What's more, it (gently) takes a somewhat deflationary attitude to-wards many things metaphysicians like to talk about, e.g., accidents, uni-versals, and the like. By "deflationary" Gorman means that such items are taken seriously, but their ontological status is taken down a notch: fea-tures, universals, possible worlds, and other such things are understood in terms of what substances are and what substances are. Substances are "basic beings," and other things are what they are only in relation to sub-stances. Of course this is Aristotle 101, but metaphysicians, Aristotelians included, often slip into treating non-substances as mini-substances, and Gorman pushes back against this throughout.

A Contemporary Introduction to Thomistic Metaphysics begins by ex-plaining what philosophy is, what metaphysics is, and how these relate to other kinds of thinking. It then moves through a series of topics, ending with a brief look at applications of metaphysical thinking in theology.