In this chapter, the phenomenologico-ontological question concerning the sense of Being is investigated within the atmosphere of breathing. The mainstream of Western philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle onward, has been predominantly ocularcentric. The phenomenological tradition in general, as well as phenomenological ontology (Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty), belongs to this ocularcentric tradition. In Being and Time, Heidegger states that seeing is our primary access to beings and Being; the a priori structure of being-in-the-world is essentially “care,” and this care is fundamentally a “care for seeing.” All the other structures of being-in-the-world are intertwined with this priority of sight. According to Merleau-Ponty, philosophy can be reborn through an intimate relationship with the arts and poetry. This raises a critical question: is it possible for poets and artists to challenge the phenomenologico-ontological understanding of the priority of sight in respiratory terms? In this chapter, the primary challengers are Elias Canetti and Marcel Duchamp. Canetti derived his respiratory thinking from poet and author Hermann Broch, for whom breathing was the authentic and primary sense of how the world is experienced. Similarly, during the last two decades of his life, Duchamp understood breathing as his “prime occupation,” identifying himself simply as a “breather.” This chapter interrogates what occurs when Canetti’s and Duchamp’s priority of breathing is taken seriously as a challenge to reroot the foundations of phenomenological ontology. What kind of ontology emerges if the primary access to Being is understood not in visual but in respiratory terms?