In an age where appearances are often substituted for what really is, deception and falsity for honesty and truth, this metaphysics book takes things 'as they actually are' and discovers that reality 'is' actuality (which as subsistent is God), that philosophical knowledge in its content is caused by what is known and is objectively true. It considers goodness and beauty, human existents as individual, relational units (e.g., the family), agents and goals, chance and evil. It is in contrast with Sartrean existentialism, process philosophy, linguistic analysis, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and deconstructionism.

Author - Leo Sweeney SJ
Author - William J. Carroll
Author - John J. Furlong

"The role of the existential dimension in metaphysics still calls for penetrating study. In its new extension 'an epistemology which is not a re-presentationalism,' Fr. Sweeney's project augurs a coming to grips with the central issue at stake, especially in its fifth and tenth chapters."
— J. Owens, CSsR, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto

"The first edition of this book first got me interested in and led me to fall in love with philosophy, and I have appreciated that very much through the years. It is a textbook written by an excellent scholar and an excellent teacher — a combination that makes the book both profound and approachable."
— Roland J. Teske, SJ, Marquette University

"A textbook of rare scholarly merit. . . . It is a systematic philosophical exposition of Thomistic or Gilsonian existentialism. . . . The key doctrines of the primacy of existence over essence . . . the four causes, the categories, analogy, the transcendentals, etc. . . . are all here expounded with force and clarity and defended cogently."
— Henry Veatch, Georgetown University