The syllabus focuses on two essential moments in the history of ontology: the Aristotelian idea of a science of “being qua being,” in the books of his Metaphysics, and the Kantian attempt to lay a new foundation for metaphysics in the Critique of Pure Reason. The nature of the Aristotelian “science that baffles us,” its character as a first philosophy but an aporetic science, will be discussed, as well as its relations
with the science of the “first mover.” The consequences of the “Copernican revolution” carried out by Kant, will be shown to include the impossibility of a speculative science of God, the Soul, and the World, as well as the way in which Kant considers it possible to establish a foundation for metaphysics on new bases. Attention will also be paid to the establishment of ontology in Modern Times as a discipline of the philosophical curriculum, as a science of being in general, and to the role played by Leibniz's system in the formation of Kant's critical project.