This paper discusses Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas’attitude towards ontology. On the one hand, that Ricoeur revised the conventional ontology means that he not only has replaced the question of “it is” pursued by conventional ontology, with the phenomenological descriptions and the hermeneutical analyses of the question “both it is and it not is” formally, but also renovated this kind of ontology in content. On the other hand, starting from his typical reading of ontology, Levinas has proved the preferential and important meaning for his “the ethics for others” and its superiority to ontology, and the important significance for philosophy. Accordingly, the revision and transcendence to ontology is a strong current in contemporary French philosophy. This paper tries to affirm the meaning and value of the trend.
