Ontology

ONTOLOGY. - From ὄν and λόγος, science of being, it is synonymous with metaphysics (v.) and seems to have been introduced for the first time by J. Clauberg (v.), who used the two terms "ontosophia vel o.," but it was above all popularized by Chr. Wolff (v.), with the work Philosophia prima sive o. methodo scientifica pertractata qua omnis cognitionis humanae principia continentur (1730). In § 1 it is defined: "Scientia entis in genere seu quatenus ens est," and Wolff, after deploring the discredit into which o. had fallen through the fault of the scholastics, promises to rehabilitate it: "Nos eandem a contemptu quo laborat vindicamus, sterili tractatione in foecundam conversa" (new ed., Frankfurt and Leipzig 1736, p. 1). The new terminology passed unchallenged into modern rationalism down to the whole of the 18th century, when, after Kant (who nevertheless still prefers the old term metaphysics), philosophy became, through the work of idealism, the theory of the development of spirit. It reappears, however, in some thinkers of secondary importance and returns to favor in France and Italy with ontologism (v.). But while Wolff defined o. as the science of the formal concepts that concern being, the ontologists consider it as the science of the real itself as it is in itself in its absolute source, as do Gioberti and Mamiani.

Among the precursors of Neoscholasticism (Sordi) the term "metaphysics" still prevails, but with an important modification that would have many followers and that probably goes back to an earlier origin. Metaphysics embraces the consideration of real being in its widest extension and is divided into a general metaphysics, or properly o., and a special metaphysics that embraces what for Aristotle and St. Thomas was "natural philosophy," which treats of the nature of bodies (cosmology) and of the nature of living things together with man (psychology): "O., quae a graeco nomine desumpta latine idem est ac sermo de ente, definiri potest illa metaphysicae pars quae agit de ente in communi" (D. Sordi, O., ed. by P. Dezza, Milan 1941, p. 39). The new classification recurs frequently among the Neoscholastics (Remer, De Maria, Pesch, Frick, De Mandato, Zigliara) and also recent ones (Maquart, Metaphysica ostensiva: ontologia, theologia naturalis). The term o. was taken up by Husserl to indicate the science that studies the essential (eidetic) structures proper to the various sciences; hence Husserl speaks of "regional o." insofar as every positive or experimental science (Tatsachenwissenschaft, Erfahrungswissenschaft) has its theoretical foundations in the eidetic o., and he distinguishes a double class of o., material and formal, according as they consider the content or its laws (cf. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie, I, new ed., The Hague 1950, § 9-10, p. 23 ff.). For Heidegger o. must investigate the deepest structure of being, as distinct from the "ontic" investigation that is proper to the sciences (cf. Sein und Zeit, I, 5th ed., Halle 1941, § 3, p. 11). In his last writings Heidegger proposes a Fundamentalontologie which, instead of stopping at "being as being" (traditional o.), considers the "foundation," that is, "being itself" (Sein selbst) in its original openness (cf. Was ist Metaphysik, 5th ed., Frankfurt 1849, p. 17 ff.). An o. constructed in function of the "principle of immanence" is that of G. Jacoby (Allgemeine Ontologie der Wirklichkeit, I, Halle 1925), while N. Hartmann has returned to the old term "metaphysics" also for the analysis of knowing (Grundlegung einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, 3rd ed., Berlin 1941).

Cornelio Fabro