Being and Existence

Being and existence in philosophy are originally not synonyms, although with respect to their meanings, they are related and somewhat overlapping. In the Middle Ages, perhaps under the influence of Islamic philosophy that recognized the contingency of the "existence" of the created world as compared with God, the word "existere" in Latin ("to exist" or "to appear") was distinguished from "esse" ("to be") or "essentia" ("essence"), an abstract form of the participle of "esse."

The relationship of being and existence is somewhat complex, but it can be better understood when being is contrasted with its paired concept, as in being and becoming, being and appearance or phenomena, being and essence, or being and thought. The meaning of being slightly differs according to its paired concept. The philosopher, implicitly or explicitly, holds a certain sense of being as primary, and his/her understanding of being constitutes the framework or background of his/her thought, although he/she does not necessarily discuss it thematically.

Modern existentialism and analytic philosophy revolted against the essentialism of the Medieval tradition that treated existence as basically contingent. But these modern revolts did not entirely ignore being or essence. Existentialism, for example, can be regarded as the existential appropriation of being or essence, which suggests a new integration of being and existence whereby we can experience being or essence or even God in a more profound way.

Distinction of Being and Existence

Philosophers often distinguish between being and existence, saying that the former is broader than the latter, i.e., that being applies not only to objects that actually exist but to objects that are merely abstract (e.g., qualities, relations, and numbers) and fictitious (e.g., centaurs, dragons, and Pegasus), whereas existence only applies to objects that actually exist.

Another way of distinguishing between being and existence is rather historical. The classical Greek equivalent of the English verb "be" is "einai," but there seems to be no classical Greek equivalent of the English verb "exist." It was only in the Middle Ages that the Latin word "exsistere" was made from a combination of "ex" ("out of") and "sistere" ("to cause to stand") to mean "to exist," "to appear," or "to emerge." The reason why classical Greek does not have any distinct concept of "exist" is that in Greek philosophy from Parmenides to Aristotle the primary project was a veridical one of articulating truthfulness in reality through copula sentences of the form "X is Y." The theory of predication was central, and the theory of existence peripheral. So, even when Greek philosophers wanted to express the concept of existence, they did so only in the predicative form; "X exists" was expressed as "X is something." Thus, the word "einai" ("be") had to be used more widely than its predicative meaning. It was in the context of this use of "einai" ("be") that Aristotle referred to the concept of existence as "hoti esti" ("that it is") as distinguished from "ti esti" ("what it is"), which would mean essence.

Of course, in late Greek philosophy the old Greek verb "hyparkein" (originally, "to make a beginning") started to be used non-technically to mean "to exist"; but, it and its early Latin rendering "exsistere" still continued somewhat ambiguously to retain the predicative meaning as well, and furthermore the use of the noun exsistentia ("existence") was not popular yet.

Eventually, however, the concept of "existentia" ("existence") was established amongst Christian philosophers of High Scholasticism such as St. Thomas Aquinas as a technical term contrasted with "essentia" ("essence"), an abstract form of the present participle of "esse" ("to be"). According to Charles H. Khan, this development of the modern sense of existence occurred under the influence of Islamic philosophy, which distinguished existence (wujud) from essence (mahiat) in its radical revision of Greek ontology in light of a biblical metaphysics of creation within Islam which distinguished the created world (contingency) from God (necessity). Thomas applied the distinction between essence and existence to each and every finite thing in the created world (although he believed that essence and existence are identical within God). According to him, God causes each and every a finite creature with its "essence" to "exist." What is interesting is that he also used the word "esse" ("to be") to describe the existential word "existentia" ("existence"), when referring to the distinction between essence and existence as that between "quod est" ("what it is") and "quo est" ("by which it is"), respectively, which reminds us of Aristotle's similar distinction between "ti esti" ("what it is") and "hoti esti" ("that it is").

The final point in the last paragraph shows how intertwined, complex and even confusing the terminology about being and existence is.

With the emergence of modern existentialism, however, the contrast between being and existence became minimal again because existentialism understood the former not in divorce from the latter but only in the context of the latter. For existentialists, this means that being is only meaningful because of existence which is primary. According to Martin Heidegger, Western philosophy overlooked the question of what being itself really means. Being itself, of course, is the most general property shared in common by all beings; but, according to Heidegger, Western philosophy dismissed the question of being, treating it simply as undefinable or obvious, and established various essentialist theories of knowledge such as logic, epistemology, and ontology, which are detached from human existence. In order to let human beings constantly pursue the question of being, Heidegger referred to that kind of human being as "Dasein" (literally "being-there"), who, as a "being-in-the-world" (In-der-Welt-sein) thrown out to the temporal world of beings, is faced with angst and mortality in human existence, but who nevertheless is expected to experience authenticity by asking about being in the midst of beings. In the words of Heidegger in his Being and Time, "The 'essence' of Dasein lies in its existence."

The distinction between being and existence was also minimized by scholars such as Franz Brentano and Gottlob Frege in a manner different than existentialism. According to them, every predicative proposition can be translated into an existential one without changing meaning. For example, adding "exists" to "a wise man" to give the complete sentence "a wise man exists" has the same effect as joining "some man" to "wise" using the copula. So, the "exists" of the existential proposition takes the place of the copula. This Frege-Brentano view is the basis of the dominant position in the analytic tradition of philosophy in modern Anglo-American philosophy: that existence is asserted by the existential quantifier.

Different Realms of Being

As was noted above, being is broader than existence. So, there are different realms of being according to its kind. Concrete, 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. Compared with them, ideas and values such as love, justice, and good seem to be abstract, and they do not exist in the same sense of being physically sensible material. For Plato, however, those ideas and values in an incorporeal realm of the world are real existences because they are self-existent and immutable, while material beings in the corporeal world are merely their ephemeral "shadows" far from being real existences. For Aristotle, by contrast, only individual things called substances in the space-time world are fully existent beings, and other beings, called categories, such as relations, quantity, time and place, and Plato's ideas and values, have a derivative kind of being, dependent on those individual things. Thus, to which realm of being we should attribute existence is not an easy question to answer, given the difference of approaches by Plato and Aristotle.

This Plato-Aristotle tension was echoed in the Medieval controversy between realism and nominalism. The approach of realists was to argue that the sentence "Socrates is wise," which contains a noun reference only for "Socrates," can be rewritten as "Socrates has wisdom," which apparently proves the existence of a reference for "wisdom" as well. This argument, however, was inverted by nominalists such as William of Ockham in arguing that "Socrates has wisdom" can be rewritten as "Socrates is wise," which contains a reference only for "Socrates." The nominalist method became widely accepted by analytic philosophy in the twentieth century.

Modern Approaches in Analytic Philosophy

According to Bertrand Russell's "theory of descriptions," the negation operator in a singular sentence takes wide and narrow scope, as when we distinguish between "some S is not P" (where negation takes "narrow scope") and "it is not the case that 'some S is P'" (where negation takes "wide scope"). The problem with this view is that there appears to be no such scope distinction in the case of proper names. The sentences "Socrates is not bald" and "it is not the case that Socrates is bald" both appear to have the same meaning, and they both appear to assert or presuppose the existence of someone (Socrates) who is not bald, so that negation takes narrow scope.

The theory of descriptions has generally fallen into disrepute, although there have been recent attempts to revive it by Stephen Neale and Frank Jackson. According to the "direct reference view," an early version of which was originally proposed by Bertrand Russell, and perhaps earlier by Gottlob Frege, a proper name strictly has no meaning when there is no object to which it directly refers. This view relies on the argument that the semantic function of a proper name is to tell us which object bears the name, and thus to identify some object. But no object can be identified if none exists. Thus, a proper name must have a bearer, if it is to be meaningful. To adapt an argument of Peter Strawson's, someone who points to an apparently empty space, uttering "that's a fine red one," communicates nothing to someone who cannot see or understand what he is pointing to. Variants of the direct reference view have been proposed by Saul Kripke, Gareth Evans, Nathan Salmon, and others.

According to the "two-sense" view of existence, which derives from Alexius Meinong, existential statements fall into two classes.

1. Those asserting existence in a wide sense. These are typically of the form "N is P" for singular N, or "some S is P."
2. Those asserting existence in a narrow sense. These are typically of the form "N exists" or "S's exist."

Existence in the wide sense does not actually mean existence. For example, although the sentence "Pegasus flies" implies existence in the wide sense because it implies that something flies, nevertheless it does not imply existence in the narrow sense. For we deny existence in this sense by saying that Pegasus does not exist. In effect, the world of all things divides, on this view, into those (like Socrates, the planet Venus, and New York City) that have existence in the narrow sense, and those (like Sherlock Holmes, the goddess Venus, and Minas Tirith) that do not. Common sense suggests the non-existence of such things as fictional characters or places.

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. Parmenides considered being to be the first principle of reality, believing that only being is, and that non-being is not. Also, everything is one, and the one is being, which is continuous, all-inclusive, and eternal. For him, becoming is illusory and impossible. By contrast, Heraclitus regarded becoming as the first principle, maintaining that everything is in a state of flux.

Plato is considered to have reconciled between being and becoming by integrating the immutable world of Ideas and the transitory world of material beings through the notion of participation.

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. 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 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. Heidegger, for example, stressed upon this distinction in order to highlight the concept of being or to-be as a dynamic activity.

Being and existence

See above.

Being and essence

Of course, being (ens or essens) and essence (essentia) are closely connected linguistically because in Latin the latter (essentia) is an abstract form of the former (essens), which is the present participle of the verb esse ("to be"). However, when being is contrasted with essence, it means an actual existence, whereas the essence of a being is that which makes what it is. So, the contrast of being and essence is that of existence and essence. This may be confusing a little because the aforementioned contrast of being and existence basically treats being as essence. In any case, Medieval philosophers such as St. Anselm and St. Thomas Aquinas argued, perhaps following Persian philosopher Avicenna, that God is a unique being whose essence is its existence, while essence and existence are distinct for all beings other than God. The biblical concept of God as "I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14) expresses this identity of essence and existence in God.

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 describe what they factually are.

Assessment

Greek philosophy was primarily interested in the predicative approach, dealing with the given reality of "being" through copula sentences, and it had no independent concept of "existence." But, when Islamic philosophy appropriated the biblical doctrine of creation, it realized the importance of the notion of "existence" related to the contingency of the created world. Medieval Christian philosophy adopted this from Islamic philosophy and contrasted "existence" with "being" or "essence." ("Essence" is linguistically related to "being" as its participle in Latin.) But then, modern existentialism was dissatisfied with this contrast of essence and existence, feeling that it still gave a special status to essence, not appreciating existence enough. Existentialism, therefore, wanted to go beyond the contrast of essence and existence by understanding essence only in terms of human existence which was considered to be primary. Modern analytic philosophy is another approach, which is a linguistic approach, to go beyond the difference of the predicative and the existential with the latter as primary.

From this, we can observe that history seems to have experienced a transition from essence to existence, starting from Greek philosophy and going through Islamic philosophy and Medieval Christian philosophy to reach existentialism and analytic philosophy. The destination of this transition, however, seems not to be the total estrangement of existence from essence but rather the reappreciation of essence in the context of existence, as can be seen especially in existentialism. So, history seems to have been flowing toward a point of destination at which essence and existence are to be integrated, going beyond their contrast that once emerged.

This leaves us an important question: What does it really mean to go beyond the contrast of essence and existence to reach a point of their integration? Does it mean to lead us to experience more about God because according to the Medieval formulation God has no distinction of essence and existence whatsoever within himself? Essentialists would respond that going beyond the distinction cannot lead to any more experience of God, since we finite creatures, who should anyway stay with the distinction, no matter how much we may strive to go beyond it, are qualitatively different from God, who alone enjoys the identity of essence and existence. The existentialism of Heidegger, too, would respond negatively about the experience of God albeit for a different reason — for the reason that it does not believe in God as understood in objectified form within the traditional framework. This is why Heidegger is usually considered to be an atheist. On the other hand, many observe that this atheism of existentialists such as Heidegger does not deny God in every sense but suggests a new, profound way of knowing God through authenticity, "a renewed possibility of experiencing God" This new awareness of God in Heidegger's project of reappreciating essence in the context of existence is somewhat echoed in Paul Tillich's eschatological notion of "essentialization" in one's eternal life beyond the estrangement of existence from essence. Whether this can also heal the cleavage in the realist-nominalist controversy is yet to be seen.

See also

• Cogito ergo sum
• Cosmological argument
• Existence proof
• Gödel's ontological proof
• Meaning of life
• Metaphysics
• Ontology
• Solipsism
• Three marks of existence

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Aristotle. The Metaphysics, translated by Hugh Lawson-Tancred. London ; New York: Penguin Books, 1998. ISBN 0140446192
• Arnauld, Antoine and Pierre Nicole. Logic, or, The art of thinking: containing, besides common rules, several new observations appropriate for forming judgment. Cambridge [England] ; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0521482496
• Eagleton, Terry. The Meaning of Life. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN 0199210705
• Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. ISBN 0060638508
• Hemming, Laurence Paul. Heidegger's Atheism: The Refusal of Theological Voice. University of Notre Dame Press, 2002. ISBN 0268030588
• Heraclitus, Fragments. Translated by Brooks Hexton. New York : Penguin Books, 2003. ISBN 0142437654
• Kahn, Charles H. "On the Terminology for Copula and Existence." In Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition: Essays Presented by His Friends and Pupils to Richard Waltzer on His Seventieth Birthday, edited by S. M. Stern, Albert Hourani, and Vivian Brown. London: Bruno Cassier, 1972.
• Kahn, Charles H. "Why Existence Does Not Emerge as a Distinct Concept in Greek Philosophy?" In Philosophies of Existence: Ancient and Medieval, edited by Parviz Morewedge. New York: Fordham University Press, 1982. ISBN 082321060X
• Loux, Michael J. Ockham's Theory Of Terms. London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974. ISBN 0268005508
• Magee, Bryan. The Story of Philosophy. New York: DK Pub., 1998. ISBN 078943511X
• Mill, John Stuart. A System of Logic. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1884.
• Plato. The Republic, translated by Sir Henry Desmond Pritchard Lee. London ; New York: Penguin Books, 2003. ISBN 0140449140
• Prior, Arthur Norman. "Existence." In The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards. New York: Macmillan, 1967. ISBN 0028949900
• Quine, W.V. On What There Is. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, Philosophy Education Society, 1948.

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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