n.
Theory of being as such.
It was originally called "first philosophy" by Aristotle . In the 18th century Christian Wolff contrasted ontology, or general metaphysics, with special metaphysical theories of souls, bodies, or God, claiming that ontology could be a deductive discipline revealing the essences of things. This view was later strongly criticized by David Hume and Immanuel Kant . Ontology was revived in the early 20th century by practitioners of phenomenology and existentialism , notably Edmund Husserl and his student Martin Heidegger . In the English-speaking world, interest in ontology was renewed in the mid-20th century by W.V.O. Quine ; by the end of the century it had become a central discipline of analytic philosophy . See also idealism ; realism ; universal .