During the last two decades, a great part of the abundant philosophical works published consisted of monographs and essays that could best be described as historiographic and taxonomic. This phenomenon was accompanied by an over-all decline in the publication and use of philosophical works that are more general in scope, such as manuals. This may have been due to changes in contemporary readers' tastes—they now seem to be turned off by the excessively systematic approach and the high-flown erudition of many philosophy manuals.

On the other hand, the growing penchant for specialization and for the acquisition of a deeply historical as well as speculative understanding of philosophical questions has diverted our attention from one indispensable task, that is, that of providing those who would like to go into the field of philosophy with basic knowledge that can serve as the foundation for a fruitful assimilation of the wide repertoire of specialized studies.

This book is meant to be a manual on basic philosophy, that is, metaphysics—the science of being, as it has always been understood from the time of Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas up to the present. Metaphysics is especially relevant in our time as philosophy begins opening up again to the transcendence of being after centuries of subjectivist confinement. Contemporary studies on phenomenology, existentialism, and analytic philosophy are once again starting to raise questions regarding being.

Our aim is to present metaphysical principles in a clear and orderly way for the reader. Thus, he will be capable of tackling the various pressing philosophical questions faced by men of our time.

(From Preface)