Heinrich WatzkaCorresponding author

A New Realistic Spirit
The Analytical and the Existential Approaches to Ontology

Article
16/1 - Spring 2011, pages 7-28
Date of online publication: 24 mars 2011
Date of publication: 24 mars 2011

Abstract

I shall distinguish between two periods of analytic ontology, one semi-idealistic, the other post-idealistic. The former fostered the very idea of a conceptual scheme within which questions of ontology could be formulated and answered in the first place; the latter rejected this idea in favour of the view that ontological inquiry neither presupposes a framework, nor provides the framework for science or everyday speech. Since then, ontology is what it always have been, the systematic study of the most fundamental categories of being, not of thought. Unfortunately, such a category theory becomes aporetic in its search for a solution of the problem of the “temporary intrinsic” (D. Lewis). Experience cannot tell us, whether entities persist by “perduring” or by “enduring.” One can take an alternative route and seek to broaden the conceptual basis of ontology by focussing on “Being” (Sein) in contrast to entities, or being (Seiendes). The controversy on perdurantism and endurantism emerges as a dispute over two conflicting ways of being in time, not of Being itself.

Keywords

Cite this article

Watzka, Heinrich. “A New Realistic Spirit: The Analytical and the Existential Approaches to Ontology.” Forum Philosophicum 16, no. 1 (2011): 7–28. doi:10.35765/forphil.2011.1601.02.

Bibliography

Carnap, Rudolf. “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology.” In: Meaning and necessity: a study in semantics and modal logic, 2nd edition, 205–221. Chicago: the University Chicago Press, 1970.

Davidson, Donald. “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme.” In: Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd edition, 183–198. Oxford: Clarendon Press 2001.

Haslanger, Sally. “Endurance and Temporary Intrinsics.” Analysis 49, no. 3 (1989): 119–125.

Heidegger, Martin. Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1979.

Heidegger, Martin. Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1972.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.

Kim, Jaegwon. Mind in a Physical World An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.

Kripke, Saul A. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.

Lafont, Cristina. Sprache und Welterschliessung: zur linguistischen Wende der Hermeneutik Heideggers. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1994.

Lewis, David K. On the Plurality of Worlds. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1986.

Lowe, E. J. “Serious Endurantism and the Strong Unity of Human Persons.” In Unity and Time in Metaphysics, edited by Ludger Honnefelder, Edmund Runggaldier, and Benedikt Schick, 67–82. Berlin; New York: Walt de Gruyter 2009.

Lowe, E. J. The Four-Category Ontology. A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006.

Lowe, E. J. “How Real Is Substantial Change?” The Monist 89, no. 3 (2006): 275–293.

Lowe, E. J. The Possibility of Metaphysics. Substance, Identity, and Time. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.

Lowe, E. J. “The Problems of Intrinsic Change: Rejoinder to Lewis.” Analysis 48, no. 2 (1988): 72–77.

Nerlich, Graham. “Space-Time and Substantivalism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics, edited by Michael J. Loux, and Dean W. Zimmerman, 281–314. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Putnam, Hilary. Reason, Truth, and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Quine, Willard Van Orman. Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: The Technology Press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1960.

Quine, Willard Van Orman. “On what there is.” In From a Logical Point of View, 1–19. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.

Rea, Michael C. “Four-Dimensionalism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics, edited by Michael J. Loux, and Dean W. Zimmerman, 246–280. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Sellars, Wilfrid. Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. With an introduction by Richard Rorty, and a study guide by Robert Brandom, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Smart, J. J. C. “The Tenseless View of Time.” In Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics, edited by Theodore Sider, John Hawthorne, and Dean W. Zimmerman, 226–238. Malden, MA: Blackwell 2008.

Strawson, P. F. Individuals. An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. London: Methuen, 1959.

Copyright

© Forum Philosophicum
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License