Ontology

Understanding Being

The Concept of Being

The term "being" denotes that singular commonality which can be conceived in anything: everything we can think of substantively shares the characteristic of existence. However, to be is not a property of the object itself; rather, it is a characteristic of our thought about the object, which is always directed toward something; in any thought, something is distinguished and differentiated. Therefore, being has no counterpart; it cannot be separated from "something," and it is not an object in itself. When nothingness is contemplated, being is negated in this thought; nothing exists (since the notion of nothingness explicitly indicates non-existence). If the world were entirely homogeneous, it would mean the absence of any "something" that differs from another, that is, the absence of the world as such. Nothing would occur; there would be nothing.

Being, thus, signifies the inherent action-relation within any thought that highlights a certain being.

But if there is initially nothing, how can something arise? The ancient Greeks concluded that there must always and everywhere exist something universal, possessing the quality of being independent of any thinking being, yet captured by thought as a necessary condition for thinking about objects. Being is logically necessary, for otherwise, nothing could be conceived!

It is important to note that from the thought of being, we cannot derive anything about particular existents or events. It is empty and does not encompass the fullness of all that is real; rather, it merely establishes that primary condition of thought: to think requires at least something to serve as content, anything at all that can be conceived as something given. This is akin to an empty program for a computer: since it is a program, the computer "knows" that it is dealing with a program, but because it is empty, nothing is executed.