The Ethics of Ontology

ousia points already in Aristotle to the perplexing presence of the concrete individual, itself irreducible to the hegemony of form

as Theodor Adorno suggests, “we speak Aristotle all our lives and ‘don’t even know it,’”

ousia operates both conceptually and practically.

Aristotle’s conception of ousia, traditionally rendered “substance,” but more literally, simply “being,” functions both in Aristotle and throughout the history of Western thinking as a parameter according to which the totality of beings is quite literally set in order.

The tremendous power of the Aristotelian distinction between form and matter lies in its universal applicability: anything can be thematized as a composite of these two principles

such principles have historically animated the various structures of oppression operating at the very heart of Western civilization.

aura of objectivity to these principles that serves to legitimate the manner in which they function

Yet this Aristotelian legacy fails to recognize the contingent nature of all ontological investigation

ethics, which concerns itself with the contingency of human character and action

Ontology, the search for the ultimate principles of reality