| Sumario: | Metaphysics deals with truth, existence, goodness, change, time, causation, thinking and saying. We feel we grasp them, but when we try to say what they are we become tongue-tied and attempts to explain them scientifically can be deeply unsatisfying. aMetaphysics and Grammar argues that our grasp of the topics of metaphysics is part of our grasp of various forms of speech; that the ways of thinking in which those topics figure are differentiated by grammar. Surveying the history of philosophy from classical Greece to the present day, William Charlton shows how interest in metaphysics grew up with an interest in grammar and attributes the difficulties philosophers have had with metaphysical topics, particularly since the Enlightenment, largely to a failure to distinguish between things signified by words and things expressed by constructions. aFrom truth, existence, goodness, change and time to causation, thought and speech, Charlton takes the traditional metaphysical topics in turn, illuminating grammar's relation to them and revealing the meaning behind grammatical constructions. By presenting metaphysics as an art, not a science, Metaphysics and Grammar familiarizes students with the fundamental and recurring philosophical questions.
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