Being

Do not copyedit this article! I am still working on it. —Keisuke Noda 19:01, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

The question of being (Greek, "eon" or "ousia"; Latin, "esse"; German "Sein"; French, "étre"), in philosophy, has been one of the central topic of metaphysics; the study of "being" is called ontology.

Although we use the same word "is," the meaning of being is different according to its kind such as: sensible material being; values and norms; principles; mathematical objects; time; space; God, and others. Each philosopher often takes certain sense of being as primary. Thomas Aquinas, for example, conceived God as the primary being, from which all other beings in the world receive its existence. Materialists, on the contrary, conceive a material or sensible entity as the primary model of being and identify physical sensibility with the primary sense of being. Aristotle, Husserl, and Heidegger, are some of philosophers who developed their philosophy with the full awareness that there are diverse senses of being.

Being has been often inquired into in contrast to its reciprocal concept, and the meaning of being differs according to its paired concept, for example, being and becoming, being and appearance or phenomena, being and thought, being or "is" and ought, being and essence, being and beings, and being and existence. How to approach the question of being is determined by the style of thought or philosophical approach or methodology. Analytic philosophy and phenomenology, two major trends of contemporary philosophy, approach the question of being by applying totally different philosophical methodology.

Multiple senses of being in a paired set of concepts

Being is often paired with another concept and the sense of being differs according to what it is paired with. The pairs listed below are some of those often discussed in the history of philosophy. These pairs, however, often overlap and they are not mutually exclusive.

Being and becoming

Being, when it is contrasted with becoming, means immutability, permanence, or constant. For example, Plato found the primary sense of being in this sense. He asserted that the Ideas are "real" existence and material beings are ephemeral "shadows" of these Ideas for the reason that Ideas are immutable, permanent existence whereas material beings can decay and change. Aristotle's concept of "substance" ("ousia") is also another example.

Some philosophers, on the contrary, found the primary sense of being in change and process. Heraclitus, for example, held this view and symbolized being as "fire." The existence of fire lies in its dynamic process of emission of energy. Likewise, for Heraclitus, being primarily means becoming, change, and dynamic process. Thomas Aquinas also applied this dynamic concept of being to God's existence. Aquinas tried to present God's activity by this active concept of being.

Being and phenomena

Being, when it is contrasted with phenomena, means true reality in contrast to mere appearances or what appears to sense perception. Plato, for example, inquired into the true reality of being in contrast to what appears to our five senses. For Plato, the true reality of being are permanent, immutable Ideas, which intellect alone can grasp. Thing are beautiful, for example, by virtue of the Idea of beauty which is the true reality. What appears to our five senses is a less real, ephemeral appearance.

Being and thought

Being, when it is contrasted with thought, means the objective reality that is outside of the cognitive subject. Thought refers to ideas in the mind and being to spatio-temporal, extra-mental existence. This contrast was used by modern philosophers who had an epistemological concern. The contrast of being and thought appeared within the question of how ideas or thoughts in the mind can be a real representation of the objective reality which exists outside of the mind.

Is (being) and ought

Being or "is," when it is contrasted with ought, means factuality in contrast to normativeness. Kant, for example, distinguished prescriptive statements in morality, which use "ought" or "should," in contrast to natural, descriptive statements which describes what they factually are.

Being and essence

Being, when it is contrasted with essence, means actual existence. Essence of a being is what it is and whether it in fact exists or not is a separate question. Anselm, for example, argued that God is a unique being whose essence is its existence while essence (what it is) and existence are separable for all beings other than God. He developed "ontological proof of the existence of God" based upon this identity of being and essence in God. Biblical concept of God as "I am who I am" expresses this identity.

Being and beings

Being, when it is contrasted with beings, means existence in the sense of event or fact of to-be. Beings mean particular entities that exist, but being means the fact of existence itself. Martin Heidegger, for example, stressed upon this distinction in order to highlight the concept of being or to-be as a dynamic activity.

Diversity of the sense of being

There are diverse senses of being according to its kind. Material beings exist in the space-time world and they exist in the sense of physical reality which is detectable by physical senses or physical instruments. Ideas and values such as love, justice, good do not exist in the same sense of being as physically sensible material. In which sense do they exist is subject to philosophical discussion. For Plato and Medieval Scholastics, those ideas and values are real existences in an incorporeal realm of the world.

The sense of existence of time, space, numbers, principles are also subject to philosophical discussion.

Some philosophers elaborated on the existence of human beings. Existentialists, for example, explored complex elements involved in human existence , which includes freedom, authenticity - inauthenticity, anxiety, death, good and evil, justice, afterlife, faith, and others.

Heidegger, who took the question of being (ontology) as the primary subject of philosophy in the twentieth century, analyzed how a human being interprets the meaning of his existence. A human being does not exist in the same sense as a material thing exits, and instead man constantly interprets the meaning of his existence. In his Being and Time, Heidegger developed the analysis of Dasein (human being in a rough sense) as hermeneutic phenomenology.

Existentialists such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Karl Jaspers, Sartre all highlighted unique modes of human existence and tried to explicate them.

Interdependency of being

Beings can exist in the web of interconnected relations to other beings. The relationship between God and human beings, those among human beings, those between human beings and material things, and those among material things are not the same. Martin Buber, for example, conceptually distinguished God-man relationship as "I-thou" relationship from relationships among material things in the world.

Aristotle viewed the world as a teleologically organized organic whole, where all beings are mutually connected by multiple purposes. Medieval scholastics viewed this interconnectedness within a creationist perspective. Leibniz viewed this interconnectedness within the idea of "pre-established harmony," and Heidegger conceptualized the interconnected mode of human existence as "being-in-the-world."

Historical conceptions

Existence can be seen as central to many systems of belief, religions, and myths. Beliefs concerning existence may posit additional properties, such as value or goodness. Divergent conceptions of existence have often resulted in tension amongst communities with differing beliefs about existence, especially when coupled with the related question of worldview.

In the western tradition of philosophy, the first comprehensive treatments of the subject are from Plato's Phaedo, Republic, and Statesman and Aristotle's Metaphysics, though earlier fragmentary writings exist. Aristotle developed a theory of being, according to which only individual things called substances are fully beings, but other things such as relations, quantity, time and place (called the categories) have a derivative kind of being, dependent on individual things.

The medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas, perhaps following the Persian philosopher Avicenna, argued that God is pure being, and that in God essence and existence are the same. At about the same time, the nominalist philosopher William of Ockham, argued, in Book I of his Summa Totius Logicae (Treatise on all Logic, written some time before 1327) that Categories are not a form of Being in their own right, but derivative on the existence of individuals.

In Hindu philosophy, existence is only of one object called Brahma. All other forms of existence are manifestations of this unique reality Brahma, due to influence of an agency called Maya. To perceive the existence of the unique reality of Brahma, one has to learn to come out of the influence of Maya.

See also

• Being and existence
• Cogito ergo sum
• Meaning of life
• Metaphysics
• Ontology

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Aristotle. The Metaphysics, translated by Hugh Lawson-Tancred. London; New York: Penguin Books, 1998. ISBN 0140446192
• Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, trans. Linda Russell. Oxford University Press, 1985. (in English)

External links

All links retrieved November 12, 2007.

• Existence on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Existence. Definitions from leading philosophers
• A documentary project about the meaning of life.

General Philosophy Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved December 7, 2007.
• The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved December 7, 2007.
• Philosophy Sources on Internet EpistemeLinks. Retrieved December 7, 2007.
• Guide to Philosophy on the Internet. Retrieved December 7, 2007.
• Paideia Project Online. Retrieved December 7, 2007.
• Project Gutenberg. Retrieved December 7, 2007.

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