The essay is intended to delineate the fundamental profile of a general ontology of life, held to be an unavoidable necessity for a well-founded idea of the unification of knowledge and of every practice in human research. Modern and contemporary science neglect and almost forget the specificity and originality of the primordial phenomenon of life. Philosophy falls victim to the same mistake and separates the domains of spirit and the human sciences from their root in life; this is precisely the dimension that we intend to recover. Following Husserl, Scheler, and Jonas, we believe that the fundamental core of the primordial phenomenon of life is to be found in the idea of "force," since it is a dimension that contemporary physicalism is unable to grasp in its specificity. Beyond these great philosophers, we also follow the original approaches of philosophically gifted scientists such as L. von Bertalanffy, F. Capra, H. Maturana and F. Varela. At the conclusion of this contribution, we advise that the fundamental ontology of life would be a task that is just preliminary to the unveiling of the dimension of spirit, rather than the exclusive and last purpose of philosophy.