Definition : On/Onta/Ontology
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“On” is the Greek word for “being.”
“Onta” is the Greek word for “beings.”
“Ousia” is the Greek word for “substance.”
“Ontology” is a logic of “being.”
There are firstly four logics of being, which form a system together. Whenever we analyse “two” (on and onta) there are undoubtedly “four” realtions which logically follow (On-Onta, On-On, Onta-On and Onta-Onta).
1. “On qua Onta” (the one of the many)
An example of ontology is the line of inquiry pursued collection of essays in Andre Bazin’s “What is Cinema.” Bazin, without having seen every film (onta, beings, the many) assumes that there must be something essential to cinema, something which is cinema’s being, unique to cinema. This is the “essence” of something. Bazin conceived of the essence of cinema as mis-en-scene (the arrangement of objects in the space of the frame) and montage (the arrangement of these “space-images” over time, “indirect-time-images”).
The same theory can be applied to everything. There are chairs. These chairs are all part of the set of chair-beings, the multiplicity that is chairs. If there are so many things, all which are chairs, and not tables, or pants (and so on) then there must be something essential to chairs alone, an essence. The same applies to concepts like love, virtue, or joy, and also to groups of knowledge like mathematics, science, art-theory (and so on). Whenever there are many things (onta) gathered together, and then perceived as one (on) then we do a form of ontology. In this sense, ontology is a theory of language, in which every word, every concept, has an essence. This is the art of philosophy, revealing the essence of every concept. This is very close to the way in which Socrates (through Plato) thought of ideas (eidos), each with its own signular essence, its own individual and essential meaning (ref: Plato’s Theory of Being).
2. “On qua On” (the one of all ones)
A logic of “being” is a theory which can be applied to everything we think, everything we know. If one follows that to “be” something, one must “not be” something else (which is being itself) then one can also follow this with the notion that all these things being a set together have something in common (being itself).
Plato’s theory of being was centred in “thought.” Aristotle’s was centred in physical existence. For Aristotle thoughts were not “being,” they were had after “being” had happened in the “real world.” For Aristotle the world happened, and then we had thoughts about it, and hence thoughts must come after objects in the world. The “real world” or “really real” is referred to as “ontos on” in Greek, and for Aristotle refers to objects. For Aristotle each of thse objects is being part of a set of objects, of beings, just as in Plato. All of these objects have a single “essence” as in Plato. The only difference is that Aristotle centres his thought on objects in the world, not thoughts in the mind. For Plato the word tree is always a word, always a concept. For Aristotle the word tree stands in for the real thing.
After conceiving of everything in the universe as “being” itself, and not being anything else Aristotle then went one step further. He asked: if there is rock-being, and people-being, and other animal-being, and planet-being (and so on) then is there not something essential to all of these physical “beings,” something which was common among all “being.” The science of rocks, of animals, of people, of planets, all these performed the task of asking “on qua onta.” To ask what was common to all these beings was to ask “on qua on.” This was the special object of “metaphysics.”
What is common to all being? What is the “being of being”? For Aristotle it was “substance,” or “Ousia.” Substance was comprised of two sides: one which visibly faces us, and one which is facing away, invisible. The one facing us Aristotle called eidos, or “form” which comprised of our perceptions of forms, and our “ideas” of/as these forms (Plato’s “eidos”).This was what we saw and perceived with the other senses. Form is what varies, rather than what is common to “being qua being.” Aristotle argued that there was something underneath “form/eidos,” something we cannot see. This was the common feature of being, which he called “matter.”
3. “Onta qua On” (the many of the one)
Aristotle did not like the atomist view, that matter could be broken into more pieces (into atoms, and energy, just as substance had subdivided into form and matter). Lucretius, however, a Latin poet, took up this approach. He argues that if there was a universal matter, of which we were all made, then it would also break down into finer and finer particles, into “grains” (like Egyptian thought). These tiny, and indivisible particles he called, after the Greek atomists, “Atoma.” In Lucretius’ only (surviving) book, The Nature of the Universe, he theorises half of a working “Theory of Thermodynamics” (energy is indestructable, and simply changes forms, all things must tend toward balance) and many more things besides. This then reverses into “on qua onta” and produces our conception of energy (a “one” of the “many” atoms). Considering that Lucretius was writing in 50 A.C.E. his work is startlingly ahead of its time (relatively speaking).
4. Onta qua Onta (the many of the many)
In a sense, Liebniz’s physics approaches this final mode of ontology, an understanding not of the many as one, or the one as many, or the one of all ones. In Leibniz the atom is called the “monad” and has a “soul,” and an area for “windows” (which indicate a perceiving consciousness). Rather than material atoms Leibniz starts again from an “intersubjective” position in which everything is living, every smallest particle of our world alive and conscious. Each monad of matter is conceived as “folds,” and “pleats” rather than as atoms, or separate particles. “Matter is folds and the forces that act to create un/folding.”
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Bibliography (Wayfarer Gallery)
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Aristotle, The Metaphysics
Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (for a great impression/review of this book visit What Birds Give Up: The Fold Notes)
Lucretius, The Nature of the Universe (for a great impression of Lucretius visit: The Timeless Infinite Universe)
F.E. Peters, A Lexicon of Greek Philosophical Terms
Plato, The Symposium, Meno
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