Metaphysics: The Classic Readings is an essential collection of the most influential attempts to depict the fundamental nature of reality or being - from Spinoza's doctrine of a single, indivisible substance to Russell's 'logical atomism', and from the Buddha's account of a causally interrelated world to Leibniz's one of casually independent 'monads'.

David E. Cooper is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Durham. He is the author of a number of books including Metaphor (1986), Existentialism (1990, second edition 1999) and World Philosophies: An Historical Introduction (1996). He is also editor of A Companion to Aesthetics (1992), and three previous volumes in the series Philosophy: The Classic Readings - Aesthetics (1997), Ethics (1997) and Epistemology (1999). All of the above are published by Blackwell.