A brief history of ontology
Lecture 1 Ontology as a Branch of Philosophy
Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) Realist theory of categories Intelligible universals extending across all domains Central role of organisms Medieval scholastics: Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, … (1200 – 1600) Aristotelianism as philosophia perennis Common panscientific ontology and controlled vocabulary (Latin)
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A brief history of ontology
Descartes (1596 – 1650) Sceptical doubt initiates subversion of metaphysics, rise of epistemology Central role of mind Dualism of mind and matter Kant (1724 – 1804) Reality is unknowable Metaphysics is impossible We can only know the quasi-fictional domains which we ourselves create
A brief history of ontology
Brentano (1838 – 1917) Rediscovery of Aristotle Methods of philosophy and of science are one and the same Husserl (1859 – 1938) Inventor of formal ontology as a discipline distinct from formal logic Showed how philosophy and science had become detached from the 'life world' of ordinary experience
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The Four Phases of Philosophy
First Cycle
rapid progress
practical interest
scepticism
mysticism
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Thales to Aristotle
Stoicism and Epicureanism
Pyrrho, Eclectics
Neo-Pythagoreans, Neo-Platonists
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Second Cycle
Third Cycle
up to Aquinas
Scotism
Ockham, Nominalists
Lull, Nicholas of Cusa
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Bacon, Locke
Rationalists
Hume, Reid
Berkeley, Kant German Idealism
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A brief history of ontology
Wittgenstein 1 (ca. 1910 – 1918) Author of Tractatus Bases ontology on formal logic in reductionistic atomism Vienna Circle (1922 – ca. 1938) Schlick, Neurath, Gdel, Carnap, Gustav Bergmann … Centrality of logic to philosophy Construction of philosophy from either physics or sensations as base
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A brief history of ontology
Wittgenstein 2 (ca. 1930 – 1951) Centrality of language and of language games Metaphysics = language goes on holiday British Ordinary Language philosophy Philosophical problems to be solved by the study of the workings of language Speech Act Theory (J. L. Austin, 19111960)

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