Philosophy as Metaphysics

Being

The Category of Being as the Foundational Concept of Metaphysical Philosophy: Ontological Issues in the History of Philosophy

Following the critical observations made earlier regarding traditional metaphysics, which has primarily been an ontology—an inquiry into being—one might find the appearance of this paragraph somewhat perplexing. However, it is not our intention to provide a purely formal and overly detailed reproduction of outdated perspectives on being that may attract only the attention of specialists. In this educational course, we approach the concept of being for several reasons. First, it is the most ancient and fundamental notion in philosophy, one that nearly every philosophical school has relied upon until quite recently; thus, if we wish to comprehend philosophical texts, we must engage with it regardless. The fact that it was the primary concept of an now-defunct metaphysics does not imply that we should forget it entirely. Therefore, secondly, this concept leads us to a series of derivative notions such as non-being, substance, matter, nature, social being, and individual being, without which a course in philosophy would be incomplete. Our attention to being can also be justified from a values-based perspective. For instance, the Russian philosopher P. P. Gaidenko once noted the spread of "ontological nihilism" rooted in utopian activism, where many individuals have come to desire the transformation not just of Earth but of the entire cosmos. The roots of this widespread passion for restructuring everything, the author argues, can be traced back to the establishment, in the late Middle Ages, of a type of thinking that arose from the rejection of traditional ontology and the evaluation of reason not as the highest form of being but as a subjective beginning, a subject that stands in opposition to the world of objects. For these and several other reasons, we will now turn our attention to the concept of being.

The Category of Being as the Foundational Concept of Metaphysical Philosophy: Ontological Issues in the History of Philosophy

Regardless of its nature, philosophical knowledge unfolds within a complex of concepts or categories (from the Greek katēgoria, meaning expression, characteristic, definition, judgment; in philosophy, categories refer to the most general concepts). The construction of philosophical reasoning requires addressing the question of the initial, foundational category. This may take the form of the most abstract and general category that highlights a common property shared by the vast array of objects, processes, and phenomena. This commonality, it seems, is "existence." To "exist" or "to be" is what we first acknowledge when we wish to speak about anything: both individual things and the world as a whole. By the category of "being," we assert that the world, which encompasses the totality of things and processes, is present, existing, for before we advance in any direction in our thoughts about the world and its components, we must acknowledge its existence. The category of "being" emphasizes the fact of existence of particular objects and phenomena, which bears an undeniable weight, compelling us to regard this fact as undeniable. This is evident even from the standpoint of everyday life: only the initial undeniable existence of something becomes the subject of further consideration.

At the dawn of philosophy, the category of being emerged first, also due to the deep crisis in the existing being of former societies. The experience of the fragility of existence and the destruction of established forms of coexistence prompted reflections on the relationship between being and non-being, as well as the nature of both. The first to consciously introduce the category of being into European philosophy was, as we recall, Parmenides. He was convinced that non-being cannot even be conceived, for this would contradict the logic of rational thought. From this perspective, being can be considered as a seamless fullness of the universe, an eternal surrounding totality of objects.

Simultaneously, however, alternative thoughts began to emerge in philosophy that sought to connect "being" and "non-being," grounded in empirical experience. For example, the sophist Protagoras declared that man is "the measure of all things," meaning that a person is the judge who determines for themselves what is being or non-being, existence or non-existence of "things." The Cynics, in contrast, outright ignored the existence of societal norms, liberating individuals from the burdens of public opinion and customs. Meanwhile, the atomists Leucippus and Democritus acknowledged the union of being and non-being in the form of atoms and void.

Overall, it must be said that the early ancient philosophical tradition was more inclined to associate being with objecthood, with some material equivalent: whether atoms or elements. All questions related to the meaning and nuances of the category of being have come to be termed ontological. The term "ontology" was first employed in the "Philosophical Lexicon" compiled by R. Goclenius in 1613, later solidified by Christian Wolff, and signified "the doctrine of being."

The ontological thoughts of Plato and Aristotle exerted significant influence on European philosophy. As is well known, Plato regarded the realm of ideas as true being, while everything that surrounds us in everyday life is something intermediate between being and non-being. This notion, in a transformed form, persisted into Neoplatonism. Aristotle developed a clearer and more detailed speculative ontology. He posited that "being" possesses multiple meanings, which he categorized into four groups, one of which expresses itself through categories of essence, quality, quantity, and other higher kinds of being. For him, "being" pertains to all that "is." The being encompasses everything that exists, including both objects and their predicates. However, "essence" applies only to being in its primary sense, i.e., to the bearer of all other predicates. For instance, Aristotle indicates that to be a man is not the same as to be educated, as education is an additional (not primary) quality of a person. Among all categories of being, none can exist separately; only essence is capable of this. The definition of essence essentially involves ascribing all properties to something based on the notion that something is something that can exist unconditionally as a finite being, in and of itself. The significance that Aristotle attributed to essence is evident in the following: "Thus the question, which has been posed since ancient times, which is currently raised, and which continually presents difficulties—the question of what being is—boils down to the question of what essence is." Perhaps the replacement of the question of being with the question of essence was, for him, the solution to the fundamental problem of metaphysics.

Medieval scholastic ontology, theologically reinterpreting Aristotle, engaged in constructing a hierarchy of participation in being. According to its proponents, only God is identical to being as such; in Him resides the totality of being, while everything else possesses limited being. Thus, only God is the absolute being. Modern philosophy rejected the ontological problem as well as metaphysics in general, and only German classical philosophy returned to it, albeit, as mentioned earlier, from the perspective of epistemology.

A significant attempt to renew ontology in the 20th century was the philosophy of M. Heidegger. He redirected ontology toward humanity. Traditional ontology studied things in themselves. According to Heidegger, the new ontology is a doctrine on how being embodies itself, how it manifests within humanity. Human existence is a process of transitioning being from abandonment, lost in the social and material world, to a new life, to the authentic element of being. Incidentally, the Eastern philosophical tradition has never opposed being and non-being. This holds profound significance, as each thing exists for a time as such and then disappears, thus transitioning into non-being.

Another attempt to construct ontology in our time was introduced by another German philosopher, N. Hartmann (1882-1950), who maintained that ontology should focus on what exists. He distinguished between real and ideal being. We come to know real being through emotional acts, while ideal being is represented by mathematical and logical forms, ideal forms as the essence of things, and moral values.

The approaches discussed concerning the problem of being demonstrate how what seems an abstract category has prompted deep and rigorous contemplation, substantially enriching philosophical life. For our further exploration, we should emphasize the main point: the category of being serves as the foundational, most general characteristic of everything that exists and can be the subject of thought and practical relation.