TRISTAN GARCIA'S TYPOLOGY OF ONTOLOGIES

This is Garcia's diagram of a substantialist ontology. There is a split between primary and secondaryqualities, predicates, and entities. The thing-in-itself is hermetically sealed off, whereas the secondary qualities, predicates, and entities refer their being to the in-itself substance:

"In this type of substantial model of the distribution of being, the being of certain secondary entitiesflows towards the being of primary entities, which itself flows in a closed circuit". (Forme et Objet, 16, my translation).

This is the substantialist- or substance-model of ontology. Kacem classes Harman's OOO as a substance-ontology in this sense. It also corresponds to what Feyerabend calls a Parmenidean ontology, with simple and unchanging substances underlying the complexity of appearances.

The vectorial model of ontology is quite different in that it gives primacy to event over substance. The thing (chose) is constructed a posteriori, and the vector of being is primary. Vectorial ontologiesfor Garcia include Nietzsche and Bergson:

"A second model consists in distributing being no longer substantially but vectorially. In this case we conceive trajectories of being, identified with events, facts, powers, intensities, or intentionality: these vectors of being are primary" (17).

This is the typology that Kacem refers to when he declares that ultimately Garcia, despite wishing to move beyond this opposition, has more in common with the substantial ontologies, and that he could have called his book "Being without Event". As for Kacem Harman is entirely within the substantial model, this diagnosis applies with even more force to Harman's OOO.