Metaphysical questions are widely discussed in contemporary philosophy again, often with reference to classical figures in the history of philosophy. In this course we will consider two of such questions, rather closely related to each other. The first is the question about the substance: are there substances, what are they, and how are we to distinguish them from things in other categories. We will look at some classical authors who deal with this question, such as Aristotle, Hume, Spinoza, Strawson, but also at contemporary authors, such as Kathryn Koslicki.
The second is the question of monism, which itself comes in several varieties, for instance: 1) are there only one kind of things or not; 2) Is there only one individual thing at the fundamental level?; 3) Is there only one individual thing at all? Again, there are both classical and contemporary authors who are willing to defend different varieties of monism, including Spinoza, Michael Della Rocca, Jonathan Schaffer and others.
Towards the end, we will also look at some related ideas from Buddhist thought, both in Nagarjuna and as interpreted today by Graham Priest.
- Kursleiter*in: Anton Kabeshkin