Contemporary Metaphysics (2026) #401

Carrara, M., De Florio, C., Lando, G., & Morato, V. (2026). Contemporary Metaphysics. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. 289 pages, 92.05 Euro, 99.99 USD (hardcover); 79.20 USD (Kindle).

An interesting idea and a great table of contents, but the execution is unclear about who the ideal reader is — and will really satisfy nobody.

The Book

There are fundamentally two kinds of reviews. Show me any book on the philosophy of AI, or love, or happiness, and I’ll tell you where the author went wrong, where he cut corners, and where his explanations shine. That’s me as an expert, reading a book and giving my informed opinion. This kind of review can be useful but one thing it cannot do: it can never approach a book in quite the same way as the book’s intended audience. The reviewer’s perspective is irrevocably tainted by their knowledge of the topic. But then, there is also the other kind of review — one where the reviewer is part of the audience for the book. Where they are not an expert, but a learner, not looking to find flaws in the book, but to learn from it. And this is how I will approach this review today.

I know next to nothing about metaphysics. Sure, I’ve studied a few courses many decades ago, when telephones stopped working when you tried to pull them out of the wall, and when we listened to music on cassettes that would melt in the sun and require delicate surgery to restore the flimsy tape into a new shell. But I’ve long ago forgotten all of that. By my own constitution, I have an intense dislike of metaphysics as a topic. I’ve always been joking that I’m one of those people who philosophise with a hammer rather than with a scalpel. I’m drawn to bold statements, broad, sweeping debates and daring claims. Metaphysics always seemed to me to be just the opposite: a discipline where for a hundred years or so people have been making smaller and smaller distinctions, taking apart concepts and terms with the infinite patience of a clock-maker, and then trying to put everything back together again. The winner is the one who manages to put the thing back together so that it actually works — but I never saw anyone succeed at this game — which just prompts another faction to engage with even more intricate