Abstract

Robert M. Adams has written a fairly short book, but into it he has packed a lifetime of rigorous analytic thought, and, what is rarer, deep insight into the nature of things. The book expands and recasts Gifford Lectures that Adams delivered in 1999, as well as other lectures and papers, and though it addresses difficult issues, Adams's clear style, retaining the informality of lectures, considerably eases the task of the reader; and the book is not without an occasional touch of humour, e.g. ‘As metaphysicians we may wish to assign a certain oomph to one side or the other in such lawgoverned relations; but it is not clear that the concept of oomph is at home in fundamental physics’ (p. 12).I cannot cover all the many and various topics in the book, but I shall endeavour in what follows to present a central thread of argument in it, the distinction between what is and what is in itself (the centrality of which is indicated by its presence in the book's title) and to show how this distinction leads to the theistic and idealist metaphysics to which the author is inclined.