Aristotle´s construction of a typological ontology

This project wants to demonstrate that Aristotle`s ontological programme consists in the construction of a typological ontology in opposition to the concept of a gradational ontology. The entities of the average reality are evaluated as adequate exemplifications of essential properties; therefore essences equally distributed in the particular entities and universals predicated of these entities are introduced into the ontological field; the consideration of the average reality as an imperfect one is rebutted. Aristotle wants to build up an alternative ontology in direct opposition to Plato`s ontology (or to his interpretation of the significance of this ontology): He does not accept the division of the entities composing the reality into independently existing models and into copies of these models; his interpretation of reality distinguishes between instantiations of properties and properties, the latter of which do not exist by themselves in an authentic world, but only as potentialities for their actualization in the particular entities. Essences are distributed in an equal way in the particular entities, since every exemplification of a property is regarded as an adequate exemplification of the property itself. As, for example, every human being exemplifies in an identical way the property "human being" and is not considered as being inferior, in this realization itself, to a privileged bearer of this same property, every element of this class of particular substances can be the subject of a uniform predication of the universal "man": Thus universals are introduced for the first time into an ontology. We obtain therefore in Aristotle a typological ontology which eliminates the peril of the third man regress. As to the method of this investigation, my general method is that of strict logical analysis as practiced in Analytical Philosophy. In particular, I am convinced that the ontological positions which Aristotle develops in his later works are closely to be connected with the contents of De Ideis: The incompatibility between substance and universal spoken of in various passages of the Metaphysics is, for instance, to be connected with the difference between common entities and particular things of De Ideis.