Features of Ontology in Aristotle

Abstract

In my contribution, I deal with some aspects concerning the textures, which, in my opinion, represent the bearing structures of Aristotle’s ontology. Throughout my investigation, I show that, within Aristotle’s ontology, the basic status of any individual/particular entity consists in its being an instance of a property or of a complex of properties: individual/particular entities are, constitutively, concretised properties. Neither bare entities, nor entities which could be neutral to all their properties, are admitted into Aristotle’s ontology; at least some properties represent the very framework of the individual/particular entities. Hence, essences do exist. Aristotle’s interpretation of individual/particular entities is an immediately essentialist one. I show thereafter the presence, within Aristotle’s ontology, of features which constitutively determine the status of substance and of universal. The complex of the features related to substances and to universals implies the existence of ontological rules making up the framework of any substance as such and of any universal as such. These ontological rules precede the properties belonging to the particular concrete substances as members of a particular species or of a particular genus. Among the ontological rules which govern substances and universals, the rules stating the incompatibility between substance and universal deserve particular attention, since any transgression committed against these rules can provoke the collapse of the whole ontology.