The Passions of the Soul and the Elements in the Onto-Poiesis of Culture

Abstract

Traditional ontology and metaphysics inquired into the last principles and innermost structures of what is. They assumed the status quo of the world, the cosmos, and of objectivity as such. Overwhelmed by the power of the physical elemental forces with Nature, by then unreachable stars and planets and by their seeming endurance while human life surges, develops, and unfailingly declines toward extinction, the traditional ontologies sought in the notion “Being” an ever-present, and everywhere the same last principle that maintains whatever there is whether in stasis or in flux.