1950 – 2014
E. J. Lowe (Edward Jonathan Lowe) was a British analytic philosopher and one of the leading metaphysicians of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A long-serving professor at Durham University, he made major contributions to ontology, philosophy of mind, personal identity, and the philosophy of properties, developing an influential neo-Aristotelian four-category ontology.
Developed the four-category ontology, a neo-Aristotelian framework distinguishing substantial and non-substantial universals and particulars
Authored 'The Possibility of Metaphysics' (1998), a landmark defense of metaphysics as a viable autonomous discipline
Made influential contributions to the metaphysics of properties, tropes, and truthmaking
Published 'A Survey of Metaphysics' (2002), a widely used systematic introduction to contemporary metaphysics
Advanced arguments on personal identity, mental causation, and non-reductive physicalism