Historical Ontology

Abstract

This chapter lays out the historical methodology of the book. The primary inquiry of this book is ontological, but not foundational. It is historical. In other words, it does not aim to identify the absolute and immutable structure of being forever and all time (being qua being). The contribution of Being and Motion is to locate a new historical ontology of motion—a minimal condition that, from the perspective of the present, appears to have always been a hidden dimension of the past. The aim is therefore to take one the most important (not the only or essential) features of contemporary reality (motion) and use it to reinterpret the dominant notions of ontology, such as space, time, force, quality, quantity, relation, and so on. From the vantage point of the present, the past can now be reinterpreted anew, without foreclosing the future.