Ontology — The branch of philosophy that studies being as being: what exists, what are the modes of existence, what are the fundamental categories of the real. The term was coined in the 17th century (Goclenius, 1613) and systematized in the 18th century by Wolff (Philosophia Prima, 1730), but ontological investigation goes back to Parmenides (“Being is; non-being is not”) and Aristotle (Metaphysics). Heidegger revives the question of being (Seinsfrage) as philosophy’s fundamental problem, forgotten by the metaphysical tradition.
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