an analytic philosophy book that sounds right up my alley

I can’t disagree with any of this from the description of E.J. Lowe’s FOUR-CATEGORY ONTOLOGY, though obviously Lowe’s style and my own are pretty different:

“E. J. Lowe sets out and defends his theory of what there is. His four-category ontology is a metaphysical system that recognizes two fundamental categorial distinctions which cut across each other to generate four fundamental ontological categories. The distinctions are between the particular and the universal and between the substantial and the non-substantial. The four categories thus generated are substantial particulars, non-substantial particulars, substantial universals and non-substantial universals. Non-substantial universals include properties and relations, conceived as universals. Non-substantial particulars include property-instances and relation-instances, otherwise known as non-relational and relational tropes or modes. Substantial particulars include propertied individuals, the paradigm examples of which are persisting, concrete objects. Substantial universals are otherwise known as substantial kinds and include as paradigm examples natural kinds of persisting objects.

This ontology has a lengthy pedigree, many commentators attributing it to Aristotle on the basis of certain passages in his apparently early work, the Categories. At various times during the history of Western philosophy, it has been revived or rediscovered, but it has never found universal favour, perhaps on account of its apparent lack of parsimony as well as its commitment to universals. In pursuit of ontological economy, metaphysicians have generally preferred to recognize fewer than four fundamental ontological categories. However, Occam’s razor stipulates only that we should not multiply entities beyond necessity; Lowe argues that the four-category ontology has an explanatory power unrivalled by more parsimonious systems, and that this counts decisively in its favour. He shows that it provides a powerful explanatory framework for a unified account of causation, dispositions, natural laws, natural necessity and many other related matters, such as the semantics of counterfactual conditionals and the character of the truthmaking relation. As such, it constitutes a thoroughgoing metaphysical foundation for natural science.”

All right, the one difference I can see is that “universals” don’t have a special status for me. The object/quality distinction (for me) is not the same as particular/universal. But it’s still eerily similar, I think. [ADDENDUM: And, I doubt the same thing is meant by “substance,” but close enough.]

As the book description indicates, the ultimate source of the similarity is Aristotle. In a sense, OOO is the first basically Aristotelian position in continental philosophy. (I’m talking about recent continental thought here. Obviously, the whole Brentano school drew heavily on Aristotle, but that was before the analytic/continental divide had really set in.) Way too much is made of the Heidegger/Aristotle relation, but I have argued that elsewhere.