This is a book about everything. Literally. It is also a book about how anything whatsoever happens. By answering the question what is a thing?, philosopher M. Oreste Fiocco reveals what it is to exist, what a being, any being at all, is. In this way, he illuminates reality as a whole and what it is to be real. Such profound matters require a special method of inquiry, which Fiocco introduces and elaborates. Any assumption about the world or anything in it might distort the correct answer to a question as general as what it is to exist. Thus, the method employed herein -- original inquiry -- begins with no assumptions about reality. It is, then, a method independent of any figure, trend, or tradition in the history of philosophy. Via this method, one simply confronts all this, the world, an all-encompassing diverse array of whatnot, and on this basis can come to a secure account of what it is to be. In simply confronting the world, however, one's experience shifts, is transient: all this goes from one way--with, say, a cat here--to some other way--the cat being over there. This manifest inconstancy must be accounted for in any comprehensive account of the world. Yet so must a manifest constancy. If the cat is now, at this moment, over there, that the cat is now, at this moment, over there is forever true. These seemingly contradictory phenomena, inconstancy and constancy, demonstrate the importance of time to understanding the world. Since any legitimate inquiry is directed at something or other and since many objects of inquiry (including inquiry itself) occur over time, correct accounts of temporal reality and of being - of time and the world - provide insight into all inquiry. These accounts provide constraints on and, hence, guidelines for investigating any subject matter in any field. Therefore, this is a book for anyone curious about such grand, abstruse matters as the nature of reality or of time itself, as well as a book for someone curious about any thing at all.
Industry Reviews
"In Time and the World, Fiocco shows the rest of us how metaphysics can and should be done. With his deep respect for the craft of philosophy, Fiocco avoids flashiness and overly technical approaches and lets his simple, ingenious arguments do the talking as he quietly and inexorably develops his extremely controversial views about philosophical methodology, ontology, and time."
DLMichael Della Rocca, Yale University
"This is a book about time. It offers an intriguing defense of transientismDLthe view that moments come into, and go out of, existence. But it's definitely not just a book about time. It's a very ambitious and far-reaching book about the nature of our world. It sets out a novel view about what we are doing (or should be doing) when we do metaphysics. As such, it's an important read for all of us who are interested in the big questions about what is in our
world, how it's structured, and how we can come to learn about it."
DLKristie Miller, University of Sydney
"Marcello Oreste Fiocco's aim in this absorbing and thought-provoking book is nothing less than to inquire into the character of 'all this,' where 'all this' is the impetus to any inquiry whatsoever. This means that he is trying to achieve insight into literally everything. It is an ambitious aim, but the ambition is reined in illuminating ways and is provided with rigorous justification."
DLA.W. Moore, University of Oxford
