Metaphysics: Its Structure and Function

by Stephan Körner

This is an ambitious and substantial study of its nature and inescapability. Professor Körner's method may be described as 'philosophical anthropology', and aims to arrive at a characterisation of the metaphysical beliefs with which we (have to) operate. Professor Körner begins by describing how the categorical framework of a person's metaphysical beliefs may be embedded in more ordinary beliefs and practical attitudes to the world. He illustrates the variety of such frameworks and describes their role, going on to explain how they may be modified by argument and reflection. This is an independent inquiry, but also the culmination of a series of Professor Körner's earlier works. The writing is extremely clear and the material sensitively controlled, revealing great learning and many suggestive insights and comparisons. It presents overall a comprehensive and carefully thought-out account of metaphysics.

252 pages, Paperback

First published September 6, 1984

About the author

Stephan Körner was a British philosopher, who specialised in the work of Kant, the study of concepts, and in the philosophy of mathematics. Born to a Jewish family in Czechoslovakia, he left the country to avoid certain death at the hands of the Nazis after the German occupation in 1939, and came to the United Kingdom as a refugee, where he began his study of philosophy; by 1952 he was a professor of philosophy at the University of Bristol, taking up a second professorship at Yale in 1970. He was married to Edith Körner, and was the father of the mathematician Thomas Körner and the biochemist, writer and translator (née) Ann M. Körner.