Abstract

This work develops a comprehensive ontological reconstruction of the human being based on a foundational thesis: to be is to belong. In contrast to the modern paradigm of the sovereign individual—conceived as an isolated, self-sufficient entity prior to its bonds—this work proposes an Ontological Revolution of Belonging that redefines the subject as a Self of Belonging: biologically, affectively, temporally, and institutionally bound from its origin. The Philosophy of Belonging (PB) articulates this turn through a coherent theoretical architecture that integrates ontology, epistemology, science, psychology, economics, politics, and ethics. At its ontological core, belonging is established as a primary category of being, completed by an Ontology of the Limit, which demonstrates that every habitable belonging requires non-arbitrary boundaries in order to be compatible with freedom. The work grounds this thesis in a non-ergodic universe, where vital stability emerges from systemic integration against entropy, and anchors it materially in the neurobiology of bonding, identifying the limbic system as the central interface of inclusion and exclusion. At the epistemological level, the work shows that to know is to belong: truth, rationality, and science always emerge from epistemic communities governed by non-arbitrary rules. Post-truth thus appears as a rupture of epistemic belonging, not as a mere informational deficit. In critical dialogue with contemporary philosophical tradition, PB overcomes existentialist melancholy by showing that anguish, absurdity, and solitude are not ultimate truths of being, but symptoms of an incomplete ontology of the bond. In the psychological domain, the work introduces the Clinic of Action, which redefines psychic suffering as a real rupture of belonging, rather than as a merely internal cognitive error. This clinic is articulated with a systematic typology of Pathologies of Belonging, explaining how closed, conditional, instrumental, arbitrary, or phantasmatic belongings generate anxiety, depression, trauma, and social pathologies. Psychology is completed with a Theory of Relational Temporality, in which memory, presence, and promise constitute the ontological continuity of the Self, and with a theory of imaginative fantasy as a reparative faculty that sustains meaning and action in the face of the imperfection of real belonging. At the economic and institutional level, the work replaces Homo Economicus with the Self of Economic Belonging, redefining money, institutions, and law as collective fantasies of shelter whose function is to guarantee open, stable, and non-arbitrary belongings. Economic policy is reorganized around five objectives, culminating in the satisfaction of belongings as the supreme criterion of social success. Justice is reformulated as effective ontological recognition: place, continuity, and protection against arbitrariness. Finally, the work proposes an ethics of belonging and an Art of Living based on relational mastery, creative repair, and systemic responsibility, projecting a civilizational horizon founded on open belonging, creative freedom, and ontological continuity. The Philosophy of Belonging thus presents itself as an original transdisciplinary paradigm, capable of reorienting science, clinical practice, economics, institutions, and everyday life in the twenty-first century. This article was written with the assistance of ChatGPT and Gemini.