Philosophical Content of the Problem of Being: The Dialectic of Being

Being as the Fundamental Category of Philosophy

A distinguishing feature of philosophy as a doctrine is its provision of the most generalized knowledge about what exists. Thus, the philosophical understanding of the world is grounded in a generalized, abstract, theoretical reflection of reality. This reflection is achieved through the use of the most general concepts—categories. The most general category of philosophy is the ancient concept of "being."

The problem of being is one of the central themes of philosophical contemplation and inquiry. Since the 18th century, the branch of philosophical knowledge associated with the study of being has been designated as "ontology."

In philosophy, even during antiquity, a distinction was made between the concepts of "being" and "existent." The existent refers to the totality of surrounding things. However, within the diversity of things, one can discern what is common to them all. This neutral characteristic of all that exists lies in the fact that it exists at all. This is encapsulated in the concept of "being."

In the attempts to explore being as a philosophical problem, the paradoxical nature of the category itself emerges: on one hand, being is oriented towards the most general characteristics of the existent; on the other, it is comprehended through the dimensions of existence, its structure, and reproducibility. It is not coincidental that, in this regard, philosophy encounters the problem of comparing being as such with its individual varieties, aspects, and forms.

To address this problem, contemporary philosophical literature proposes to conditionally separate "the being of the world" from "being in the world," expressed through the relationship between the infinite and the finite. "The being of the world" possesses absolute characteristics—it is monistic and indeterminate. In contrast, "being in the world" is concrete, pluralistic, and object-oriented.

The philosophical problem of being involves the consideration of the relationship between the constancy of being and changeability, that is, the process of becoming being. A prerequisite for defining being as an extremely broad category is its comparison with non-being. Being and non-being (nothingness) do not exist without one another. All specific forms of existence arise from non-being (once they did not exist) and become present being, that is, something. Their being is always linked with the possibility of their non-being, that is, a transition to another form of being. Non-being is conceived as a relative notion. In an absolute sense, non-being does not exist (attempting to conceive of non-being in an absolute sense is a futile endeavor). In our consciousness, there will always emerge some forms, some "something." Between being and non-being stands becoming, which, within being itself, fixes a certain contradiction (for example, the process of personality development).

Therefore, being is a philosophical category that signifies all that truly exists. The main forms of being are:

• The being of things and processes that exist independently of humans and their activities;
• Spiritual, ideal being, which is divided into individualized and objectivized forms;
• Human being as existence within the world of things and the realm of spiritual values;
• Social being, which is divided into the being of an individual person and the being of society as a whole.