This book offers a new and original hypothesis on the origin of modal ontology, whose roots must be traced in the mathematical debate about incommensurable magnitudes, which is the implicit background of Plato’s last dialogues, culminating in the definition of being as dynamis in the Sophist. Incommensurable magnitudes – also called dynameis by Theaetetus – are presented as the solution to the problem of non-being  and serve as the cornerstone of a philosophy of difference and becoming.This also involves the passage to a rationality of mediation rather than of commensuration. Readers will discover therefore an insightful debate with some of the most important issues in philosophy reconsidered from the point of view of an ontology of the incommensurable. These issues include the infinite, the continuum, the existence, and the difference. The general perspective of the book is that the ontology and the rationality which arise out of the discovery of incommensurable constitutes a thread that runs through the entire history of philosophy, leading to Kantian transcendentalism and to the philosophies derived from it, such as Hegelianism and philosophical hermeneutics. The book is aimed at students of philosophy, from bachelor to doctorate, and in general to an audience interested in historical reconstruction or theoretical discussion of the treated topic, mainly students and scholars of ancient philosophy, German idealism, philosophical hermeneutics and history of mathematics.weiterlesen