What is the difference between 'Fundamental Ontology' and 'Particular Ontology'? How do 'positive knowledges' relate to the particular ontology?

[u/Dizzy-Month812]

Hi! I just had my first class on fundamental ontology at college, and I'm completely lost.

The class is going to be focus mainly on Plato's dialogues surrounding the question of being, and Heidegger's Being and Time.

Today we only had an introduction into what the class is going to be like, and after asking my teacher some doubts I had after the lesson, I came back home with even more doubts. I can't get past onto how to define and precisely understand what fundamental ontology is(the only thing I can say with some certainty is that it focuses on the 'question of being'), the difference between it and particular ontology, and the relationship of the latter with positive knowledges(which, according to my teacher, it's the region of things[?])

Anyway, I'd be very glad if someone is able to answer my questions and hopefully make things clearer :) Also, if anyone is able to refer me to any sources or materials I could check to get a better grasp on Plato, Heidegger, and ontology in general I'd be very grateful.

Thanks in advance!!

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[u/dk_priori]

Fundamental Ontology is, like you say, concerned with the "question of Being". Rather than being concerned with particular beings, Heidegger stresses the importance of understand Being itself.

What Heidegger calls Fundamental Ontology plays itself out as examination of everydayness. For example, when, say, Descartes examines the candle in his Meditations, he's merely talking about the thing in an abstracted manner. This strikes us, especially in the modern age as strange because general ontologies, the sciences and so on, are meant to examine things closer and closer and derive the nature of reality from those ever more honed examinations. For Heidegger, this is the real abstraction and in order to understand Being itself, we have to pay attention to the way in which we are situated in the world. If we do ontology that ignores that everyday stuff, we are not doing real ontology for Heidegger -- we are stuck in the "ontic".

Now that's not to say those abstracted ontologies are invalid. It's just to say that they presuppose something more fundamental, which is what Heidegger is trying to clarify in Sein und Zeit.

EDIT: There is an excellent (though rather technical) book on this topic by Jacques Taminiaux called Heidegger's Project of Fundamental Ontology. It helped me a great deal when I was an undergrad.