Be

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Being ( ancient Greek εἶναι eĩnai , Latin esse - both infinitive ), existence , being given describes the basic concept of philosophy and metaphysics . The verb sein , to which being forms the substantiated infinitive, cannot be clearly defined and requires an underlying concept of being. In the tradition there are two fundamentally different approaches:

  1. The univoke (unambiguous) understanding of being: Being is the characteristic that is still common to all beings after deducting their individual properties ( entity ).
  2. The analogous understanding of being : Being is what belongs to “everything”, the counter-concept to being is nothing, since nothing can stand outside of being.

In contrast, the concept of beings ( ancient Greek τὸ ὄν to ón , Middle Latin ens - participle) describes individual objects or facts. Being can also denote the totality of what exists, ie “the whole world”, as long as this can be determined spatially and temporally. Being, on the other hand, is the unchanging, timeless, comprehensive being (Greek ousia , Latin essentia ) both of individual objects and of the world as a whole.

The terms “being” and “being” are in a tense relationship, since every being has a being in some way. Being is ephemeral in becoming and what has become possible. The investigation of the essence of all beings is the main subject of ontology . Another topic is the demarcation of what is and what is not . Every form of realism emphasizes that what is given in the senses is primarily a matter of being, whereas what is merely thought is more of a non-being. Being presupposes an existing world of objects, properties or relationships. In contrast to this, the various forms of idealism see what actually exists in the inner world of what is purely mentally presented , while the reality of an outer world is disputed and taken for mere appearance.

The concept of being has the widest possible scope of meaning ( extension ) because it can refer to everything that is conceivable. Everything that is conceivable means everything that is not “not”. The principle of the excluded third applies to being and nothing . Only through the concept of being does the idea of ​​negation and difference become possible. Difference is the transition from being to being. Being and being are in a dialectical relationship to one another. The being (synthesis) results from being (thesis) and nothing (antithesis) through the distinguishability. The difference between being and existence is that by existence one means being in reality with a place and time determination. In contrast, properties can also be ascribed to such objects without a proven existence: Atlantis is a lost world empire.

The concept of being is discussed in general metaphysics . It asks about the most general categories of being and is therefore also called fundamental philosophy. If it examines being as a being, one speaks of ontology (doctrine of being).

The concept of being

A first approach to the topic is the linguistic use of the expression sein . In colloquial German and in the Indo-European languages ​​in general, “sein” is used as a linguistic link, as a copula , to connect subject and predicate in grammatical sentences or in statements of logic . Whether this grammatical function as a mere copula corresponds to a semantic insignificance of the word “being” has been a controversial discussion since Aristotle at the latest .

“Even to be or not to be is not a sign of the thing with meaning [of which it is said], not even if one were to say 'being' naked in oneself, because it is nothing in itself, but describes a certain connection [ to something] that cannot be thought without the connected "

- Aristotle

According to an observation by Aristotle, which many philosophers still consider to be correct, the word "is" has different meanings depending on the constellation of statements. "But since that which is, simply expressed, is used in multiple meanings." ( Aristotle )

One can distinguish the different meanings of the word “ist” in German as follows

  1. Existence . Example: Socrates is.
  2. relation
    1. identity
      1. mathematical equality . Example: two times two is four.
      2. Marking . Example: Aristotle is Alexander's teacher.
      3. Definition . Example: ontology is the study of beings.
    2. Predication of properties. Example: Socrates is mortal.
    3. Classification . Example: an elephant is a mammal.

The use of “is” to denote existence can refer to the existence of objects, but also of facts (it is the case that ...). The other uses of “is”, i.e. identity, predication or classification, characterize relations or properties, whereby they implicitly assume the existence of the subject (so-called existential presupposition).

Categorical determination of beings

A first systematic analysis of beings is the writing Categories by Aristotle. In this work he investigated fundamental ways of expressing beings. He put together a list of ten terms that are completely independent of one another and, in his view, can no longer be traced back to other terms.

designation Greek question example
substance ousia , ti esti What is something Man, horse
quantity poson How much / big is something? two cubits long
Qualitative poion What is something like? knows, able to read
relation pros ti How is something related (to something)? double, half, bigger
place pou Where is something? in the Lyceum, on the market square
time pote When is something? yesterday, last year
location keisthai What position is something in? it is set up, sits
To have echein What has something wears shoes, is armed
To do poiein What is doing cuts, burns
Suffer paschein What does something suffer? is cut, burned

The category list contains two classes of terms, namely substance and the remaining nine categories, accidents . Substance is that which underlies beings ( hypokeimenon ). The substance is always the subject of a statement ( predication ). Accidental, however, do not exist independently, but only in one substance. They can only be stated in connection with a substance.

In a further step, Aristotle distinguished the first substances ( prote ousia ) from the second substances ( deutera ousia ). The first substance cannot be predicated of any other underlying. It is individual and numbered one, so indivisible. The second substances are the species and genera predicted by the first substances. Socrates is said to be a human being and a living being. The second substances are not accidental, because they always belong to the first substance. They describe the essence of the first substance. Accidents, on the other hand, always relate to a certain state of a substance.

History of philosophy

Antiquity

In Greek natural philosophy , the search for the original ground of beings consisted of explanations based on a primary substance (fire, water, air, apeiron ). It was not until Parmenides that being became an abstract concept to be determined beyond natural philosophy.

“The one (shows) that (being) is and that it is impossible that it is not. That is the path of belief; he follows the truth. But the other (asserts) that it is not and that this non-being must necessarily exist. This path is - I tell you - completely inexplicable. Because you can neither recognize what does not exist (because that is impossible) nor express it. "

- Parmenides

Since being is no longer the empirically tangible, but the true, Parmenides rejected the non-existing as impossible. For him it was true that “being is uncommon and immortal, whole and uniform, and unshakable and perfect.” In his didactic poem, in which he also considered the becoming and decay of nature, Parmenides differentiated for the first time between the perishable being and the immortal metaphysical To be, even if he has not yet used the term being explicitly. What is really there does not arise and does not disappear. Against Parmenides, Heraclitus advocated becoming as the principle underlying the world. ( panta rhei )

In the dialogue with Sophist Plato problematized that there is possibility in the non-existing, so that one can also talk about the non-existent. The non-existing is not nothing , but diversity. For example, if you say that rest is not movement, that doesn't mean that rest is nothing. “But it is because of its part in beings”. Rest and movement are just not the same. For Plato, being as becoming and passing away was something that participates in being (in unchangeable ideas). The existence of red things consists in participating in the redness. According to Plato, being is one of the five categories in which all other ideas participate, alongside rest, movement, identity and difference .

“And since being and the different go through everything and also through each other: the different will now, as having a part in the being, certainly be by virtue of this part, but not that in which it has part, but different; but as being different from being, it is obviously quite necessarily non-being. Once again, being, as having a share in the different, is different from all other genres, and each of them is not different from them as a whole, nor is any of the others as a whole, but only itself. "

- Plato

Even if he understood being as abstract, Plato still concentrated on the consideration of the empirically tangible:

“So I say whatever has any active power ( dynamis ), unless 'to do something else by nature' (poiein) or if only to suffer the slightest of the most insignificant - even if it were only once -, everything be in an exact way ( ontus einai ); because I set the definition (limit) to delimit beings in their being, nothing other than effective force. "

- Plato

The being, which is subject to the laws of cause and effect, is opposed as unchangeable quantities by the ideas whose highest principle is unity ( to hen ).

Only Aristotle came to a clear conceptual distinction between being and being. “From time immemorial and now and always it is in demand and always difficult to grasp what beings are.” (Met. VII 1, 1028 b 2-4) In dealing with Plato's ideas, he developed the structuring of beings in an early concept according to categories (see above). Later, in metaphysics , he made “beings as beings” ( to ho en on ) the fundamental theme of the “first philosophy”. "There is a science that regards beings as beings and what belongs to them in itself." (Met. IV 1, 1003a 21)

Beyond the categorical structuring, he now viewed beings as existence ( to estin ), as reality ( entelechia ) and possibility ( dynamis ) and as true and false. Being is not a generic term because it is not unambiguously ( univocal ), but rather ambiguous ( equivocal ) about things. The concept of being adds nothing to substance ( ousia ); it is that which is always already, unchangeable and essentially contained in the individual things. Being as general cannot be stated without reference to an individual (see problem of universals ). Everything that is said about beings has being as such, which establishes unity ( pros hen ), the supreme and first being ( protos on ). "Since being is now denoted in so many meanings, the first being of them is obviously the what, which denotes being (substance)." (Met. 1028 a 13 - 15). Absolute being is for Aristotle the "unmoved mover", which he understood as the pure, only self-thinking reason to which all being strives and through which the becoming and passing away are caused.

Neoplatonism

In Neo-Platonism in Plotinus is the ground, the first principle, the one ( to hen ), the ideas and the empirical beings derive from the hierarchy. Being is equated with spirit ( nous ). The spirit is at the same time what is. Being and thinking coincide in one. Being is thinking, being is thought.

“The first must be something simple above all things, different from everything that is after it, being for itself, not mixed with something that comes from it, and yet able to be present in another way, truly one thing being and not first something else and only then one. […] Because if it weren't easy, removed from all contingency and all composite, and truly one thing, then it would no longer be the original reason; only because it is simple is it the most independent of all things and thus the first. "

- Plotinus

From this primordial ground, everything that is flows through emanation . The mind itself is the first step in emanation. Reason cannot be the highest authority, because it always contains the reference to something, a difference. This unspecified difference is being. The development of being is the world of ideas ( kosmos noetos ), world reason. The nous creates the genera and types of beings through emanation. The ideas are the whole of each being through which the multiplicity of matter is brought into unity. The ideas give form to beings and are thus ontologically primary. Emanation is a hierarchical process of development from the highest general to the single species and the individual. This also determines the order of the world.

“If the ideas are now many, there must necessarily be something in common in them and also something of their own, which distinguishes one from the other. This own, then, this separating difference is the individual form of the idea. But if there is a shape, there is something that is shaped, in which the specific difference is; So there is also matter there, which takes up the form and is the substrate for everyone. Furthermore, if there is an intelligible cosmos in the upper world and the earthly one is its image, but this is composed, among other things, of matter, then there must be matter there too. "

- Plotinus

Similar to Plotinus, his pupil Porphyrios distinguished between being, living and thinking. Following on from this, Augustine combined Christian thought with Neoplatonism in his doctrine of the Trinity. The created worldly being stands opposite the uncreated divine being. Being is no longer accessible to sensual human knowledge. Knowledge of being becomes a believing inner knowledge (intima cognitio). Also Boethius represented the dependence of beings from the divine being. “Being and what is are different; Being itself that is not yet, but only that which is by receiving the form of being, and there is. "( Boethius ) Every being ( ens ) participates in the being ( esse ), but has being itself participate in nothing. The ideas are ideas in the Spirit of God, whose will is the first principle.

middle Ages

In the medieval discussion, the dispute about the relationship of being and God to one another took place above all on the question of proofs of God. While Scotus Eriugena still placed God above being and non-being and rejected statements about God as impossible, Anselm von Canterbury's proof of God contains positive statements about God, in that he is the highest good, highest great, highest 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 thought ( quo maius cogitari non potest ). Only by awarding a property is a proof of God possible and at the same time the assumption of a realistic position in the universal dispute.

Thomas Aquinas softened Anselm's radical realism through the doctrine of Analogia Entis . In his work De ente et essentia ( About beings and essence ) he first showed that for being without a circle or infinite regress no causation can be shown. Being itself is a prerequisite for the differentiation (realdistinction) of beings.

Johannes Duns Scotus opposes the concept of analogy with the doctrine of the univocality of beings. The being ( ens ) is the simplest concept of all ( simplex simpliciter ). This term is contained in all other terms ( in omni conceptu est ens ). Whether you are talking about nature or philosophy or theology, the concept of being is always included. The distinction in 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 being is the object of reason, the infinite being is the matter of faith.

The separation of reason and faith found another continuation in Wilhelm von Ockham . Although he recognized that being and one are expressed as concepts of all individual things according to their essence (what is), as a nominalist he rejected the concept of univocality. “Although there is a common term for all beings in this sense, the name 'being' is nonetheless equivocal, because nothing of all things about which it can be predicated is predicated according to a concept when used significantly.” Outside the mind it's just isolated things.

Hume

For David Hume , the existence of an outside world could not be rationally justified. Belief in the outside world is a natural, psychologically conditioned human need.

“So the idea of ​​existence must be exactly the same as the idea of ​​what we conceptualize as existing. Simply referring to something in reflection and referring to what exists are not two different things. The idea of ​​existence, when connected with the idea of ​​any object, adds nothing to it. Whatever we imagine, we present as existing. Every idea that we like to carry out is an idea of ​​something that is. Anyone who denies this must necessarily be able to point out the particular impression from which the idea of ​​being could be derived, and show that this impression is inseparable from every perception that we consider to be existing. "

- David Hume

Kant

“Being is obviously not a real predicate, that is a concept of something that could be added to the concept of a thing. It is just the position of a thing or certain determinations in itself. In logical use it is merely the copula of a judgment. The phrase God is omnipotent contains two concepts that have their objects: God and omnipotence; the little word: is, is not another predicate, but only that which the predicate or the subject places. 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 set a new predicate for 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 more can be added to the concept, which merely expresses the possibility, because I think its object as simply given (through the expression: it is). And so the real contains nothing more than the merely possible. "

- Kant

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

Spruce

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

Hegel

The problem of the beginning arises in all philosophy. For Hegel, it already contains all the moments. His doctrine of being forms the beginning of his logic . To do this, he takes up the understanding of being of the Eleaten , and on the other hand that of Heraclitus. These determined it as the beginning (principle) or ground of the changeable appearance of nature. Pure being, as the other of pure nothing (Heraklit / Plato), is contained immediately in the beginning. 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 ground of everything 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 or further determined."

- Hegel

Here pure thinking, pure thought and pure being mean that they are mere form and absolutely devoid of content. As a pure abstraction, it is the same as nothing. By itself, one is as true or false as the other. Hegel says that only the unity of both is their truth. Becoming consists of them. That is why they are identical in him, although they remain different. This Heraclitus truth is fundamental to Hegel's whole logic. Hegel speaks of an absolute abstraction without further determination. For him, all concepts of philosophy are “examples of this unity”.

“It is a great thought to move from being to becoming; it is still abstract (with Heraclitus, note) , but at the same time it is also the first concrete element, the unity of opposing determinations. This is so restless in this relationship, the principle of liveliness is in it. It replaces the deficiency that Aristotle showed in earlier philosophies - the lack of movement; this movement is itself a principle here. So this philosophy is not a past; its principle is essential […]. It is a great insight that one has recognized that to be and not to be are only abstractions without truth, that the first true 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 all is to determine the absolute as becoming. "

- Hegel

He takes up 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 ) Pure being is only the form of the absolute. Furthermore, he distinguishes from indefinite being that which he calls Dasein. “Dasein is determinate being; its determinateness is existent determinateness, quality. ”( Hegel ) This is finite because becoming already contains the moment of its finiteness, the nothingness, in itself. Being is mediated through essence . In it, being is not only immediate , but also mediated . Only in concrete existence does the difference between the essence and its appearance appear. Everything that exists has an appearance. It is nothing other than the immobile being that underlies this changeable appearance. In concept being and essence are canceled. They are united in it as knowledge . It is the unity of subjectivity and objectivity. In this respect, the highest that man can know about God and everything else is his concept. This then also constitutes the reality for the subject.

Heidegger

Martin Heidegger's ontological starting point is the ontological difference between being and being, with which he transfers the hermeneutic paradigm, so to speak, to ontology: Just as an individual can only be understood through its relation to the whole, being forms the understanding horizon for everything individually in the world Encounter. Being therefore precedes all beings. Just as the giver and the giving are not visible in the given, being is always in front of and co-pending in dealing with the world. Since the being itself nothing but a being is , can not say that "Being". Heidegger therefore says, in order to avoid the expression “being is”, “there is being” or “being is west”. Being is the always athematic horizon on which the individual things show themselves in their meaningful meaning. Being and understanding coincide with Heidegger. Heidegger's philosophical concern was to make this non-thematic horizon a topic and to express what is otherwise only implicitly considered and meant.

Since everyday language always only refers to beings and not to non-thematic “horizons of understanding”, Heidegger felt it was his duty to develop a completely new vocabulary in order to use it to talk about being without incorrectly referring the traditional terms for being to that Being transferred and thus reified. With Heidegger this led to a struggle with the traditional language and earned him his idiosyncratic style.

In order to understand the “meaning of being”, Heidegger tries to clarify being and time by asking the person who has always somehow understood being: the human being. Heidegger is concerned with an understanding of being and not with knowing , as was the case with Kant, for example, when he asks about the subject's cognitive ability. Thought cannot go back behind understanding, because meaning is always something that has already preceded it; it cannot be made afterwards by combining two initially unrelated, i.e. H. senseless things are made. Understanding the “meaning of being” can therefore only be achieved 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 man, 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 expose the existentials , ie the structures that fundamentally determine people. On the basis of this, the question of how the world can be understood through them should then be answered.

However, “Being and Time” remained a fragment and the question of the meaning of being remained largely unresolved. Heidegger after one of him as a hairpin designated rethinking his later work attempted to his historical reference to think about being of man. A retrospective of the history of philosophy shows for Heidegger 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 is only thought of as Resource for human needs appears, thus under considerations of utility. “Truth” is therefore not a timeless and always prevailing one, but truth itself is historical. Unlike Kant, it can no longer be traced back to a subject who determines beings through the application of fixed categories, but rather it occurs in the course of history from being itself. Humans cannot control how and when a world as a whole opens up to them. Especially since this is a process in itself, according to Heidegger, which to this day has never entered people's consciousness. This is related to the fact that being always reveals itself in such a way that being arrives and appears in being, but at the same time the process of revealing itself does not become a problem for man. So being hides itself in its revealing. For Heidegger, this leads to the 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, with the beginning of modern times, technical world domination appears as the ultimate sense of humanity.

See also

literature

classic

Classic exegesis

  • Karl Albert: Meister Eckhart's thesis of being , Kastellaun 1979, ISBN 3-450-00009-8
  • P. Aubenque: Art. Onto-logique , in: Encyclopédie philosophique universelle
  • L. Azar: Esse in the philosophy of Whitehead , in: New Scholasticism 37 (1963), 462-471.
  • Enrico Berti: Multiplicity And Unity Of Being In Aristotle , in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 101/2 (2001), 185-207.
  • Joseph Bobik: (Thomas) Aquinas: On being and essence (De ente et essentia), A translation and interpretation, Notre Dame: University Press 1970
  • S. Brown: Avicenna and the unity of the concept of being , in: Franciscan Studies 25 (1965), 117-150.
  • S. Dumont: The univocity of the concept of being in the 14th century , in: Mediaeval Studies 49 (1987), 1-75.
  • LJ Elders: The metaphysics of being of St. Thomas Aquinas in a historical perspective , Leiden 1993
  • Kurt Flasch : Being and being able to do with Nikolaus von Kues , in: Parusia studies on the philosophy of Plato and the problem history of Platonism, Frankfurt / M.1965, 407-421.
  • J. de Vries: Das' esse commune with Thomas von Aquin , in: Scholastik 39 (1964), 163-177.
  • Etienne Gilson : Being and Some Philosophers , Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies 1949
  • Etienne Gilson: L'être et l'essence , 2nd A., Paris 1962.
  • Ludger Honnefelder : Ens inquantum ens , The concept of being as such as an object of metaphysics according to the teaching of Johannes Duns Scotus, Münster: Aschendorff, 1971, 2nd A. 1989.
  • K. Kremer: The Neoplatonic philosophy of being and its effect on Thomas Aquinas , 2. A. Leiden 1971.
  • W. Kluxen: Thomas von Aquin: The being and its principles , in: J. Speck (ed.): Basic problems of the great philosophers, antiquity and the Middle Ages, 1972, 177–220.
  • S. Knuuttila / Jakko Hintikka (eds.): The logic of being , Dordrecht 1982
  • Alasdair MacIntyre, Art. Being , in: Donald Borchert (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd A., Macmillan 2005, Vol. 1, 527-532, ISBN 978-0-02-865780-6
  • Gottfried Martin: Immanuel Kant: Ontologie und Wissenschaftstheorie , Cologne 1951.
  • SP Marrone: Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus on the knowledge of being , in: Speculum 63 (1988) 22-57.
  • Parviz Morewedge (Ed.): Philosophies of Existence ancient and medieval , New York: Fordham University Press 1982, ISBN 0-8232-1059-6 Essays u. a. on Plato , Aristotle , Ancient Philosophy , Buddhism , Duns Scotus , 13th Century, Late Middle Ages, Kalam , Suhrawardi , Avicenna and Islamic Philosophy
  • L. Oeing-Hanhoff: Being and language in the philosophy of the Middle Ages , in: Jan P. Beckmann (Ed.): Language and knowledge in the Middle Ages, Berlin: De Gruyter 1981 (Miscellanea mediaevalia 13), 165–178.
  • Joseph Owens: The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics , Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies 1951.
  • Yvanka B. Raynova. Being, meaning and values. Phenomenological and Hermeneutic Perspectives of European Thought . Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2017, ISBN 978-3-631-70591-9
  • Yvanka B. Raynova, Vesselin Petrov (Ed.): Being and Knowledge in Postmetaphysical Context. Vienna: Institute for Axiological Research, 2008, ISBN 978-3-902295-06-4
  • LM de Rijk: The effect of Neoplatonic semantics on medieval thinking about being , in: Jan P. Beckmann (Ed.): Language and knowledge in the Middle Ages, Berlin: De Gruyter 1981 (Miscellanea mediaevalia 13), 19–35.
  • LM de Rijk: Peter Abelards semantics and his doctrine of being , in: Vivarium 35 (1986), 85-127
  • Barry Smith: Ontological aspects of Husserl's phenomenology , in: Husserl Studies 3 (1986), 115-130.
  • E. Sonderegger: Because being or not being is not a characteristic of the thing . In: Journal for Philosophical Research 43 (1989), 489-508.
  • W. Strolz: Being and Nothing in Western Mysticism . Freiburg / Br. 1984
  • Hans Peter Sturm: Neither to be nor not to be . Würzburg 1999.
  • Michael Theunissen: Being and Appearance . The critical function of Hegelian logic, Frankfurt / M. : Suhrkamp 1978.
  • Ernst Tugendhat : Being and Nothing , in: Perspectives on Martin Heidegger's 80th birthday. Frankfurt / M. 1980
  • Bernhard Welte : Ens per se subsistens , in: Philosophisches Jahrbuch 71 (1964), 243-252.
  • Albert Zimmermann : Ontology or Metaphysics? The discussion of the subject of metaphysics in the 13th and 14th centuries; Texts and research, Leiden: Brill 1965

Recent systematic discussion

  • P. Butchvarov: Being qua Being. A Theory of Identity, Existence, and Predication, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1979
  • Peter T. Geach: Form and Existence , in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 55 (1954), 251-272.
  • Peter T. Geach , AJ Ayer , Willard Van Orman Quine : Symposium: On What There Is. In: Aristotelian Society Supplement 25 (1951), 125-160.
  • Peter T. Geach: What Actually Exists. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplement 42: 7-16 (1968)
  • John Mackie : The Riddle of Existence. In: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplement 50 (1976), 247-266
  • Alasdair MacIntyre , Art. Being , in: Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd A., Vol. 1, 527-532
  • Barry Miller: The Fullness of Being , Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 2002
  • George E. Moore : Is Existence a Predicate? In: Aristotelian Society Supplement 15 (1936), 175-188.
  • William V. O. Quine: On What There Is. In: Review of Metaphysics 2 (1948), 21-38.
  • Wolfgang Stegmüller : The problem of universals then and now. 1965.
  • P. Weiss: Being, Essence and Existence. In: Review of Metaphysics 1 (1947), 69-92.
  • C. J. F. Williams: Being, Identity, and Truth. Oxford: OUP 1992.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alois Halder - Philosophical Dictionary, Herder Verlag 2008
  2. ^ JB Lotz, W. Brugger: General Metaphysics . Section D: “Concept of being”. Third edition, Munich 1967.
  3. ↑ The works of Charles H. Kahn offer a concise overview of the Greek material and are still indispensable. For a brief overview, cf. his essay in Knuutila / Hintikka.
  4. ↑ Aristotle : Peri hermeneias 3. 16 b, 20-25
  5. ↑ Cf. Albert Keller: Keyword “Being”, in: Hermann Krings, Hans Michael Baumgartner, Christoph Wild: Handbuch philosophischer Grundbegriffe, Munich 1974
  6. ↑ Aristotle: Met. VII 1, 1026a 33
  7. ↑ Extensive and detailed systematic sketch of word meanings in the article Being in: Anton Hügli , Poul Lübcke: Philosophielexikon , people and concepts of occidental philosophy from antiquity to the present, rororo Encyclopedia, Volume 55453, 1995, ISBN 3-499-55453-4
  8. ↑ Parmenides: About nature (fragments), in: Wilhelm Capelle : Die Vorsokratiker, Kröner, 8th edition 1968, 165
  9. ↑ Parmenides: On Nature, 169
  10. ↑ Plato: Sophistes 256a
  11. ^ Plato: Sophistes, 233
  12. ^ Plato: Sophistes, 247d-e
  13. ↑ The second science, on the other hand, is physics, which deals with the perceptible being (Met. VII 11, 1037a 14-16)
  14. ^ Plotin: Enneaden V, 4, 1., Schriften Volume 1, Hamburg 1956, 151
  15. ^ Plotin: Enneaden II, 4, 4, 1.c., Schriften Volume 1, Hamburg 1956, 249
  16. ↑ Boethius: Hebdomadibus, II, in: Theologische Traktate, Meiner 1988, 37
  17. ^ Wilhelm von Ockham; Texts on the theory of knowledge and science, Stuttgart 1984, 83
  18. ↑ David Hume: Treatise on human nature, Meiner, Hamburg 1989, 91
  19. ↑ Critique of Pure Reason B 627 f.
  20. ^ Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Basis der Wissenschaftslehre (1802), complete edition of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences I / 2, 359-360
  21. ↑ cf. GWF Hegel: Science of Logic I. stw, Frankfurt 1986, p. 73. It is still nothing, and it should become something. The beginning is not pure nothing, but nothing; from which something should proceed; being is therefore already included in the beginning.
  22. ↑ cf. GWF Hegel: Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences I. stw, Frankfurt am Main 2003, § 86, p. 182f.
  23. ↑ cf. GWF Hegel: Encyclopedia I. § 87, p. 186.
  24. ↑ cf. GWF Hegel: Encyclopedia I. , § 88, S. 188f.
  25. ↑ cf. GWF Hegel: Lectures on the History of Philosophy I. stw, Frankfurt am Main 1999, p. 320. Here we see land; it is not a sentence from Heraclitus that I (have) not included in my logic.
  26. ↑ cf. GWF Hegel: Science of Logic I. S. 86. "Since [...] this unity of being and nothing is the first truth once and for all and constitutes the element of everything that follows, so are all further logical determinations besides becoming itself : Existence, quality, in general all concepts of philosophy, examples of this unity "
  27. ↑ GWF Hegel: History of Philosophy I. S. 324f.
  28. ↑ GWF Hegel: Encyclopedia I. § 85, p. 181.
  29. ↑ GWF Hegel: Science of Logic I. S. 115.
  30. ↑ cf. GWF Hegel: Encyclopedia I. § 122, p. 231.
  31. ↑ cf. GWF Hegel: Encyclopedia I. § 131 (+ addition), p. 261ff.
  32. ↑ cf. GWF Hegel: Lectures on the history of philosophy. I p. 275ff. He saw the awareness of this for the first time in the Eleatics. "But since the change is now understood in its highest abstraction as nothing, this objective movement is transformed into a subjective one, takes the side of consciousness, and the being becomes the unmoved." P. 278. But only Plato asks explicitly the nature of the being (eidos).
  33. ↑ GWF Hegel: Science of Logic II , 245f.