10 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
American philosopher who has developed easy ontology — a deflationary approach to metaphysics according to which existence questions can often be answered 'easily' by appeal to linguistic and conceptual facts.
Jean-Paul Sartre's phenomenological ontology distinguishing being-in-itself (the brute facticity of things) from being-for-itself (consciousness, which is nothingness negating itself) and developing radical freedom, bad faith, and the conflict of consciousnesses.
Martin Heidegger's foundational work developing existential analytic of Dasein — human existence — as the pathway to recovering the forgotten question of Being.
German philosopher who developed a comprehensive systematic ontology (Strukturontologie) arguing that Being as such — the absolutely universal dimension — is the subject matter of ontology and must be analyzed through a framework of structures.
German philosopher whose Being and Time reframed the question of Being through existential analysis of Dasein, and who developed a sustained critique of modernity's technological enframing.
Plato's late dialogue in which the Eleatic Stranger attempts to define the sophist — leading to a radical revision of Parmenidean metaphysics and an account of how false statements are possible.
Lorenz Puntel's systematic ontology presenting a comprehensive theory of structures — logical, ontological, alethic, and modal — constituting Being as such.
Merleau-Ponty's unfinished posthumous work developing the concept of the flesh (la chair) — the sensing-sensed chiasm that is neither subject nor object but the medium of all experience.
An English-language introduction to Lorenz Puntel's systematic ontology co-authored with Alan White, presenting the core arguments of Structure and Being for an anglophone audience.
American philosopher who dismantled the analytic-synthetic distinction and meaning-theoretic foundationalism in Two Dogmas of Empiricism, developed naturalistic epistemology, and argued for an inscrutability of reference.