This chapter was originally written for an event honouring E. J. Lowe. The author considers Lowe a philosopher of the first rank, a philosopher who has resisted the idea that philosophical problems are to be addressed in ways that keep ontology at arm's length. Lowe's work is a fine example of what the Australians call ontological seriousness. The remarks presented in the chapter are meant less as objections to Lowe's 'four-category ontology' than as requests for clarification. Lowe and David Armstrong agree that universals depend on their instances; the instances are 'metaphysically prior' to the universals. The chapter presents Lowe's account of dispositionality. The discussion is concluded by mentioning three aspects of Lowe's view. First, according to Lowe kinds depend on attributes that characterize them. Second, Lowe tells us that kinds are characterized by attributes, properties, and relations regarded as universals. Third, is an instance of the salt kind.

According to the author, Aristotelian metaphysics has more to do with Aristotle's philosophical methodology than his metaphysics. The core of this Aristotelian conception of metaphysics is the idea that metaphysics is the first philosophy. This chapter clarifies what this conception of metaphysics amounts to in the context of recent discussion on the methodology of metaphysics. It also identifies some methodological issues concerning the foundations of Aristotelian metaphysics. In the first section, the chapter compares the Aristotelian and what could be called a 'Quinean' conception of metaphysics. The second section considers the approach emerging from the critique by Ladyman and Ross; it aims to naturalize metaphysics. Finally, the chapter hints towards a programme for a rigorous methodology of Aristotelian metaphysics inspired by E. J. Lowe's work. According to this line of thought, metaphysics is primarily concerned with metaphysical possibility, which is grounded in essence.

E. J. Lowe regards kinds as ontologically fundamental although David Armstrong takes a reductive attitude towards natural kinds. This chapter examines Lowe's claim, and concludes that it is unwarranted. Lowe has an ontology of four categories, in which we have individual substances (objects, particulars), modes (property/relation instances, tropes), and two species of universal: attributes (non-substantial universals, properties/relations) and substantial universals (kinds). Lowe claims that his ontology has an advantage over Armstrong's when it comes to our understanding of the laws of nature. Lowe's account of laws does not provide a metaphysics that avoids the inference problem for Armstrong, and so does not give us an independent, metaphysical reason for adopting a category of kinds. The chapter argues that analogous metaphysical problems in accounting for the relationship of laws to particulars beset Lowe's four-category ontology as much as Armstrong's two category ontology.