Metaphysics and Its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge by Jorge J. E. Gracia (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 651 methodology to the present volume. Greer is especially adept at showing how Gregory, Augustine, Donne, and Taylor interpreted key biblical texts to contribute to their eschatological perspectives, as well as explicating their own writings. He also offers just enough historical context in each case to provide the reader with adequate background. The breadth of material that Greer covers in a relatively brief work results in a richness that can also be a bit vexing. In several places he entices the reader with an idea mentioned in the course of a larger point. For example, in his discussion of time and eternity in Augustine's thought, Greer makes the piquant observation that "time has become a moral problem for him" (136)-given Augustine's notion that one's perception of the passage of time relates to one's desires-and leaves the reader to chew on this thought further. Perhaps this happy frustration is part of Greer's intention, though, to entice us with a limited amoqnt of material from these great thinkers in order to spur us on to more thought, especially in a contemporary perspective. In this way we are drawn into the engaging if ultimately ineffable endeavor of eschatology. Or to borrow another line from Eliot, "For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business." Dominican House ofStudies Washington, D.C. JODY VACCARO LEWIS Metaplrysics and Its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge. By JORGEJ. E. GRACIA. Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1999. Pp. xix + 247. $18.95 {paper). ISBN 0-7914-4214-4. Anyone familiar with the work of Jorge Gracia will come to this book expecting it to be well-organized, clearly written, and judicious. They will also expect it to canvass a wide range of views held by ancient, medieval, modern, analytic, and continental philosophers and to propose a novel approach. They will, finally, expect not to be given any cheap thrills, because they know that Gracia never goes for the exciting assertion when a true one is available. In none of this will they be disappointed. In MetaplrysicsandIts Task, Gracia's main theme is the nature ofmetaphysics, and his secondary theme is its resilience, that is, its ability to withstand the many attacks that philosophers have made on it. Chapter 1 sets out those two themes and the proper way of addressing them. Chapter 2 begins to address the first one (i.e., the question of the nature of metaphysics) by offering a definition of philosophy and making the point that the genus of metaphysics is "philosophy." Then Gracia turns to the really hard part, namely, completing the definition by explaining the differentia of metaphysics. In chapters 3-6, he discusses various 652 BOOK REVIEWS proposals that have been offered, grouping them according to whether they consider the distinctive thing about metaphysics to be its object, its method, its aim, or the types of propositions it deals with. Here Gracia's goal is to clarify and reject false views of metaphysics; within these four main types I count twenty-three subtypes of rejected theory, but since many of these have subtypes of their own it turns out that Gracia is characterizing and rejecting no less than fifty theories of what metaphysics is. Chapters 7-9 set out his own view. In chapter 7, he states his theory, namely, that metaphysics is the study that attempts "(a) to identify the most general categories; (b) to define the most general categories if at all possible and if not, at least to describe them in ways which allow us to identify them; (c) to determine the relationships among the most general categories; (d) to fit less general categories into the most general ones; and (e) to determine how less general categories are related to aU the most general categories, including the ones in which they do not fit" (140). In this chapter he also explains his view of what a category is. In chapter 8, he discusses reductionism, which he takes to be at the root of many false conceptions of metaphysics, and in chapter 9 he expands on his understanding of categories with...