  From roughly the beginning of the 1920s Rickert’s philosophy is characterized by what has been referred to as an “ontological turn” (Farges 2010, 26; Kuttig 1987). However, in Rickert’s eyes the introduction of ontology is not a departure from his earlier epistemological focus or the leap into a completely new philosophical dimension. As his definition of ontology as “the doctrine of what is predicated as being” (Rickert 1934b, 54) already suggests, ontological questions are deeply connected to questions about judgment and predication. In other words, if we take our knowledge to consist of judgments and if we take our judgments to consist of a formal and a material component, then it is legitimate to ask what is the material component cast into conceptual forms in judgments. As the opening quote of this section indicates, for Rickert it is important to uphold pluralism in ontology. In keeping with the pluralism of meaningful predication (there is a plurality of things that we can meaningfully articulate judgments about), we cannot dogmatically presuppose that there is only one meaning of the ‘being’ addressed in our predicative activities. In this regard, far from being detrimental to a genuine ontological investigation, Rickert’s insistence on the preeminence of epistemology turns out to have a positive effect on ontology. If the compass to orient ourselves in ontology is meaningful predication, then we are from the beginning immune to dogmatic reductions of what is to one monistically conceived dimension of reality (Rickert 1934b, 57).