Lowe argues in this fascinating new study that metaphysics should be restored to centrality in philosophy, as the most fundamental form of inquiry, whose findings underpin those of all other disciplines. He portrays metaphysics as charting the possibilities of existence, by identifying the categories of being and the relations between them. He then sets out his own metaphysical system, with which he seeks to answer many of the most vexed questions in philosophy.

Forms of thought are involved whenever we name, describe, or identify things, and whenever we distinguish between what is, might be, or must be the case. It appears to be a distinctive feature of human thought that we can have modal thoughts, about what might be possible or necessary, and conditional thoughts, about what would or might be the case if something else were the case. Even the simplest thoughts are structured like sentences, containing referential and predicative elements, and studying these structures is the main task of philosophical logic. This clear and accessible book...