The Introduction raises the question of what the task, job, or purpose of metaphysics is and, by extension, what the metaphysician should aspire to do. It then canvasses different conceptions of metaphysics that answer these questions in different ways, noting how some answers are bolder and more ambitious than others. Among the boldest and most ambitious of these conceptions of metaphysics is that of Thomas Aquinas, who held both that metaphysics studies everything and that it can do so in such a way as to produce rigorous knowledge of the highest sort – what Aristotle would call unqualified episteme.