Ontology

"Philosophy, like mathematics as well, can be divided into two parts, namely into the pure and into the applied. - Metaphysics is the system of pure philosophy. The word metaphysics means a science which goes beyond the boundaries of nature. (Nature is the summation of all objects of experience.)A principle is a general rule, which again contains other rules under it. lf we take together all pure concepts which can be entirely separated from the empirical ones, then we attain thereby a science. Philosophical cognition consists of mere concepts a priori.

Physics is the philosophy of nature insofar as it depends on principles from experience; but metaphysics is the philosophy of nature insofar as it depends on a priori principles. Moral philosophy teaches us the practical principles of reason. The concepts toward which everything seems to be aimed is the concept of a highest being and of another world.

Metaphysics is necessary. Its ground is reason, which is never to be satisfied by empirical concepts. Reason finds satisfaction neither in the consideration of things, nor in the field of experience, i.e, in the sensible world. The concepts of God and of the immortality of the soul, these are the two great incentives on whose account reason went out beyond the field of experience.

A major question is: how are a priori cognitions possible? The whole pure mathematics is a science which contains only a priori concepts, without its supporting their ground on empirical concepts. That there are thus actual a priori cognitions is already proved; indeed, there is a whole science of sheer pure concepts of the understanding. But the question arises: how are the a priori cognitions possible? The science that answers this question is called critique of pure reason. Transcendental philosophy is the system of all our pure a priori cognitions; customarily it is called ontology. Ontology thus deals with things in general, it abstracts from everything particular. It embraces all pure concepts of the understanding and all principles of the understanding or of reason.

The main sciences that belong in metaphysics are: ontology, cosmology, and theology.


Ontology is a pure doctrine of elements of all our a priori cognitions, or: it contains the summation of all our pure concepts that we can have a priori of things."

More at http://www.formalontology.it/ontology-definitions-one.htm