This volume collects together key contemporary texts in metaphysics. Designed for students or general readers with some background in philosophy, it has a distinctive pedagogical aim: to improve their ability to understand difficult philosophical texts, to engage critically with them, and to use them as a springboard for philosophical thought and writing.Each text is followed by a detailed commentary, which puts the author's views and arguments into context, explains key terms and argumentative moves, and - most importantly - asks a variety of questions. The questions are designed to prompt the reader to think hard about what the author is saying and why, to think of objections, and to formulate and justify his or her own views on the topic.The book includes texts by Kripke, Lewis, Parfit, Armstrong, Nagel and Dennett, amongst others. The topics covered are free will, personal identity, realism & nominalism, modality, persistence, realism and anti-realism.

Helen Beebee is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham. She is the author of Hume on Causation (2006) and co-editor, with Julian Dodd, of Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate (2005).

Julian Dodd is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Manchester. He is the author of Works of Music: An Essay in Ontology (2007) and An Identity Theory of Truth (2000), and co-editor of Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate (2005).