Being
From Freepedia
A being, in the most general sense, is anything that is alive. Being with a capital 'B', on the other hand, is often used in philosophy to refer to divine Being, God, or ultimate reality.
In philosophy, a being is anything that can be said to be. Ontology is the philosophical study of being. See also categories of being and "I think, therefore I am".
In linguistics, "to be" is a copula.
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Being in historical philosophy
Being and substance in Aristotle
Among the first inquiries into what "being" encompassed was undertaken by Aristotle. The term "substance" in Aristotle was a precise metaphysical term denoting an individual thing about which specific assertions may be made.
Since the Aristotelian view of matter is negative, the "substance" or "being" is a real thing that exists. Since matter renders things more obscure to our perception, it follows that the true essence of an object is independent of matter, its "being" is independent of the material world.
To Aristotle, only spirits and God are independent of matter, and thus these entities are purely "substance" or "being." This is the origin of the phrase "One in substance with the Father" or modernly "One in being with the Father" in the Catholic Nicene Creed.
Being in continental philosophy and existentialism
Some philosophers deny that the concept of "being" has any meaning at all, since we only define an object's existence by its relation to other objects, and actions it undertakes. The term "I am" has no meaning by itself; it must have an action or relation appended to it. This in turn has led to the thought that "being" and nothingness are closely related, developed in existential philosophy.
Existentialist philosophers such as Sartre, as well as continental philosophers such as Hegel and Heidegger have also written extensively on the concept of being, distinguishing between the being of objects (being in itself) and the being of people (Geist (philosophy) in Hegel, Dasein in Heidegger, and being-for-itself and being-for-others in Sartre).
Further reading
- Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
- Heidegger, Being and Time
- Sartre, Essays in Existentialism and Being and Nothingness
