Kondylis's conception of social ontology does not offer any fixed causalities or laws nor does it say what people ought to do or not do in any given situation or how their social action should unfold. The task of social ontology is accordingly not to reduce fluid and varied phenomena to basic samples and basic genetic factors; what is sought is to show the spectrum of the forces and factors, which can be constituted and become discernible only from the – irreducible and inexhaustible – diversity of form. Such forces and factors, of course, include certain constants such as striving for self-preservation through the expanding of one's own power, and the friend–foe relation, which exist in all societies and are actualised in concrete historical situations and therefore have concrete dimension and content e.g.
Kondylis's notion of social ontology does not provide any fixed causalities or laws, nor does it specify what people should or should not do in a given situation or how their social actions should unfold. The task of social ontology is to reveal the range of forces and factors that shape complex phenomena, rather than reducing them to basic elements.