2025-04Thematic Section
The Entity as Being: On the Ontological Aspects of Style

Abstract:

This article approaches style as an ontological aporia: the condition of appearing that cannot be grasped either as a property of an entity or as Being itself. Beginning from the etymological constellation of stilus/stylus and στῦλος, it reconstructs a tension between writing and architectural space, and shows how visible mappings of space (peristyle, hypostyle) articulate a schema in which things appear or withdraw. The argument then turns to Aristotle’s dynamis and energeia in order to describe style as a “between” that precedes determinate traits as their condition of possibility. Finally, through Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche’s “grand style” and Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on expression, the paper clarifies how style both enables and destabilizes the ontic–ontological binary. Style is thus neither ornament nor a “third” thing, but the work of mediation through which appearing is possible.

Keywords:

style, aporia, appearing, ontological difference, dynamis–energeia, phenomenology, ontology

How to cite:

Marczyński, Anton. “The Entity as Being: On the Ontological Aspects of Style.” Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture 9, no. 4 (2025): 69-97. https://doi.org/10.14394/eidos.jpc.2025.0035.

Author:

Anton Marczyński
Faculty of Philosophy and Cognitive Science, University of Białystok
Plac Niezależnego Zrzeszenia Studentów 1, 15-420 Białystok, Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2588-3607
a.marczynski@uwb.edu.pl

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