4:00 PM

Ted Daigle Auditorium

St. Thomas University’s Department of Philosophy invites you to this year’s Aquinas Lecture titled, “Is an Ontology of Life Possible? Heidegger and Aristotle on Living Beings” delivered by Dr. Francisco Gonzalez, Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa.

The lecture will take place on Friday, February 6, 2026 at 4:00 PM in the Ted Daigle Auditorium.

When Martin Heidegger first turns to Aristotle in the early 1920s, it is with the goal of finding in the ancient Greek philosopher resources for developing an ontology of life, i.e., an account of what characterizes living things as such in their very being. By the time he publishes Being and Time in 1927, however, Heidegger has abandoned this project in favour of a focus on distinctly human being (Dasein). In this work he claims that the only interpretation of what he calls "mere life" that is possible is a 'privative one', i.e., one that interprets life as lacking what defines human Dasein. In a course of 1929/30 (Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics) Heidegger then attempts this 'privative' interpretation of 'life', or rather of 'animal life' (since plants must be ignored completely): if the being of Dasein is being-in-the-world, he argues, animals are 'poor in world'. 

"In this talk I wish to challenge this abandonment and the severe restriction of an ontology of life by opposing to Heidegger the very Aristotelian texts (De Anima and the biological writings) that were his own initial inspiration," Dr. Francisco Gonzalez said.

"The question at issue is whether we can indeed understand life only negatively in opposition to our own way of being as 'mere life' or, on the contrary, can understand our own being only within a broader comprehension of life as such."