (hypostasis) in their conceptual representation of the biblical teaching of the triunity of divine persons in the Godhead as well as the theanthropic person of Christ. Medieval Christian theologians such as Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas also critically employed both neo-Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysical categories to conceptually represent biblical teaching. In a recent article on divine impassibility in Credo magazine, theologian Craig Carter summarizes my point here nicely: “I think we have to acknowledge that everyone utilizes metaphysical assumptions in exegesis and that the choice is not ‘metaphysics or not,’ but rather, ‘unrevised pagan metaphysics or biblically shaped metaphysics.’” (Craig Carter, “Why I No Longer Believe in a Passible God.” Credo, March 27, 2019).
For contemporary analytically minded theologians who are in search of a comprehensive reference work that will deepen their grasp of contemporary metaphysics, The Atlas of Reality fits the bill. Towards this aim, let me close by offering a brief guide to various chapters in the book that I think helpfully correspond to various loci in systematic theology, with an eye toward constructive analytic theological work in particular: Theology Proper relates to the following: Substance/Nature/Essence (chs. 9; 14–15); The Nature of Time (Chs. 19–21); Properties/Attributes/Universals (chs. 7–8). Creation, Providence, and Miracles relate to the following: Causation (chs. 26–27); The Nature of Time (Chs. 19–21); Laws of Nature (ch. 5). Christology relates to the following: Substance/Nature/Essence (chs. 9; 14–15); Properties/Attributes/Universals (chs. 7–8).
One final warning is in order: the book is not for the faint of heart. I would not recommend the book as an introductory text in metaphysics (a much better place to start would be Koons and Pickavance’s much smaller and more introductory volume Metaphysics: The Fundamentals).
