A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Robert Larmer is a Ph D candidate at the University of Ottawa.
Metaphysics: Constructing a World View. William Hasker, Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1983.
William Hasker’s Metaphysics: Constructing a World View is an excellent introduction to an important field of philosophy. It is brief and easily read, yet sound and scholarly. Through a judicious use of footnotes, Hasker succeeds in writing a book easily understood by the non-specialist, yet giving those interested in further study much to pursue.
It is impossible in a short book to cover comprehensively so vast and complex a subject as metaphysics. Instead of attempting such a task, Hasker wisely confines himself to an introductory chapter where he discusses some of the perennial problems of metaphysics. These problems are: (i) free will versus determinism, (ii) the mind-body problem, (iii) the nature of the world, i.e., realism versus idealism, and (iv) God’s relation to the world. In a short epilogue he discusses some of the beliefs essential to a Christian metaphysic.
In the main I was impressed by Hasker’s ability to do justice to large issues in a short space. Perhaps I would be less impressed if I did not agree with him on so many issues!
One issue on which I do not agree with him, however, is his view that emergentism, i.e., the theory that the mind is an immaterial ‘soul-field’ generated by the body, but in some mysterious way independent of the body and capable of surviving the dissolution of the body, provides the best answer to the admittedly difficult mind-body problem. Contrary to Hasker, I do not think that emergentism is a viable theory of the mind. I believe in the existence of an immaterial soul, but feel that such a view implies the truth of mind-body interactionism, a theory rejected by Hasker.
This book is one in a series entitled Contours of Christian Philosophy. There is at this time a volume entitled Epistemology: The Justification of Belief, by David L. Wolfe, and a volume on ethics, by Arthur Holmes, and a volume on philosophy of religion, by C. Stephen Evans, are slated to appear in late 1984. The volumes in this series aim to serve as introductory level texts in various fields of philosophy and attempt to evaluate philosophical viewpoints not only in relation to their general strength, but with the concern to explore their value in framing a Christian world view.