The article analyzes the sustainability/resilience dichotomy from a systemic perspective, exploring the arguments that underlie the rhetoric around sustainable development, simultaneously seeking to frame the alternatives that can best be applied to the management of the problematic relationship between society and nature. Based on the growing perception that current governance models are inadequate to provide the necessary answers to face global challenges, the transposition of the concept of resilience to the domain of social ontology, may contribute to the paradigm shift, reinforcing the nexus of agency and perceptions, through the concept of ontological resilience.