What is an Ontology?
March 23rd, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: Somewhat Vexing– Ontology qua Thanatos :: Defining Ontology :: further lunacy stirs + :: What is an Ontology?
Cologne 23-Mar-2008
Joseph Polanik schrieb Sat, 22 Mar 2008 08:48:55 -0500:
> Michael Eldred wrote:
>
> >Joseph Polanik schrieb
>
> >>That Pete wrote:
>
> >>>Well, in “who am I”, I understand that the “am” is the domain of
> >>>ontology, and if the answer is that “I” is “a mammal”, or “Wu Ming,
> >>>General Citizen, SS# 123-45-6789″, then the answer is about where the
> >>>”I” fits in a taxonomy or database, is knowledge and thus
> >>>epistemological.
>
> >>>I’m curious about claims that who-ness is properly an issue of
> >>>ontology. People are encountered in an openness, and the “who that I
> >>>am” may be reflective happening in that open. But is that, in and of
> >>>itself, sufficient to make whoness an ontological issue?
>
> >ME: Whoness as a shining-back (Widerschein) from the world. “Heidegger
> >is at pains to comprehend “this enigmatic shining-back of the self out
> >of things philosophically” (diesen rätselhaften Widerschein des Selbst
> >aus den Dingen her philosophisch, GA24:229) “
> http://www.webcom.com/artefact/dlctcslf….. )
>
> a genuine encounter with another may be well described as a shining thru
> and a shining back; but, is that ontology … or dating?
>
> >>JP: who is claiming that who-ness is properly an issue of ontology?
>
> >>look at the sample answers to ‘who am I?’ that you gave. the first
> >>(’mammal’) is also a potential answer to ‘what am I?’ the second (’Wu
> >>Ming, General Citizen, SS# 123-45-6789′) is not.
>
> >ME: Rather the opposite. Whatness is the traditional cover-up for the
> >genuine phenomenon of whoness which the personal pronoun “I” is already
> >on the way to skipping over. Anyone claiming that “ontology concerns
> >what there is; so, ‘what am I?’ is an ontological question;” (Wed, 19
> >Mar 2008 04:49:25 -0500) has no philosophical question at all,
>
> JP: ontology is defined as the study of what there is; for example, in this
>
> definition from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
>
> “As a first approximation, ontology is the study of what there is.”
ME: Rather, one would have to say, “As a last degeneration, ontology is the
study of what there is.”
>
> JP: the article continues:
>
> “Many classical philosophical problems are problems in ontology, like
> the question whether or not there is a god, or the problem of the
> existence of universals. These are all problems in ontology in the sense
> that they deal with whether or not a certain thing, or more broadly
> entity, exists. But ontology is usually also taken to encompass problems
> about the most general features and relations of the entities which do
> exist. There are also a number of classic philosophical problems that
> are problems in ontology understood this way. For example the problem
> how a universal relates to a particular that has it (assuming there are
> universals and particulars), or the problem how an event like John
> eating a cookie relate to the particulars John and the cookie, and the
> relation of eating, assuming there are events, particulars and
> relations. These kinds of problems quickly turn into metaphysics more
> generally, which is the philosophical discipline that encompasses
> ontology as one of its parts. The borders here are a little fussy. But
> we have at least two parts to the overall philosophical project of
> ontology: first, say what there is, what exists, what the stuff is
> reality is made out off, secondly, say what the most general features
> and relations of these things are.”
>
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-…]
>
ME: These guys at Stanford should limit themselves to eating cookies.
The term ‘ontology’ goes back to R. Goeckel (Goclenius) around 1600 who, in
his ‘Lexicon philosophicum’, introduces _epistaemae ontologikae_ as term for
one of the three Aristotelean _epistaemai theooretikai_. Ontology thus names
Aristotle’s prima philosophia as the inquiry into _to on haei on_ which
phrase can be variously rendered in English as “beings insofar as they are
beings” or ” “beings as such” or “beings qua beings” or “beings as beings” or
“beings in their being”. Unfortunately, today we have become too dumb to
understand the import of such a well-thought-out formulation which is, in any
case, the most open definition of ontology. When Aristotle comes to enter
this investigation in Book Zeta of his Metaphysics, he first notes that
“being is said in many ways”, again, an important warning which we today are
too dumb to understand. He then proceeds to list some, but by no means all,
of these various meanings, as “what it is and this-here, and also how and how
much and each of the other such categories” (Z 1028a12). In a further step he
then picks out What as a prime meaning, and this What is then further
investigated as an investigation of _ousia_, which itself has many meanings.
Medieval metaphysics in particular (Thomas Aquinas) focused on the whatness
or quidditas as the subject of ontology, but this is already a significant
narrowing of the horizon of the original Aristotelean definition which leaves
open many ways of thinking to proceed INCLUDING the possibility of not giving
Whatness the priority, let alone the exclusive signification, among the
various possible meanings of being.
In the famous book of definitions Delta, the first meanings of _to on_ are
given as the distinction between _kata symbebaekos_ and _kath’ hauto_, i.e.
being that just comes along and being for itself. The second group of
meanings of _to on_ is the categories, what, how, in relation to, how much,
where, when, etc. The third sense of _to on_ is the distinction between true
and false, and the fourth fold into which Aristotle unfolds the meaning of
_to on_ covers the distinction between _dynamis_ and _entelecheia_, i.e.
between potency and completed presence, a major, major aspect of Aristotle’s
ontological inquiry (in Book Theta). To dare to narrow-mindedly define
ontology as “the study of what there is” therefore indicates a narrowing of
the horizon and a stage of degeneration of philosophical mind horrible to
contemplate.
Rather, Aristotle’s open definition of ontology as the inquiry into beings in
their being still holds within itself latent historical possibilities as yet
unfathomed. One of these possibilites is to ask for a unified meaning of
being itself, a tack which Heidegger takes with his momentous “step back”.
Another possibility is to question the unfolding of being into the
distinction between what and who, a possibility not taken up by Aristotle
himself, but a latent possibility nevertheless for mind that is sufficiently
open to attempt to fathom this abyss. Since Hegel, starting with Feuerbach
through to Loewith, Goldschmidt, Theunissen et al, the German Geist has
approached (or shied away from) this abyss — the rich tradition of
dialogical philosophy (with which Heidegger also engaged) about which
Anglo-Saxon philosophy is wilfully and smugly almost entirely ignorant.
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_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Dr Michael Eldred (c)_-_-
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