David Builes at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews:
As the reader might have guessed, the views that Strawson defends in the book are far apart from mainstream views in contemporary analytic metaphysics. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that the style of the book is also distinctive. For one, the focus of the book is on developing a unified “big picture” view of fundamental matters in metaphysics, so one might find less detailed argument and critical engagement with alternative views in this book than in other contemporary books in metaphysics, e.g., one could easily write an entire book on categorical monism, or on the powerful qualities view, or on thing-monism, or on kind-monism). The book also seamlessly incorporates references to the history of philosophy throughout. Although Strawson knows full well that his views are not very popular in contemporary metaphysics, he argues that many of his views have been endorsed by some of the most prominent philosophers throughout history (including Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Russell, and others).
In my view, Strawson does an excellent job of bringing out the intuitive motivations for the views that he discusses in an accessible manner, and I strongly recommend the book to anyone who is interested in fundamental metaphysics. In what follows, I will focus on two of Strawson’s main claims: categorical monism and the powerful qualities view.
more here.
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