E.J.Lowe is a leading contemporary metaphysician making this a well-informed and reliable guide to important recent developments in the subject
Offers comprehensive coverage of the subject and will serve well as the single core text for almost any metaphysics course
The survey is fully up-to-date with emphasis on contemporary views and issues enabling students to engage effectively with the latest literature on the subject
Provides an extensive bibliography of publications, most of which are recent, making this a very useful reference for further study

A Survey of Metaphysics provides a systematic overview of modern metaphysics, covering all of the most important topics likely to be encountered on a metaphysics course. The conception of metaphysics underlying the book is the fairly traditional and widely-shared one that metaphysics deals with the deepest questions that can be raised concerning the fundamental structure of reality as a whole. The book is divided into six main parts, each relatively self-contained, focusing in turn on the following major themes: identity and change, necessity and essence, causation, agency and events, space and time, and universals and particulars. In an introductory chapter, the conception of metaphysics underlying the book is explained and defended against the many and varied opponents of metaphysics those students are likely to encounter. While the book makes reference when necessary to the history of metaphysics, its emphasis is on contemporary views and issues. The author`s approach is not narrowly partisan, but avoids bland neutrality in matters of controversy.

1. Introduction: The nature of metaphysics
Part I
Identity and Change
2. Identity over time and change of composition
3. Qualitative change and the doctrine of temporal parts
4. Substantial change and spatiotemporal coincidence
Part II
Necessity, Essence, and Possible Worlds
5. Necessity and identity
6. Essentialism
7. Possible worlds
Part III
Causation and Conditionals
8. Conterfactual conditionals
9. Causes and conditions
10. Conterfactuals and event causation
Part IV
Actions and Events
11. Event causation and agent causation
12. Actions and Events
13. Events, things, and space-time
Part V
Space and Time
14. Absolutism versus relationalism
15. Incongruent conterparts and the nature of space
16. The paradoxes of motion and the possibility of change
17. Tense and the reality of time
18. Causation and the direction of time
Part VI
Universals and Particulars
19. Realism versus nominalism
20. The abstract and the concrete