This article approaches the notion of engagement from the perspective of
critical ontology. With language as the starting point of its hermeneutic
task, it commences with an etymological analyses of diverse Indo-European
words gravitating around the semantic field of the notion of engagement.
From these introductory insights obtained by an exercise in comparative
linguistics, devotion and commitment are mapped as two opposite, yet
inseparable, modes of being of engagement. Both of these modes seem to
condition engagement in an ontologically disparate manner. While examining
their fundamental structures, some of the canonical concepts of history of
philosophy such as being, existence, subjectivity, or world - and also some
of its constitutive binary oppositions such as body/mind,
individual/collective, transcendence/immanence, light/darkness and
sacred/secular - will be reconsidered through the prism of different
ontological dispositions that devotion and commitment impose respectively on
engagement. The overall aim of this investigation is to bring forth the main
existential characteristics of being-engaged, by interpreting the roles of
who, where, and what of engagement, and in order to provide a fundamental
conceptual apparatus for a critical ontology of engagement.