Ontology
Ontology
(on, ontos, being, and logos, science, the science or philosophy of being).
I. DEFINITION
Though the term is used in this literal meaning by Clauberg (1625-1665) (Opp., p. 281), its special application to the first department of metaphysics was made by Christian von Wolff (1679-1754) (Philos. nat., sec. 73). Prior to this time “the science of being” had retained the titles given it by its founder Aristotle: “first philosophy”, “theology”, “wisdom”. The term “metaphysics” (q.v.) was given a wider extension by Wolff, who divided “real philosophy” into general metaphysics, which he called ontology, and special, under which he included cosmology, psychology, and theodicy. This programme has been adopted with little variation by most Catholic philosophers. The subject-matter of ontology is usually arranged thus: The objective concept of being in its widest range, as embracing the actual and potential, is first analyzed, the problems concerned with essence (nature) and existence, “act” and “potency” are discussed, and the primary principles — contradiction, identity, etc. — are shown to emerge from the concept of entity. The properties coextensive with being — unity, truth, and goodness, and their immediately associated concepts, order and beauty — are next explained. The fundamental divisions of being into the finite and the infinite, the contingent and the necessary, etc., and the subdivisions of the finite into the categories (q.v.) substance and its accidents (quantity, quality, etc.) follow in turn — the objective — reality of substance, the meaning of personality, the relation of accidents (q.v.) to substance being the most prominent topics. The concluding portion of ontology is usually devoted to the concept of cause and its primary divisions — efficient and final, material and formal –the objectivity and analytical character of the principle of causality receiving most attention.
Ontology is not a subjective science as Kant describes it (Ub. d. Fortschr. d. Met., 98) nor “an inferential Psychology”, as Hamilton regards it (Metaphysics, Lect. VII); nor yet a knowledge of the absolute (theology); nor of some ultimate reality whether conceived as matter or as spirit, which Monists suppose to underlie and produce individual real beings and their manifestations. Ontology is a fundamental interpretation of the ultimate constituents of the world of experience. All these constituents — individuals with their attributes — have factors or aspects in common. The atom and the molecule of matter, the plant, the animal, man, and God agree in this that each is a being, has a characteristic essence, an individual unity, truth, goodness, is a substance and (God excepted) has accidents, and is or may be a cause. All these common attributes demand definition and explanation — definition not of their mere names, but analysis of the real object which the mind abstracts and reflectively considers. Ontology is therefore the fundamental science since it studies the basal constituents and the principles presupposed by the special sciences. All the other parts of philosophy, cosmology, psychology, theodicy, ethics, even logic, rest on the foundation laid by ontology. The physical sciences — physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics likewise, presuppose the same foundations. Nevertheless ontology is dependent in the order of analysis, though not in the order of synthesis, on these departments of knowledge; it starts from their data and uses their information in clarifying their presuppositions and principles. Ontology is accused of dealing with the merely abstract. But all science is of the abstract, the universal, not of the concrete and individual. The physical sciences abstract the various phenomena from their individual subjects; the mathematical sciences abstract the quantity — number and dimensions — from its setting. Ontology finally abstracts what is left — the essence, existence, substance, causalty, etc. It is idle to say that of these ultimate abstractions we can have no distinct knowledge. The very negation of their knowableness shows that the mind has some knowledge of that which it attempts to deny. Ontology simply endeavours to make that rudimentary knowledge more distinct and complete. There is a thoroughly developed ontology in every course of Catholic philosophy; and to its ontology that philosophy owes its definiteness and stability, while the lack of an ontology in other systems explains their vagueness and instability.
II. HISTORY
It was Aristotle who first constructed a well-defined and developed ontology. In his “Metaphysics” he analyses the simplest elements to which the mind reduces the world of reality. The medieval philosophers make his writings the groundwork of their commentaries in which they not only expand and illustrate the thought, but often correct and enrich it in the light of Revelation. Notable instances are St. Thomas Aquinas and Suarez (1548-1617). The “Disputationes Metaphysicae” of the latter is the most thorough work on ontology in any language. The Aristotelean writings and the Scholastic commentaries are its groundwork and largely its substance; but it amplifies and enriches both. The work of Father Harper mentioned below attempts to render it available for English readers. The author’s untimely death, however, left the attempt far from its prospected ending. The movement of the mind towards the physical sciences — which was largely stimulated and accelerated by Bacon — carried philosophy away from the more abstract truth. Locke, Hume, and their followers denied the reality of the object of ontology. We can know nothing, they held, of the essence of things; substance is a mental figment, accidents are subjective aspects of an unknowable noumenon; cause is a name for a sequence of phenomena. These negations have been emphasized by Comte, Huxley, and Spencer.
On the other hand the subjective and psychological tendencies of Descartes and his followers dimmed yet more the vision for metaphysical truth. Primary notions and principles were held to be either forms innate in the mind or results of its development, but which do not express objective reality. Kant, analysing the structure of the cognitive faculties — perception, judgment, reasoning — discovers in them innate forms that present to reflection aspects of phenomena which appear to be the objective realities, being, substance, cause, etc., but which in truth are only subjective views evoked by sensory stimuli. The subject matter of Ontology is thus reduced to the types which the mind, until checked by criticism, projects into the external world. Between these two extremes of Empiricism and Idealism the traditional philosophy retains the convictions of common sense and the subtle analysis of the Scholastics. Being, essence, truth, substance, accident, cause, and the rest, are words expressing ideas but standing for realities. These realities are objective aspects of the individuals that strike the senses and the intellect. They exist concretely outside of the mind, not, of course, abstractly as they are within. They are the ultimate elementary notes or forms which the mind intuitively discerns, abstracts, and reflectively analyses in its endeavour to comprehend fundamentally any object. In this reflective analysis it must employ whatever information it can obtain from empirical psychology. Until recently this latter auxiliary has been insufficiently recognized by the philosophers. The works, however, of Maher and Walker mentioned below manifest a just appreciation of the importance of psychology’s cooperation in the study of ontology.
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CATHOLIC: HARPER, The Metaphysics of the School (London, 1879-84); DE WULF, Scholasticism Old and New, tr. COFFEY (Dublin, 1907); PERRIER, The revival of Scholastic Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1909) (full bibliography); RICKABY, General Metaphysics (London, 1898); WALKER, Theories of Knowledge (London, 1910); MAHER, Psychology (London, 1903); BALMES, Fundamental Philosophy (tr., New York, 1864); TURNER, History of Philosophy (Boston, 1903); MERCIER, Ontologie (Louvain, 1905); DOMET DE VORGES, Abrege de metaphysique (Paris, 1906); DE REGNON, Metaphysique des causes (Paris, 1906); GUTBERLET, Allgemeine Metaphysik (Munster, 1897); URRABURU, Institutiones philosophiae (Valladolid, 1891); BLANC, Dictionnaire de philosophie (Paris, 1906). NON-CATHOLIC: MCCOSH, First and Fundamental Truths (New York, 1894); IDEM, The Intuitions of the Mind” (New York, 1880); LADD, Knowledge, Life and Reality (New York, 1909); TAYLOR, Elements of Metaphysics (London, 1903); WINDELBAND, History of Philosophy (tr., New York, 1901); BALDWIN, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (New York, 1902); EISLER, Worterbuch der philos. Begriffe (Berlin, 1904).
F.P. SIEGFRIED Transcribed by Robert H. Sarkissian
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XICopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, February 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Ontology
(from Greek and , i.e. the science of being) is, strictly speaking a synonyme of metaphysics (q.v.), but neither the one name nor the other was used by Aristotle. He called the science now designated by them philosophia prima, and defined it as Scientia. Entis quatenus Entis that is, the science of the essence of things; the science of the attributes and conditions of being in general, not of being in any given circumstances, not as physical or mathematical, but as being.
The science of ontology is regarded as comprehending investigations of every real existence, either beyond the sphere of the present world, or in any other way incapable of being the direct object of consciousness, or which can be deduced immediately from the possession of certain feelings or principles and faculties of the human soul (comp. Butler; Lectures on Ancient Philosophy, vol. 2). Watts thus defines it: Ontology is a discourse of being in general, and the various or most universal modes or affections, as well as the several kinds or divisions of it. The word being here includes not only whatsoever actually is, but whatsoever can be (On Ontology, ch. ii). The name ontology seems to have been first made current in philosophy by Wolf. He divided metaphysics into four parts: Ontology, psychology, rational cosmology, and theology. It was chiefly occupied with abstract inquiries into possibility; necessity, and contingency, substance, accident, cause, etc., without reference to the laws of our intellect by which we are constrained to believe in them. Kant denied that we have any knowledge of substance or cause as really existing. But there is a science of principles and causes, of the principles of being and knowing. In this view of it, ontology corresponds to metaphysics. Ontology may be treated of in two different methods, according as its exponent is a believer in or in , in one or in many fundamental principles of things. In the former, all objects whatever are regarded as phenomenal modifications of one and the same substance, or as self-determined effects of one and the same cause. The necessary result of this method is to reduce all metaphysical philosophy to a rational theology. the one substance or cause being identified with the Absolute or the Deity. According to the latter method, which professes to treat of different classes of beings independently, metaphysics will contain three co-ordinate branches of inquiry rational cosmology, rational psychology, and rational theology. The first aims at a knowledge of the real essence, as distinguished from the phenomena of the material world; the second discusses the nature and origin, as distinguished from the faculties and affections; the third aspires to comprehend God himself, as cognizable a priori in his essential nature, apart from the indirect and relative indications furnished by his works, as in Natural Theology (q.v.), or by his Word, as in Revealed Religion (q.v.). These three objects of metaphysical inquiry God, the world, the mind-correspond to Kant’s three ideas of the Pure Reason; and the object of his Kritik is to show that, in relation to all these, the attainment of a system of speculative philosophy is impossible (Mansel, Prolegom. Log. p.:272).
In theology the ontological argument has been freely employed, especially in the Middle Ages, regarding the Being of God. St. Augustine used it, so did Boethius; but it was left for Anselm to develop it fully. They all three inferred the existence of God from the existence of general ideas. Thus Augustine taught (De Lib. Arbitr. lib. ii, c. 3-15) that there are general ideas which have for every one the same objective validity, and are not (like the perceptions of sense) different and conditioned by the subjective apprehension. Among these are the mathematical truths, as 3+7=10; here, too, belongs the higher metaphysical truth truth in itself, i.e. wisdom (veritas, sapientla). The absolute truth, however, which is necessarily demanded by the human mind, is God himself. Augustine asserts that man is composed of existence, life, and thinking, and shows that the last is the most excellent; hence he infers that that by which thinking is regulated, and which, therefore, must be superior to thinking itself, is the summum bonum. He finds this summum bonum in those general laws which every thinking person must acknowledge, and according to which he must form an Opinion respecting thinking itself. The sum total of these laws or rules is called truth or wisdom (veritas, sapientia). The absolute is, therefore, equal to truth itself. God is truth. (Comp. Ritter, Christl. Philippians 1:407- 411.) Boethius expresses himself still more definitely (De Consol. Philippians v. Prosa 10): he shows that empirical observation and the perception of the imperfect lead necessarily to the idea of perfection and its reality in God. (Comp. Schleiermacher, Geschichte der Philosophie, p. 166.) Of Anselm’s argument we can here give only the heads; the thread of reasoning must be seen from the connection:
Monol. I. Cum tam inuumtlerabilia bona sint; quorum tam.mnltam diversitatem et sensibus corporeis experimur et ratione mentis discernimus, estne credendum esse unum aliquid, per quod unum sunt bona, qusecunque bona saunt, ant sunt bona alia per aliud? III. Demique non solum omnia bona per idem aliquid sunt boina et omnia magna per idem aliquid sunt magna, sed quicquid est, per unumu aliquid videtur esse… Quoniam ergo cuncta quse sunt, Sunt per ipsum unum; procul dubio et ipsum sunum est per se ipsum. Qusecunque igitur alia sunt, sunt per alind, et ipsum solum per se ipsum. Ac quicquid est per aliud, ninus est quam illud, per quod cuncta sunt alia et quod solum est per se: quareillud, quod est per se, maxime omnium est. Est igitur unum aliquid, qnod solnm maxime.et summe omnium est; quod autem maxime omnium est et per quod est quicquid est bonilm vel magiram, et omnino qnicquid est aliquidc est, id necesse est esse summe bonum et summe magnum et summum omnium. que sunlt. Quare est aliquid, quod sive essentia, sive substantia, sive natura dicatur, optimum et maximum est et summum omnium quae sunt.
The mode of argument which is found in Proslog. c. ii is more original (he there proceeds from the reality of the idea): The fool may say in his heart there is no God (Psa 14:1), but he thereby shows himself a fool, because he asserts something which is contradictory in itself. He has the idea of God in him, but denies its reality. But if God is given in idea, he must also exist in reality. Otherwise the real God, whose existence is conceivable, would be superior to the one who exists only in imagination, and consequently would be superior to the highest conceivable object, which is absurd; hence it follows that that beyond which nothing can be conceived to exist really exists (thus idea and reality coincide). If, therefore, the fool says, There is no God, he says it indeed, and may, perhaps, even think it. But there is a difference between thought and thought. To conceive a thing when the word is without meaning, e.g. that fire is water (a mere sound, an absurdity!), is very different from the case in which the thought corresponds with the word. It is only according to the former mode of thinking (which destroys the thought itself) that the fool can say, There is no God, but not according to the latter. See Ueberweg, Hist. of Philos.’ i,. 378, 383 sq;; 2:42, 49, 56, 104 sq., 148, 177, 497 sq.; M;Cosh, Intuition of God; Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Free Thought; Morell, Hist. of Philos. 18th and 19th Cent. p. 653; Baur; Dogmengesch. vol. ii; Hagenbach, Hist. of Doctrines, 1:325 sq.; Krauth’s Vining, Voccbulary of Philos. s.v.; Cocker, Christianity and Greek Philos. p. 491-494.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Ontology
(Gr. on, being + logos, logic) The theory of being qua being. For Aristotle, the First Philosophy, the science of the essence of things. Introduced as a term into philosophy by Wolff. The science of fundamental principles, the doctrine of the categories. Ultimate philosophy; rational cosmology. Syn. with metaphysics. See Cosmology, First Principles, Metaphysics, Theology. — J.K.F.