I used this book for my text in Metaphysics last semester. Brian Garrett is quite a good philosopher, maybe not such a great expositor. One of his epigrams is "Omit needless words," but while I agree that brevity is often conducive to clarity, this book, meant to be an introductory text in metaphysics, is often too compressed. I needed to find more material for the last three weeks of the semester because we had got through it. He also has a taste for deconstructing pseudoproblems, an important and useful thing to do, but this is not a particularly positive take on the subject for undergraduates. For example, why finish with "Realism and anti-realism" if one thinks that there is nothing to this discussion? Why not just leave it out? Chapter sequencing reflects no discernible narrative plan. I thought the best chapters were the ones on "Existence," "Causation," and "Personal Identity." "Time" is a fascinating topic that deserves more than McTaggart and Russell. "God" is not at this point a required chapter in a metaphysics book, if one has nothing interesting to say. I did benefit from his deflationary account of the problem of fate, as I say he is a good philosopher. As a teacher I have been much happier with Michael Loux's book Metaphysics: a contemporary introduction, which is much stronger on the relevance of metaphysics for contemporary philosophy. Carter's Elements of Metaphysics has flaws but is also quite a bit sexier for teaching than this one.

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