Being

[gL.edu] This article gathers contributions by Pham Vu Don, developed within the context of the Conceptual clarification about "Information, Knowledge and Philosophy", under the supervisión of J.M. Díaz Nafría.

Being

Being( ancient Greek εἶναι - eĩnai, Latin esse – both infinitive), existence, givenness designates the introductory conception of gospel and theories. [1] The verb to be, for which being forms the substantial infinitive, is nebulous and requires an underpinning notion of being. There are traditionally two unnaturally distinct styles of approaching: [N.F.: The following distinction is not clear]

1. The unambiguous (unequivocal) understanding of being: Being is the point that all beings still have in common after abating their individual parcels (reality).

2. The similar understanding of being: Being is that which belongs to “everything”, the opposite of being is nothing, since nothing can stand outside of being. [2]

The conception of being (ancient Greek τὸ ὄν - to ón, medieval Latin ens – participle), on the other hand, designates individual objects or circumstances. Being can also denote the summation of beings, i.e. “the whole world”, insofar as this can be determined spatially and temporally. Being, on the other hand, is the unchanging, dateless, comprehensive being (Greek ousia, Latin essentia) of both individual objects and the world as a whole.

The terms "being" and "being" [N.F.: What is the difference?] are in pressure because every being has a being in some way. Being is flash in the process of getting and what has come possible. The Disquisition of the nature of all beings is the main theme of ontology. Another problem is the discrimination of what is and what is not. All literalism emphasizes that the sensually given is primarily about being, while what is simply allowed is about non-being. Being presupposes a living world of connections, parcels, or objects. In discrepancy, the colourful forms of idealism see the real in the inner world of what is purely mentally imaginary, while precisely the reality of an external world is disputed and held to be bare appearance.

Being has the topmost possible compass (expansion) at each, because it can relate to anything imaginable. Anything imaginable means anything that is not "not". The principle of the barred [N.F.: What is this principle?] means applies to being and nothing. The idea of negation and difference becomes possible only thanks to the conception of being. The difference is the transition from being to being. Being and beings are in a dialectical relationship with each other. From being (thesis) and nothing (antipode), being (conflation) follows from distinguishability. The difference between being and actuality is that actuality is understood as a real being defined spatially and temporally. On the other hand, similar objects can be assigned parcels without proven actuality Atlantis is a lost area.

Being is bandied in general theories. It asks about the most general orders of being and that is why it is also called a abecedarian gospel. Insofar as he studies being as being, he talks about ontology (the proposition of being). [N.F.: Who is the subject 'he'?]

History of philosophy

Antiquity

In Greek natural philosophy, the search for the primal ground of beings consisted of explanations based on a primal substance (fire, water, air, apeiron). Only with Parmenides being became an abstract concept to be defined beyond natural philosophy.

“The one (shows) that (being) is and that it is impossible that it is not. This is the way of conviction; He follows the truth. But the other (claims) that it is not and that this non-being must necessarily exist. This way is - I tell you - completely inscrutable. Because what does not exist can neither be known (because that is impossible) nor expressed.” – Parmenides[3]

Because being is no longer empirically tangible but true, Parmenides rejected non-being as impossible. For him, the following applied: “Beings are unborn and imperishable, whole and unified, and unshakable and perfect.”[4] In his didactic poem, in which he also considers the growth and decay of nature, Parmenides distinguished for the first time between perishable beings and the immortal metaphysical beings, even if he did not yet use the concept of being explicitly. What is real does not arise and does not pass away. Against Parmenides, Heraclitus represented becoming as the underlying principle of the world. (Panta Rhei)

In the dialogue Sophistes, Plato problematized that there are possibilities in non-being, so that one can also speak of non-being. The non-existent is not nothing, but difference. For example, to say that rest is not movement does not mean that rest is nothing. "But it is because of its part in beings."[5] Rest and movement are not identical. For Plato, being as becoming and passing away was something that takes part in being (in the immutable ideas). The existence of red things is participation in redness. According to Plato, being is one of the five categories, along with rest, movement, identity and difference, in which all other ideas participate.

“And since being and what is different go through everything and also through each other, then what is different, as having a part in what is, will certainly be by virtue of this part, but not that in which it has part, but different; but being distinct from beings, it is evidently quite necessarily non-being. Again, the being, as having a share in the different, is indeed different from all other species, and not each of them is different from them as a whole, nor are all the others as a whole, but only itself.” – Plato[6]

Even if he understood being as something abstract, Plato still concentrated on the consideration of the empirically tangible: I say, then, whatever has any potency (dynamis) whatsoever, unless it is 'by nature doing anything else' (poiein) or suffering even the least of the insignificant, even if only once, anything be in an exact way (ontus einai); because I set as a definition (limit) to demarcate beings in their being, nothing other than power.” – Plato[7]

Being, which is subject to the laws of cause and effect, is opposed to the unchangeable quantities of ideas, whose highest principle is unity (to hen). Only Aristotle came to a clear conceptual distinction between beings and being. "From ancient times and now and always it is asked and always difficult to grasp what the being is." (Met. VII 1, 1028 b 2-4) In the examination of Plato's ideas he developed the structuring of the being in an early concept by categories (see above). Later, in metaphysics, he made “being as being” (to ho en on) the fundamental theme of “first philosophy”.[8] "There is a science that considers beings as beings and what belongs to them." (Met. IV 1, 1003a 21)

Beyond the categorical structuring, he now regarded beings as existence (to estin), as reality (entelechia) and possibility (dynamis) and as true and false. Being is not a generic concept because it is not stated unambiguously (univocal) but rather ambiguously (equivocally) about things. The concept of being does not add anything to substance (ousia); it is what is always already, unchangeably and intrinsically contained in the individual things. Being as a general cannot be stated without reference to an individual (see problem of universals). Everything that is stated about beings contains being as such, which creates unity (pros hen), the highest and first being (protos on). “Now that beings are denoted in so many meanings, the first being is obviously the what that denotes the essence (substance).” (Met. 1028 a 13 – 15). For Aristotle, the absolute being is the “unmoved mover”, which he understood as the pure, only self-thinking reason, towards which all being strives and through which the becoming and passing away is caused.

Neoplatonism

In Plotinus' Neoplatonism, the Urgrund, the supreme principle, is that (zu Henne) from which ideas and empirical beings are hierarchically derived. Being is equated with spirit (nous). The spirit is at the same time the essence. Being and thinking coincide in one. Being is thinking, being is thinking.

For the first must be something simple, above all else, distinct from all that comes after it, existing on its own, unmixed with anything pertaining to it, and yet otherwise capable of looking after things, truly a being and not first something else and only then one. [...] Because if it weren't simple, relieved of all arbitrariness and all composition, and really really one thing, then it would no longer be the original reason; just because it is simple, it is the most independent of all things and therefore the first.” – Plotinus[9]

It is from this ground that all beings flow through emanation. The spirit itself is the first step of emanation. Reason cannot be the supreme authority because it always contains a reference to something, a difference. This unspecified difference will. The development of being is the world of ideas (kosmos noetos), world reason. The nous creates the genera and species of beings through emanation. The ideas are the whole of what is in each case, through which the diversity of matter is brought to unity. The ideas give form to beings and are thus ontologically primary. The emanation is a hierarchical process of development from the highest general to the particular species and to the individual. This also determines the order of the world.

“Now if the ideas are many, there must necessarily be something common in them and also something peculiar that distinguishes one from the other. So this own thing, this separating difference, is the individual shape of the idea. But if there is a form, then there is something that is formed, in which the specific difference is; there is also matter there, which takes up the form and is the substrate for each one. Furthermore, if there is an intelligible cosmos in the upper world and the earthly one is its image, but this is composed of matter, among other things, then there must also be matter there.” – Plotinus[10]

Similar to Plotinus, his pupil Porphyry distinguished being, life and thinking. Following on from this, Augustine combined Christian thinking with Neoplatonism in his doctrine of the Trinity. The uncreated divine being is opposed to the created worldly being. Being is no longer accessible to sensual human cognition. Knowledge of being becomes a believing inner knowledge (intima cognitio). Boethius also represented the dependence of beings on divine being. “Different is being and what is; namely, being itself is not yet, but only what is, in that it has received the form of being, is and exists.” - Boethius[11] Every being (ens) has a part in being (esse), but that Being itself has no part in anything. The ideas are ideas in the mind of God, whose will is the first principle.

Middle Ages

In the medieval discussion, the discussion about the relationship between being and God took place above all over the question of the proofs of God. While Scotus Eriugena still placed God above being and non-being and rejected statements about God as impossible, Anselm of Canterbury's proof of God contains positive statements about God, in that he is the supreme good, supreme great, supreme being (summum essentia) , the highest being (summum esse), but also as the highest being (summum ens). God is that beyond which nothing greater can be conceived (quo maius cogitari non potest). Only by ascribing a property is a proof of God possible and at the same time a realistic position in the universals dispute.

Thomas Aquinas toned down Anselm's radical realism by teaching him the Analogia Entis. In his writing De ente et essentia (On Being and Essence), he first showed that no causation can be shown for being without a circle or infinite regress. Being itself is a prerequisite for the distinction (real distinction) of beings.

Against the concept of analogy, Johannes Duns Scotus set the doctrine of the univocity of beings. Being (ens) is the simplest concept of all (simplex simpliciter). This concept is contained in all other concepts (in omni conceptu est ens). Whether one is talking about nature or philosophy or theology, the concept of being is always included. The distinction into categories can only refer to natural and finite beings. God, on the other hand, is the infinite being about which nothing further can be said. The finite is the object of reason, the infinite is a matter of faith.

The separation of reason and faith found a further continuation in William of Ockham. Although he recognized that beings and ones are predicated as concepts of all individual things in essence (what is), as a nominalist he rejected the concept of univocity. "although in this sense there is a concept common to all beings, yet the name 'being' is equivocal because it is not predicated of all things of which it can be predicated when used significantly according to a concept."[12] Outside of the mind there are only singular things.

Kant

"Being is obviously not a real predicate, it is a concept of something that could be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the position of a thing or certain determinations in itself. In logical use it is merely the copula of a judgement. The sentence God is omnipotent contains two concepts that have their objects: God and omnipotence; the little word: is, is not a predicate, but only that which puts the predicate or the subject on it. If I now take the subject (God) with all its predicates (including omnipotence) and say: God is, or it is a God, then I do not add a new predicate to the concept of God, but only the subject in itself with all its predicates, namely the object in relation to its concept. Both must contain exactly the same thing, and therefore nothing further can be added to the concept, which merely expresses the possibility, because I think of its object as absolutely given (through the expression: it is). And so the real contains nothing more than the merely possible.” – Kant[13]

The concept of the existence of an object is empty. It does not add anything extra to an item. Whether a term has content can only be judged on the basis of experience. And, according to Kant, this is based on appearances. For Kant, ontology is therefore a speculative, i.e. metaphysical, discipline.

Fichte

In Fichte's concept of subjective idealism, being is the expression of the ego: that whose being (essence) merely consists in the fact that it posits itself as being is the ego as absolute subject. As it sits, it is; and as it is, it settles; and the ego is therefore absolutely necessary for the ego. What is not for itself is not an I.[14]

Hegel

All philosophy faces the problem of the beginning. For Hegel, it already contains all moments. His doctrine of being forms the beginning of his logic. To this end, he takes up the eleatic understanding of being and, on the other hand, that of Heraclitus. These determined it as the beginning (principle) or ground of the changing appearance of nature. Pure being is contained immediately in the beginning as the other of pure nothing (Heraclitus/Plato).[15] Hegel speaks here of a pure abstraction, that is, absolutely indeterminate being. It is the unity of finitude and infinity; Rest and movement, as well as the basis of everything that is given. For him, absolute being is synonymous with God.

"Pure being makes the beginning, because it is both pure thought and the indefinite, simple immediate, but the first beginning cannot be anything mediated and further determined." – Hegel[16]

Here pure thought, pure thought and pure being mean that they are mere form and absolutely without content. As a pure abstraction it is the same as nothingness.[17] By itself the one is as true or false as the other. Hegel says that only the unity of both is their truth.[18] Becoming consists of them. Therefore they are identical in him, although they remain different. This truth of Heraclitus is fundamental to all of Hegel's logic.[19] Hegel speaks of an absolute abstraction without further determination. For him, all concepts of philosophy are "examples of this unity".[20]

“It is a great thought to go from being to becoming; it is (in Heraclitus, note) still abstract, but at the same time it is also the first concrete thing, the unity of opposing determinations. This is so restless in this relationship, the principle of liveliness is in it. It compensates for the lack that Aristotle pointed out in the earlier philosophies - the lack of movement; this movement is itself a principle here. So this philosophy is not a thing of the past; its principle is essential [...]. It is a great insight that one has recognized that being and non- being are only abstractions without truth, the first truth is only becoming. The mind isolates both as true and valid; on the other hand, reason recognizes the one in the other, that in the one its other is contained - and so the universe, the absolute, is to be determined as becoming." – Hegel[21]

He takes up again the old question of metaphysics about God. “Being itself and [...] the logical determinations in general can be viewed as definitions of the absolute, as the metaphysical definitions of God” (Hegel)[22] Pure being is only the form of the absolute. Furthermore, he distinguishes from indeterminate being determinate, which he calls existence. “Dasein is determinate being; its determinateness is existent determinateness, quality.” (Hegel[23]) This is finite because becoming already contains the moment of its finitude, the nothingness. Being is mediated by essence. In it, being is not only immediate, but also mediated.[24] Only in concrete existence does the difference between the essence and its appearance appear.[25] Everything that exists has an appearance. It is nothing other than the unmoving being that underlies this changing appearance.[26] Being and essence are sublated in the concept. They are united in him as knowledge. It is the unity of subjectivity and objectivity. In this respect, the highest thing man can know about God and everything else is his concept. This then also constitutes reality for the subject. [27]

Heidegger

Martin Heidegger's ontological starting point is the ontological difference between "being" and "beings", with which he transfers the hermeneutic paradigm to ontology, so to speak: Just as an individual can only be understood through its relationship to the whole, being forms the horizon of understanding for everything individually encountered in the world. [28] Being therefore precedes all beings. Just as the giver and the giving are not visible in what is given, being is always prior and concomitant in dealing with the world. However, since being itself is not a being, it cannot be said that “being is”. Heidegger therefore says, in order to avoid the expression "Being is", "There is Being" or "Being west". Being is the always unthematic horizon on which the individual things show themselves in their meaningful meaning. Being and understanding coincide with Heidegger. Heidegger's philosophical concern consisted in making this unthematic horizon a topic specifically and emphasizing what is otherwise only implicitly thought and meant.

Since everyday language always refers only to beings and not to unrelated "horizon of understanding", Heidegger felt it was his duty to develop a completely new vocabulary in order to talk about being without the traditional terms for beings being incorrectly referred to as Be would be transferred and would have so reified it. This led Heidegger to wrestle with the traditional language and gave him his idiosyncratic style. [28]

In order to understand the “meaning of being”, Heidegger tries to clarify it in Being and Time by questioning the one who has always somehow understood being: the human being. Heidegger is concerned with understanding being and not with recognizing it, as with Kant, for example, when he asks about the subject's cognitive ability. Thinking cannot go back behind understanding, for meaning is always something that precedes it; H. senseless things are made. Understanding the "meaning of being" can therefore only succeed by entering a hermeneutic circle in order to uncover the meaning of being in circular movements that move from the individual to the whole and back. This individual is the human being, the whole given to him is his existence and the world in its worldliness, by which Heidegger means the basic structures of meaning in the world, such as the usefulness of tools. In Being and Time, Heidegger tries to uncover the existentials, i.e. the structures that fundamentally determine people. On the basis of this, the question should then be answered as to how the world can be understood through them. [28]

However, "Being and Time" remained a fragment and the question of the meaning of being largely unanswered. After what he called a rethinking in his later work, Heidegger attempted to think about man's historical relation to being. In retrospect in the history of philosophy, Heidegger shows that being itself is not static, but is subject to change: in the Middle Ages, for example, everything that exists is thought of as created by God, while in modern times, after the "death of God", the entire planet only as Resource for human needs appears, so under considerations of utility. “Truth” is therefore not something that is timeless and always dominant, but truth is itself historical. Unlike Kant, it can no longer be traced back to a subject who determines beings through the application of fixed categories; rather, it occurs in the course of history from being itself. Man cannot control how and when a world as a whole opens up to him. Especially since this is itself a process, according to Heidegger, which to this day has never entered people's consciousness. This has to do with the fact that being always reveals itself in such a way that beings arrive and appear in being, but at the same time the process of revealing itself does not become a problem for humans. Being thus conceals itself in its revealing. For Heidegger, this leads to oblivion of being, which essentially determines the history of Western philosophy and which to this day ensures that the question has never really been raised as to why, at the beginning of modern times, technical domination of the world appeared as the ultimate meaning of mankind. [28]

References

[1] Alois Halder – Philosophisches Wörterbuch, Herder Verlag 2008
[2] J. B. Lotz, W. Brugger: Allgemeine Metaphysik. Abschnitt D: „Seinsbegriff“. Dritte Auflage, München 1967.
[3] Parmenides: Über die Natur (Fragmente), in: Wilhelm Capelle: Die Vorsokratiker, Kröner, 8. Aufl. 1968, 165
[4] Parmenides: Über die Natur, 169
[5] Platon: Sophistes 256a
[6] Platon: Sophistes, 233
[7] Platon: Sophistes, 247d-e
[8] Zweite Wissenschaft ist hingegen die Physik, die sich mit dem wahrnehmbaren Wesen befasst (Met. VII 11, 1037a 14-16)
[9] Plotin: Enneaden V, 4, 1., Schriften Band 1, Hamburg 1956, 151
[10] Plotin: Enneaden II, 4, 4, 1.c., Schriften Band 1, Hamburg 1956, 249
[11] Boethius: Hebdomadibus, II, in: Theologische Traktate, Meiner 1988, 37
[12] Wilhelm von Ockham; Texte zur Theorie der Erkenntnis und der Wissenschaft, Stuttgart 1984, 83
[13] Kritik der reinen Vernunft B 627 f.
[14] Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Grundlage der Wissenschaftslehre (1802), Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften I/2, 359-360
[15] vgl. G.W.F. Hegel: Wissenschaft der Logik I. stw, Frankfurt 1986, S. 73.
[16] vgl. G.W.F. Hegel: Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften I. stw, Frankfurt am Main 2003, § 86, S. 182f.
[17] vgl. G.W.F. Hegel: Enzyklopädie I. § 87, S. 186.
[18] vgl. G.W.F. Hegel: Enzyklopädie I., § 88, S. 188f.
[19] vgl. G.W.F. Hegel: Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie I. stw, Frankfurt am Main 1999, S. 320. Hier sehen wir Land; es ist kein Satz des Heraklit, den ich nicht in meine Logik aufgenommen (habe).
[20] vgl. G.W.F. Hegel: Wissenschaft der Logik I. S. 86.
[21] G.W.F. Hegel: Geschichte der Philosophie I. S. 324f.
[22] G.W.F. Hegel: Enzyklopädie I. § 85, S. 181.
[23] G.W.F. Hegel: Wissenschaft der Logik I. S. 115.
[24] vgl. G.W.F. Hegel: Enzyklopädie I. § 122, S. 231.
[25] vgl. G.W.F. Hegel: Enzyklopädie I. § 131 (+Zusatz), S. 261ff.
[26] vgl. G.W.F. Hegel: Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie. I S. 275ff. Das Bewusstsein davon sieht er zum ersten Mal bei den Eleaten aufgehen. S. 278.
[27] G.W.F. Hegel: Wissenschaft der Logik II, 245f.
[28] Martin Heidegger: Sein und Zeit. (Erste Hälfte.) In: Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung. Band 8, 1927, S. 1–438