New Ways of Ontology

by Nicolai Hartmann (Editor)

Overview

Contemporary philosophy has reasserted the belief that philosophy has practical tasks. This turn reflects an understanding that the life of the individual and the community is not molded merely by personal needs and fortunes but also by the strength of dominant ideas. For Nicolai Hartmann, ideas are spiritual powers belonging to the realm of thought, but thought has its own strict discipline and critique of events. In his view, theory must include within its scope problems of the contemporary world and cooperation in work that needs doing.

New Ways of Ontology stands in opposition to the tradition of Heidegger. With deep appreciation of the history of philosophical controversy, Hartmann divides mistakes of the old ontology into those related to its method and those concerning its content. Hartmann finds a common mistake behind methodological approaches inspired by late German romanticism in attempts to develop a complete systematic account of the categories of being—not only of the ideal, but of real being.

The main task of New Ways of Ontology is to reveal and analyze interdependences and interconnections. The divisions of being and becoming, of the separation of existence and essence, as well as the old view that the real and the ideal exclude each other, require revision. For Hartmann, whose ideas take us close to modern social science research, ontology is the neutral category that includes subject and object, and gets beyond old realism and modern idealism alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781412842860
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	01/15/2012
Edition description:	Translatio
Pages:	148
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Fritz Plasser

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1: The End of the Old Ontology; 2: The Categories of Being; 3: A New Concept of Reality; 4: The New Ontology and the New Anthropology; 5: The Stratified Structures of the World; 6: Old Mistakes and New Critique; 7: Modification of the Fundamental Categories; 8: The Strata Laws of the Real World; 9: Dependence and Autonomy in the Hierarchy of Strata; 10: Objections and Prospects; 11: The Stratification of the Human Being; 12: Determination and Freedom; 13: A New Approach to the Problem of Knowledge

Editorial Reviews

This is an interesting and suggestive little book . . . Hartmann’s philosophy is most similar to what is known in this country as emergent evolution . . . [However,] Hartmann opposes both the reductionism of materialism and that of idealism. This is not merely emergent evolutionism as we have known it . . . Here we find suggestions, both subtle and intriguing, for the structuring of the different realms and the tracing of their inter-relationships.” —W. Donald Oliver, The Philosophical Review “Hartmann’s concept of categorical analysis suggests a fruitful field for metaphysical speculation.” —Jack Kaminsky, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

From the Publisher