Being

The question of being (Greek, "eon" or "ousia"; Latin, "esse"; German "Sein"; French, "étre"), in philosophy, has been a 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. Philosophers often suppose a certain kind 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 material or a sensible entity as the primary model of being and identify physical sensibility with the primary sense of being. Aristotle, Husserl, and Heidegger, are some 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 methodologies.

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, and God do not exist in the same sense as physically sensible material things do. In which sense do each kind of being exist is, thus, subject to philosophical discussion. Some philosophers recognized the multiplicity of sense of being and developed their thoughts.

Plato and Aristotle

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.

For Plato, ideas and values are true beings and they exist eternally in an incorporeal realm of the world. Whereas, material things are subject to change and decay, so they are less real, ephemeral, "shadowy" reality whose degree of reality is determined by how much they partake and manifest ideas which are true reality.

Aristotle was the first philosopher who was fully aware of the diverse sense of being. In his Metaphysics, he elaborated the complexity and multiplicity of the sense of being. He argued that 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.

God was the primary being for Medieval philosophers, from which all other beings are derived from. Thomas Aquinas, perhaps following the Persian philosopher Avicenna, argued that God is pure being, and that in God alone essence and existence are the same.

Modern philosophers, however, took a sensible material thing as the model of being and identified sensibility or physicality as the primary sense of being. This perspective of being has been dominant throughout modern times.

Husserl and Heidegger

In late nineteenth century, Edmund Husserl challenged this presupposition of modern philosophy. Husserl recognized that various kinds of being such as normative beings, values, space, time, mathematical objects, logical objects, historical object, and other do exist but in different senses. Husserl gained this insight probably from his teacher Franz Brentano who elaborated it in his On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. Husserl, thus, developed phenomenology as a philosophical methodology which can describe multiple senses of being. For example, in describing in which sense "time" exists, Husserl inquired into how time presents itself to us and developed a phenomenology of time. Similarly, for all kinds of objects, Husserl inquired into how each kind of being presents its sense of being to human subjects. Although Husserl did not finish this project, he at least laid the foundation of its philosophical methodology.

Heidegger, a student of Husserl, is the philosopher who took the question of being (ontology) as the primary subject of philosophy in the twentieth century. Heidegger combined phenomenology and hermeneutics to develop hermeneutic phenomenology, and used it as his methodology to inquire into the question of being. Because the meaning of the existence or being is the primary concern for human beings, Heidegger attempted to articulate the structure of how a human being understands or interprets his or her existence. In his inquiry to the meaning of being, Heidegger explicated the roles of death and conscience, teleological interdependence of being, and other unique elements which constitute human understanding of being.

Existentialists such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Karl Jaspers, Sartre inquired into unique modes of being of human beings, and explored complex elements involved in human existence, which includes freedom, authenticity - inauthenticity, anxiety, commitment, death, good and evil, faith, fate, and others. For existentialists, the meaning of being is intertwined with axiological and aesthetic elements.

Interdependency of being

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" and explicated teleological interconnectedness of beings.

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.

Embodiment of truth

Being has an intricate relationship with truth. In religious traditions, truth is often understood as being inseparable to being. For example, Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (john 14:6) in Bible. Here, truth is understood not as some kind of property or object one can possess or lose, but as being itself. So, Jesus did not say "I have the truth" but said "I am the truth."

The concept of the embodiment of truth is found in other religious traditions as well. Avatamsaka Sutra in Buddhism, for examples, describes the world as the manifestation of truth. In Confucianism and Taoism, perfect individual is also understood as the one who embodied truth.

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
• Brentano, Franz Clemens, and Rolf George. On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. ISBN 0520023463 ISBN 9780520023468
• Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, trans. Linda Russell. Oxford University Press, 1985. (in English)
• Husserl, Edmund. The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964. ISBN 0253200970 ISBN 9780253200976
• Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness; An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956.

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

• Philosophy Sources on Internet EpistemeLinks
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Guide to Philosophy on the Internet
• Paideia Project Online
• The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Project Gutenberg

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