Fundamental ontology

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Fundamental ontology is a term coined by the philosopher Martin Heidegger in his work “ Being and Time ” . It encompasses the analysis of the fundamental structures of being human, of Dasein , through the elaboration of what constitutes the human being in his being, the existentials .

The early Heidegger tried all being on the existence and its by recycling understanding of being the ontology to put on a new basis. For him, fundamental ontology was the basic task of every philosophy .

The initial problem

Heidegger assumes that classical metaphysics always only after a being asked about the existence forgot ( " Seinsvergessenheit "). Heidegger asks this “question of being” again: “What do we mean when we say the sky is blue?” In order to answer the question of being, it takes Heidegger

  1. a deconstruction of the classic metaphysical prejudices and
  2. the establishment of a fundamental ontology which - as the term suggests - gives every further ontology its foundation. Only then can the question of the meaning of being be answered.

This task is carried out above all by placing time in the center as a horizon for interpreting being. If, according to Heidegger, classical metaphysics with Aristotle presented being as substance , this also resulted in a restriction to the time appropriate to the substance, the present. By emphasizing the fundamental importance of time for the understanding of being, Heidegger hopes for a new approach for each subsequent ontology.

Heidegger begins his hermeneutic investigation with an analysis of each question structure. It shows that in addition to what is asked and asked about, a respondent is always required. The latter is chosen so that there could also be the answer. But the only being who can ask and answer the question of the meaning of being at all is man. In order to avoid existing associations with the expression 'human', Heidegger chooses the term 'Dasein' as the name for human beings. Dasein is therefore “Being, whose being is about its being itself.” Dasein has always had a certain pre-understanding of itself and the world, and this is where we start.

In order not to falsify the fundamental ontological analysis by grafting on a theoretical building, Heidegger does not start with a theoretical view, but with existence in its everyday life. The connection to everyday life should help avoid paradigmatic guidelines. At the same time, it cannot simply be a presentation of everyday life, which is why Heidegger combines the phenomenological investigation with a hermeneutical-interpretative one. Carrying out this analysis is the main moment in his work “Being and Time” .

Heidegger's departure from the fundamental ontological approach

Fundamental ontology as a prerequisite for working out the question of the meaning of being , as Heidegger strives for in his work “Being and Time” , to a certain extent overlaps with the question of being. This is because Heidegger, on the one hand, regards fundamental ontology as a prerequisite for answering the question about the meaning of being, and on the other hand, answering the question about the meaning of being itself is a prerequisite for every ontology, i.e. also for fundamental ontology. This indicates a later failure of fundamental ontology.

While Heidegger in “Being and Time” with his fundamental ontology still claims to create the basis for all further ontologies , Heidegger's view of this changes after the turn . Heidegger later found the return of all being to existence to be too “anthropocentric” and he now tried to think of being in terms of being itself, which led to his conception of a history of being .

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Jean Grondin: The reawakening of the question of being on the way to a phenomenological-hermeneutic destruction . in: Thomas Rentsch (Ed.): Being and time. Berlin 2001, p. 14
  2. ↑ Cf. Jean Grondin: The reawakening of the question of being on the way to a phenomenological-hermeneutic destruction . in: Thomas Rentsch (Ed.): Being and time. Berlin 2001, p. 12f