A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick Permanent WRAP URL: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/102444/ Copyright and reuse: This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: [email protected] warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications The Possibility of Ontology by Dino Jakušić A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy University of Warwick, Department of Philosophy October 2017 Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 4 DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP 6 SUMMARY 7 ABBREVIATIONS 8 INTRODUCTION 9 PART 1: THE HISTORY OF ONTOLOGY 18 CHAPTER ONE: HISTORY OF THE NAME 19 1. LORHARD AND GOCLENIUS 19 2. CLAUBERG 29 3. THE EARLY HISTORY OF ONTOLOGY 50 CHAPTER TWO: WOLFF’S ONTOLOGY 52 1. THE NAME FROM CLAUBERG TO WOLFF 52 2. THE DIVISION OF METAPHYSICS AND THE POSITION OF ONTOLOGY 56 3. PHILOSOPHY AND ONTOLOGY 78 4. WOLFF'S CONCEPTION OF ONTOLOGY 90 CHAPTER THREE: HISTORY OF THE CONCEPTION 92 1. THE PREHISTORY OF ONTOLOGY 92 2. ARISTOTLE’S PROTĒ PHILOSOPHIA 93 3. ARISTOTELIAN AMBIGUITY 122 4. A SPINOZIST DIGRESSION 147 PART 2: THE POSSIBILITY OF ONTOLOGY 161 CHAPTER FOUR: KANT AND ONTOLOGY 162 1. KANT AND ONTOLOGY TODAY 163 2 2. THE ARCHITECTONIC SENSE 167 3. THE PROUD SENSE 176 4. THE THEOLOGICAL SENSE 179 5. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF ONTOLOGY 183 CHAPTER FIVE: HEGEL AND ONTOLOGY 185 1. HEGEL AND THE NAME “ONTOLOGY” 187 2. HEGEL AND THE CONCEPTION OF ONTOLOGY 196 3. THE POSSIBILITY OF ONTOLOGY 225 4. HEGELIANISM AND ITS DISCONTENT 234 5. THE END OF ONTOLOGY 248 CONCLUSION 250 BIBLIOGRAPHY 255 PRIMARY SOURCES 255 SOURCES IN ENGLISH 255 SOURCES IN OTHER LANGUAGES 257 SECONDARY SOURCES 259 3 Acknowledgments I would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for providing me with a generous 3-years-long scholarship in support of this thesis. I would also like to thank my supervisor, Prof Stephen Houlgate, for incredibly inspiring, supportive, and enjoyable 3 years of supervision. Without him this thesis would never have been finished and I already miss our very loud and prolonged supervisions. Moreover, I want to thank the often underappreciated administrative staff of the University of Warwick Philosophy Department, especially Sarah Taylor and Sue Podmore, for getting me out of many troubles I managed to get myself into through almost a decade of my time at Warwick. Besides them, I would like to thank Prof Peter Poellner and Dr Thomas Crowther for all the help, criticism, and support they provided me during my Graduate Progress Committee meetings, especially when things were not going swimmingly. Probably the key condition of possibility of this work has been the Warwick graduate and academic community. It would be impossible to mention all the people I am indebted to, so I hope no one finds him or herself offended by a possible omission. To avoid favouritism the order is alphabetical. Thank you: Alfonso Anaya Ruiz Esparza, Adam Arnold, Stephen Barrell, Ben Berger, Sourit Bhattacharya, Lara Choksey, Paul Conduit, Irene Dal Poz, Miguel de Beistegui, Mara Duer, Sebastian Emerson, Juan Camilo Espejo Serna, Gene Flenady, Peter Fossey, Carl-Otto Frietsch, Karolos Galazoulas, Tania Ganitsky, Michele Giavazzi, Matt Godwin, Max Gottschlich, Johan Heemskerk, Julian Hensold, Samuel Honsbeek, Tom Hutchinson, Dženeta Karabegović, James Kay, Tristan Kreetz, Richard Lambert, Hemdat Lerman, Roberta Locatelli, Jack McGowan, Sofia Mercader, Ben Moffitt, Stella Moon, Johannes Niederhauser, Filip Niklas, Bethany Parsons, Fabienne Peter, Jeffery Pickernell, Maria Roca Lizarazu, Thom Ryan, Ana Salvi, Hanna Schumacher, Irina Schumski, Simon 4 Scott, Lorenzo Serini, Joseph Shafer, Danny Smith, Henry Somers-Hall, Will Stafford, Shaun Stephenson, Julia Tarnawska, Alex Underwood, Erik Urbieta, Barnaby Walker, Sarah Walsh, George Webster, Graham Wetherall, Tom Whyman, and David Woods. I would also like to thank my examiners, Prof. Dr. Anton Friedrich Koch of Heidelberg and Prof Robert Stern of Sheffield for kindly agreeing to examine my thesis, and to Prof Keith Ansell-Pearson for acting as the examination moderator. I ran numerous possible scenarios regarding the viva in my head many times, but I never anticipated that it would be as enjoyable and engaging as it was. Thank you once again! Finally, I would like to thank Prof A. David Smith who was willing to teach Aristotle and Aquinas to a confused MPhil student (although I believe he would not be very happy to see in which direction I have taken what he has taught me). David has recently left us all for the world of Ideas, but those who have met him will never forget him, but will keep recollecting him in everything we do. The final, but also the first, and eternal gratitude goes to my parents. For it must be braver and more virtuous for them to support a son writing a PhD in Philosophy, than it is for me to actually write it. 5 Declaration of Authorship This thesis is submitted to the University of Warwick in support of my application for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. It has been composed by myself and has not been submitted in any previous application for any degree apart from the background material in chapter 3 sections 2 and 3.1 which was previously submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Philosophy, at the University of Warwick, Department of Philosophy, July 2014. 6 Summary This thesis investigates the development of ontology as a philosophical discipline in the German philosophical tradition. It starts from what can be considered the invention of ontology and proceeds to the way it was received in the philosophy of Hegel. It is separated into two parts. The first part argues that what can be called the ‘traditional’ form of ontology is developed by Christian Wolff in his 1730 monograph Philosophia prima sive Ontologia, and it traces both the history of the name (or concept) ‘ontology’, as well as the history of the conception which led to Wolff’s formulation of it. The history of the name tracks the use of the concept ‘ontology’ from its first occurrence in 1606 up to Wolff. The history of the conception tracks the conceptions of various philosophical disciplines, found in thinkers such as Aristotle, Aquinas, and Spinoza, that ultimately give rise to Wolff’s conception of ontology as a science of an entity qua entity. The second part traces the development of this Wolffian conception through the philosophical systems of Kant and Hegel. The aim of this thesis is to argue that Wolff’s philosophy should be seen as the original formulation of the philosophical discipline of ontology and that the Wolffian conception of ontology is the one shared by subsequent German thinkers up to, and including, Hegel. I refer to this shared understanding of what ontology is as ‘the German ontological tradition’. The title of the thesis, The Possibility of Ontology, refers to the way in which this traditional understanding of what ontology is, is treated throughout the German ontological tradition. Specifically, Kant argues that the traditional conception is effectively impossible, while in Hegel one can find arguments that are intended to show that some aspects of this traditional discipline are in fact possible. Besides focusing on a fairly under-researched topic of the early history of ontology as a philosophical discipline, this thesis attempts to utilise its historical findings in order to provide novel ways in which the systems of the thinkers such as Kant and Hegel can be understood. There is a serious disregard for, or underplaying of, the Wolffian influence on the philosophical thought of Kant and Hegel, and it is my aim to contribute to the rectification of this situation by demonstrating the frequently overlooked dialogue these thinkers had with Wolff’s conception of ontology. 7 Abbreviations BM – Baumgarten, Metaphysica BT/SZ – Heidegger, Being and Time / Sein und Zeit CoPR – Kant, Critique of Pure Reason DP – Wolff, Discursus Praeliminaris EL – Hegel, Encyclopaedia Logic LoHP – Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy LoL – Hegel, Lectures on Logic PoS – Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit Propaedeutic – Hegel, The Philosophical Propaedeutic Propädeutik – Hegel, Philosophische Propädeutic SCG – Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles Sent. Meta. – Aquinas, Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio SL – Hegel, The Science of Logic ST – Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Super. Sent. – Aquinas, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum TdEI – Spinoza, Treatise of the Emendation of the Intellect TN 2 – Wolff, Theologiae Naturalis, pars II. VGP – Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie WO – Wolff, Philosophia prima sive ontologia 8 Introduction In his 2012 monograph, The Twenty-five Years of Philosophy: A Systematic Reconstruction, Eckart Förster takes to heart two claims from the history of German metaphysics. The first claim comes from Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of the Doctrine of Right and states that prior to the Critique of Pure Reason (or more precisely, prior to the “development of critical philosophy”) there was no philosophy at all. The second claim can be found in Hegel’s lecture from Spring of 1806 and says that “the history of philosophy has come to an end.”1 This, Förster continues, suggests that the history of philosophy lasts for merely 25 years. Förster then proceeds with an attempt to show that there is some truth in the idea underpinning these two claims, which, in their combination, assign a short time span to philosophy in the history of human thinking. My aim here is similar, but instead of the lifespan of philosophy I want to focus on ontology.