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.