One Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness

Graham Priest presents an original exploration of philosophical questions concerning the one and the many. He covers a wide range of issues in metaphysics--including unity, identity, grounding, mereology, universals, being, intentionality, and nothingness--and deploys the techniques of paraconsistent logic in order to offer a radically new treatment of unity. Priest brings together traditions of Western and Asian thought that are usually kept separate in academic philosophy: he draws on ideas from Plato, Heidegger, and Nagarjuna, among other philosophers.

Graham Priest was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, and the London School of Economics. He has held professorial positions at a number of universities in Australia, the UK, and the USA. He is well known for his work on non-classical logic, and its application to metaphysics and the history of philosophy.

Preface: What One Needs to Know
Part I: Unity
1. Gluons and their Wicked Ways
2. Identity and Gluons
3. Form, Universals, and Instantiation
4. Being and Nothing
5. A Case of Mistaken Identity
Part II: In Plato's Trajectory
6. Enter Parmenides: Mereological Sums
7. Problems with the Forms--and their Solutions
8. The One--and the Others
9. In Search of Falsity
10. Perception, Intentionality, and Representation
Part III: Buddhist Themes
11. Absence of Self, and the Net of Indra
12. Embracing the Groundlessness of Things
13. The World, Language, and their Limits
14. Peace of Mind
15. Compassion
Bibliography
Index