Esistenza, realtà, impegno ontologico. Alcune osservazioni su Quine e la riabilitazione dell'ontologia

This article examines Quine’s rehabilitation of ontology following Rudolf Carnap’s anti-metaphysical program, achieved by reducing the concept of «reality» to a notion of «existence» expressed through existential quantification. The paper analyzes two main lines of criticism against Quine’s approach: a «deflationist» perspective, which contends that Quine’s rehabilitated ontology remains a «pale zombie» of traditional metaphysics and that ontological disputes are ultimately verbal, and an «inflationist» view, which argues that Quine’s flat ontology fails to address genuine metaphysical questions concerning the "modes" of existence. Against both alternatives, this article posits that the selection of an ontology is deeply informed by a background metaphysical conception of reality. The paper concludes that a genuine rehabilitation of ontology, while leveraging Quine’s quantificational tools, should extend beyond simple existential quantification, investigating the higher-order criteria for evaluating competing metaphysical frameworks.