Optical connotations in the early philosophical ontology

The article analyses the problem of correlation between the visible and the things existent in the early philosophical ontology. The role of physical sight in the human knowledge of factual circumstances of existence is explained. It is shown that the ancient criticism of the visual experience causes the idea of a transition from the empirical to the theoretical level of the knowledge of the things. This criticism saved the optical connotations and reproduces the structure of visual perception in the sphere of philosophical ontology. Visual perception allows a person to carry out practical orientation in the empirical world. This orientation, however, does not exhaust the human faculty of cognition. The knowledge about the laws of the world as a whole is the basis of human behavior. The person receives this knowledge by abstracting from all of this in sensory experience (sense data). Such abstract knowledge about the existing-in-general is formed in the early philosophical ontology. Ancient Greek philosophy puts forward a program of transition from the level of physical sight to the level of intellectual contemplation. The first level is the cause of human opinion of existence, the second level is condition for the formation of the divine knowledge of the universal being. Opinion, based on the physical vision, is a delusion; the higher knowledge is the truth. However, the tendency to the discrediting of vision is incoherent and incomplete in the classical philosophical ontology. Abstract essence is denoted by the ancient Greeks as ''idea'', but this word in any use means ''view'', ''appearance''. The process of cognition of such an abstract entity is called by the word ''theory'', which verbally means ''contemplation'', ''look'' or ''show''. The world as a whole has the form of a sphere. Then, Greek philosophers (Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle) spoke about the metaphysical knowledge as the optical operation of a specific type. This cognitive operation is not performed with the eyes, but with the power of some ''internal visual organ'', which is called the ''eye of the soul'' by Plato and Aristotle. So, according to the first experiences of building a philosophical ontology, physical vision plays its role at the lowest level of knowledge, forming the practical experience; the intellectual contemplation (speculation) gives a person the knowledge about the essence of the physically visible world, but it saves the ''optical'' organization of the process of cognition as such.

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