But many philosophers also think there is a second kind of modality, modality de re—the modality of things. (The modality of substances, certainly, and perhaps of things in other ontological categories.) The status of modality de re is undeniably a metaphysical topic, and we assign it to the “new” metaphysics because, although one can ask modal questions about things that do not change—God, for example, or universals—a large proportion of the work that has been done in this area concerns the modal features of changing things.