The question of being (Greek, τό ὄν, the present participle of the verb ειναι, "to be"; Latin, esse; German, Sein; French, être), in philosophy, has been a central topic of metaphysics; the study of "being" is called ontology.
Philosophers often suppose a certain sense of being as primary, and from
it derive other senses of being as secondary. So, even if they use the
same word "is," the meaning of being is different, depending upon what
it is that "is": sensible material beings, values and norms, principles,
mathematical objects, quality, time, space, God, etc. For Plato the
primary kind of being is the immutable world of ideas, while for
Aristotle it is the mutable world of substances. In another context,
however, Aristotle put one immutable substance, God, as the principle of
all being, and Thomas Aquinas, too, conceived God as the primary being,
from which all other beings in the world receive their existence.
Materialists conceive material or a sensible entity as the primary model
of being, while idealists regard thought or spirit as primary. Most
philosophers, including Aristotle, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger,
were aware of these diverse senses of being.
Inquiries into being often contrast it with its reciprocal concept, and
the meaning of being varies accordingly. Paired sets include: being and
becoming, being and non-being, being and appearance or phenomena, being
and existence, being and essence, being and beings, being and thought,
and being and ought.
How to approach the question of being is determined by the style of
thought, philosophical approach, or methodology. For example, the
phenomenological approaches of Husserl and Heidegger locate the question
of being on the horizon of human consciousness and existence. Eastern
philosophies emphasize the role of "non-being" for our understanding of
being.
Many philosophical and religious traditions seem to agree that
elucidating the nature of being discloses a fundamental distinction
between an essential world and a resultant world of phenomena. They also
seem to agree that each of the two worlds has diversity within itself
with some kind of purposiveness. Yet they give different answers to the
question of which of the two worlds is more real.
A History of the Notion of Being in the West
The pre-Socratic question of being
The pre-Socratic Greeks had a more direct, non-conceptual, and
non-objectifying approach to the question of "being," as compared with
the rather indirect approach of Plato and Aristotle that attempted to
conceptualize and objectify "being" through instantiated forms or formed
matter.
For the pre-Socratics, the most important question to be answered was:
What is the world made of? In answering this question, they were
immediately convinced that all things in the world are identical in
nature with one another. Hence, they successively attempted to reduce
the world in general to water (Thales), then to air (Anaximenes), then
to fire (Heraclitus), until Parmenides finally said that the whole world
is made of "being" (to on, the present participle of the verb einai,
"to be.") Parmenides' answer was more persuasive because while it was
not at once evident that water, air, and fire are completely identical,
it was undeniable that they all have in common the property of being,
because they all are. Being, then, was considered to be the fundamental and ultimate element of all that is.
What, then, is "being"? It turned out to be a difficult question to
answer indeed. The question of what water, air, or fire is, looked much
easier because the definition of any of these was quite self-evident.
So, Parmenides did not discuss what being is, but instead highlighted
the fact of being as the truth and characterized being as one,
all-inclusive, whole, unborn, timeless, immobile, immutable, permanent,
and imperishable. His dictum: That which is, is, while that which is
not, i.e., "non-being" (to me on), is not: "The one way, assuming
that being is and that it is impossible for it not to be, is the
trustworthy path, for truth attends it. The other, that not-being is and
that it necessarily is, I call a wholly incredible course, since thou
canst not recognise not-being (for this is impossible), nor couldst thou
speak of it." Thus, any individual things that look mutable and
perishable in the world are our illusory perceptions, and they do not
belong to the realm of being.
Usually contrasted with Parmenides' notion of being as the ultimate
principle that is immutable and eternal, is Heraclitus' understanding of
fire as the ultimate element of reality, according to which the whole
of reality is mutable and transitory like fire. For Heraclitus,
everything is in flux and becoming, and immutability or stability is
illusory. Perhaps the only sense in which he was able to talk about true
being was this unchanging principle of transitory passage and its
cyclicality.
Plato and Aristotle
Plato differentiated between the immutable world of ideas or forms and
the transitory world, saying that the former is an eternal, incorporeal
realm of ideas and values that are true beings, while the latter is a
less real, ephemeral, "shadowy" world of material things that are far
from true beings and subject to change and decay. This way, Plato struck
a compromise between Parmenides' notion of being and Heraclitus' theory
of becoming, although for Plato the world of ideas is more important
than the transitory world. Both are linked through the participation of
the latter in the former, and the latter's degree of reality is
determined by how much material things partake and manifest ideas which
are true reality. The latter world, while being thus differentiated from
the former, is also differentiated from the realm of non-being that is
unformed matter; it constitutes an intermediate stage of becoming
between being and non-being. Plato treated all this in his Phaedo, Republic, and Statesman.
For Aristotle, the science of "being qua being" (on hēi on) was what he called "first philosophy," as is discussed in his Metaphysics.
but his understanding of being was quite different from Plato's. For
Aristotle, only individual things, called substances, are fully beings,
while other things such as quantity, quality, relation, place, and time,
called categories, have a derivative kind of being, dependent on
individual substances. Thus, all senses of being are derived from a
single central notion, the notion of "substance" (ousia, the feminine genetive of to on, which in turn is the present participle of the verb einai,
"to be"). According to him, however, whereas each individual substance
is a mutable thing composite of two correlative principles: form and
matter, or, in more general terms, actuality and potentiality, there is
one immutable substance, God, who is pure form devoid of matter. God as
the highest genus of substance is therefore the principle of all being
and dealt with also in first philosophy.
Medieval philosophers
Medieval philosophy basically followed the Aristotelian understanding of
the various senses of being in reality, although the Latin equivalent
to the Greek to on is ens ("being"), the present participle of sum ("I am"). Esse ("to be") is the present infinitive. Another related term is essentia ("essence"), an abstract form of the present participle of esse, referring to what a substance (substantia) is in itself.
One new development in Medieval philosophy was the distinctive notion of existentia ("existence," from the verb exsistere,
which means to "to exist," "to appear," or "to emerge"). Greek ontology
apparently did not have it, since its primary focus was the matter of
predication based on copula sentences of the form "X is Y." The best
Aristotle came up with based on the primarily predicative verb einai was the distinction between hoti esti ("that it is") and ti esti
("what it is"), which could mean "existence" and "essence,"
respectively. Medieval philosophy, however, developed the notion of
existence distinctively under the influence of Islamic philosophy, which
distinguished existence (wujud) from essence (mahiat) in
light of a biblical metaphysics of creation within Islam which
differentiated the contingent existence of the created world from the
necessary status of God. Thomas Aquinas adopted this, maintaining that
the essence and existence of each and every contingent, finite creature
are distinct, while essence and existence are identical within God, who
is therefore preeminent over the world. Thus, even when rejecting
Anselm's ontological proof for God's existence that had argued that to
know what God is (his essence) is to know that God exists (his
existence), Aquinas did not reject the identification of God's essence
and God's existence.
Interestingly, according to Aquinas, because of his preeminent status over the world, God is now "the first being" (primum ens), and each and every individual creature is a "participated being" (ens per participationem)
which derives its being from God as the first being. Thus, although God
and creatures are not totally similar, they are at least
proportionately similar, i.e., analogical in their relationship through
the "analogy of being" (analogia entis). Duns Scotus, however, denied this, suggesting the univocity of being, although he still recognized that God as ens a se ("being from itself") and creatures as entia ab alio ("beings derived from another") are two different aspects of being.
Modern philosophers
Empiricists and materialists in modern philosophy such as Thomas Hobbes
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.
At the same time, there were also rationalists and idealists who did not
agree with empiricists and materialists. Baruch Spinoza, a rationalist
with his pantheistic recognition of only one "substance" (God or Nature,
Deus sive Natura), regarded this "substance" (substantia) as the primary sense of being and referred to "mode" (modus)
as the derivative sense of being, ontologically and conceptually
derivative from the former. For substance is "that which is in itself,
and is conceived through itself," while mode is "the modifications of
substance, or that which exists in, and conceived through, something
other than itself." Thus, substance and mode are two main senses of
being, although Spinoza suggested that being itself has, in the strict
sense, no proper definition.
For absolute idealist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, "being" coincides
with "thought," because the subject matter of philosophy is the life of
the Absolute Spirit, self-thinking Thought, as manifested
panentheistically in the universe. The Absolute Spirit manifests itself
in the universe by going out of itself and returning to itself. This
life of the Absolute Spirit has three main phases: itself, nature, and
the human spirit; and they are dealt with by logic, the philosophy of
nature, and the philosophy of spirit, respectively. Thus, logic deals
with how the Absolute Spirit conceives of itself before the creation of
the universe. Logic begins with "being" (Sein), which is the most
immediate and indeterminate concept the Absolute Spirit can formulate
about itself. But, being is so completely indeterminate that it passes
over into "non-being" or "nothing" (Nichts), its negation, which
is also completely indeterminate. Non-being also easily moves back to
being. So, a third category, "becoming" (Werden), is posited,
which is the synthesis, at a higher level, of being as thesis and
non-being as antithesis. While being and non-being are wholly
indeterminate abstractions, becoming is "the first concrete thought,"
thus being able to become "determinate being" (Dasein), which is a definite being. Although notions such as being "in itself" (an sich), being "for itself" (für sich), and being "in and for itself" (an und für sich)
are also developed from determinate being, the original dialectic of
being, non-being, and becoming is the starting point of the whole
dialectic life of the Absolute Spirit that involves all other senses of
being through the triads of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis at various
phases and sub-phases.
Husserl and Heidegger
In the late nineteenth century, Edmund Husserl recognized that various
kinds of being such as normative beings, values, space, time,
mathematical objects, logical objects, historical object, and others do
exist in different senses. Husserl gained this insight probably from his
teacher Franz Brentano who had 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 as the world of the
"transcendental ego" or "pure consciousness." 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 of them 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.
Martin Heidegger, a student of Husserl, took the question of being
(ontology) as the primary subject of philosophy. Heidegger complained
that the question of being has failed to be answered in the long
philosophical tradition in the West because since Plato and Aristotle
the notion of being has always been conceptualized and objectified
through instantiated forms or formed matter. He, however, appreciated
pre-Socratics' approach to the direct disclosure (aletheia in Greek) of being, and suggested that for this kind of direct disclosure of "being" (Sein), the human being should be thrown to the phenomenal world of "beings" (Seiendes) as Dasein (literally "being-there"). By being confronted with "non-being" (Nichts)
there, the human being experiences dread about death (the negation of
being) and grasps the meaning of being in beings. His methodology of
inquiring into the meaning of being is called hermeneutic phenomenology,
resulting from a combination of phenomenology and hermeneutics. In his
inquiry into the meaning of being, Heidegger explicated the roles of
death and conscience, teleological interdependence of being, and other
unique elements. For Heidegger, the word "existence" (Existenz) is simply synonymous with Dasein: "The 'essence' of Dasein lies in its existence."
Existentialists such as Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl
Jaspers, Jean-Paul 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.
The Notion of Being in Non-Western Traditions
The Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew equivalent to the English word "to be" is hayah. But,
it is hardly used as predicative or as existential. For the predicative
purpose, the so-called noun clause is used without copula most likely;
and for the existential purpose, the particle yēš ("there is"), which is no longer a verb, is used most likely. Therefore, in most cases the verb hayah
means "to come to be" or "to come to pass." This does not mean that
this verb is equivalent to the English verb "to become." So, for
example, "the earth was waste" (Genesis 1:2), where hayahis, the past tense of hayah,
is used, actually does not mean to equate "the earth" and "waste," but
to show that "the earth came to be waste," if not that "the earth became
waste." It is interesting to observe that the Hebrew verb hayah shows an act more dynamic than the English verb "to be."
Eastern philosophies
Eastern philosophies, while having the notion of "being" like Western
thought does, have tended to recognize the notion of "non-being" more
than Western thought does. Hinduism distinguishes between being (sat) and non-being (asat), equating the former with the enduring reality of Brahman,
the supreme cosmic power, and the latter with the illusory unreality of
the manifested universe. Hinduism, however, has another, diametrically
opposed use of these terms especially in its mysticism, where non-being (asat) means that boundless and eternal metaphysical expanse of void even beyond Brahman and the universe because of which even being (sat) itself is and endures.
Buddhism accepts the Buddha's teaching that everything in the world is marked by three main characteristics: 1) "impermanence" (anitya in Sanskrit; anicca
in Pali), which not only means that everything will eventually cease to
exist, but also that everything is in flux; 2) "unsatisfactoriness" (duhkha in Sanskrit; dukkha in Pali), which means that nothing in the world can bring lasting satisfaction; and 3) "non-self" (anatman in Sanskrit; anatta in Pali), which rejects the Hindu notion of "self" (atman).
Mahayana Buddhism extends the third characteristic of "non-self" from
sentient beings to all kinds of objects in the world. The three
characteristics as a whole, therefore, mean that nothing in the world
possesses permanent, essential identity, and also that all things, in
that regard, are dependent on each other (pratityasamutpada in
Sanskrit, meaning "dependent origination"). For Mahayana Buddhism, this
means a virtual rejection of the metaphysical notion of being itself or
"own-being" (svabhava in Sanskrit). A doctrine of "emptiness" (sunyata from the Sanskrit adjective sunya,
meaning "empty"), therefore, has been developed to show this insight
into reality, so we may be led to a realm of wisdom and inner peace
where we acquire the Buddha-nature (Buddha-dhatu in Sanskrit).
According to Taoism, Tao ("Way") is the primordial state of
oneness which unites various things in the world that emerge from it.
Lao Tzu often referred to the pair of "being" (yu) and "non-being" (wu), saying that both are contained within Tao. Neo-Daoist Wang Bi of the third century C.E., however, identified Tao with non-being and believed it to be the background of the world of being.
Multiple Senses of Being in a Paired Set of Concepts
As has been noticed above, being can often be 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 things
through the notion of participation.
Being and non-being
Being means immutable, actual existence, while non-being refers to
non-existence, according to Parmenides. However, the contrast between
being and non-being has been interpreted in various ways. For Plato,
being refers to the immutable world of ideas (forms), while non-being is
unformed matter; and these two are united to constitute the transient
world of becoming. Hinduism often equates being with the enduring
reality of Brahman, and non-being with the illusory unreality of
the manifested universe. Mahayana Buddhism denies being in favor of
non-being for our enlightenment. For Hegel, being and non-being are two
opposing, completely indeterminate logical (and also ontological)
categories, which however are integrated into a third category of
becoming at a higher and determinate level. For Heidegger, being and
non-being are no longer indeterminate categories, and non-being is
instrumental for our grasp of the meaning 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
inquired into the true reality of being in contrast to what appears to
our five senses. For Plato, the true reality of being has permanent,
immutable ideas, which intellect alone can grasp. Things are beautiful,
for example, by virtue of the idea of beauty which is true reality. What
appears to our five senses is a less real, ephemeral appearance.
Being and existence
Being and existence are related and somewhat overlapping with respect to
their meanings. Being means being in general, covering all senses of
being, while existence usually represents only one sense of being, which
means the actual being of the world of phenomena. In the Middle Ages,
under the influence of Islamic philosophy that recognized the
contingency of the created world as compared with God the creator,
Scholastic philosophy used the Latin word "existere" ("to exist" or "to
appear") as distinct from "esse" ("to be"), and from "essentia"
("essence"), an abstract form of the present participle of "esse." Hence
the distinction of existence from being, and also from essence.
Being (existence) and essence
Being, when it is contrasted with essence, means actual existence, which
is one sense of being. Actual existence means that a being exists,
while its essence means that which makes what it is. Medieval
theologians such as Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas argued that
God is a unique being whose essence is its existence, while essence and
existence are separable for all beings other than God. The biblical
concept of God as "I am who I am" expresses the identity of essence and
existence in God.
Being and beings
Being, when it is contrasted with beings, means existence in the sense
of event or fact of to-be. Being means the fact of existence itself,
while beings mean particular entities that exist. Heidegger, for
example, stressed this distinction between being (Sein) and beings (Seiendes)
in order to highlight the concept of being or to-be as a dynamic
activity. In a different context, Medieval theologians distinguished
between God as "being from itself" (ens a se) and particular creatures as "beings derived from another" (entia ab alio).
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 refers 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. For idealists such as Hegel, thought and being are the same.
Is (being) and ought
Being or "is," when it is contrasted with "ought," means factuality in
contrast to normativeness. Immanuel Kant, for example, distinguished
prescriptive statements in morality, which use "ought" or "should" (sollen), in contrast to natural, descriptive statements which describe what things factually "are" (sein).
Remark
It is clear that the multiple sense of being has been almost universally
recognized both in East and West perhaps with the exception of
actualism in analytic philosophy. The distinction between an essential
type of world and a phenomenal world is the most basic distinction, and a
deity or ultimate being usually belongs to the former. The question of
which of the two worlds is more real than the other is answered
differently by different philosophical and religious schools, and even
when the answer is that the phenomenal world is more real, the real
status of a deity or ultimate being is far from questioned (as in
Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas). The essential type of world is further
subdivided into a variety of entities such as Plato's ideas and
Aristotle's categories. The phenomenal world is also subdivided into
various beings ranging from spiritual entities like angels through
humans to non-rational beings such as nonhuman animals, plants, and
minerals.
There are at least two issues that attract our attention here. First,
what sense can we make out of the basic distinction between an essential
world and a phenomenal world? Second, what does the existence of
various beings in the phenomenal world mean? The first issue seems to
show that the world of phenomena is, after all, a manifestation,
appearance, expression, unconcealment, creation, or emanation of the
essential world that includes a deity or ultimate being. The second
issue on various beings in the phenomenal world has often been treated
in terms of what is called the "great chain of being" with God as its
top, and especially in the West it has usually been taken to mean that a
world full of all possible beings is aesthetically more perfect than
otherwise, and that God made such a world to show his perfection. Hence,
while the first issue shows the act or movement of manifestation, the
second one seems to show purposiveness in that act or movement. Pope
John Paul II's call for a renewed "philosophy of being" based on both
faith and reason in his 1998 Encyclical Letter, Fides et Ratio, if from a Catholic perspective, is perhaps a reminder of these points among others.