Abstract

The term ‘ontology’ appears only twice in Leibniz’s immense corpus. The most significant occurrence of ‘ontology’, as well as one crossed-out occurrence of ‘ontosophy’, follow the mention of a ‘general science’ (written either with small or with capital initials). Leibniz’s conception of a General Science makes clear why ontology lacks generality and is thus to be rejected. First, as a division of what is thinkable, or “small general science”, ontology cannot fulfill the program of a real metaphysics that goes back to the principles of things. Second, even this real metaphysics cannot fulfill the program of the “capital General Science” understood as a reform of the art of inventing itself. The neologism ‘ontology’ was thus to be dismissed as the absurd name of an abstract metaphysics of being. Much more important for Leibniz was to reconsider the program associated with one of the established names of ‘ontology’: that of a true General Science.