Being- all existing reality. The category "being" is one of the broadest philosophical categories.

opposite existence concept - "non-existence" ("nothing"). Being, as that which can be thought, is opposed to the unthinkable nothing(as well as not-yet-being possibilities in Aristotelian philosophy). In the 20th century, in existentialism, being is interpreted through the being of a person, since he has the ability to think and question about being. Man, as being, has freedom and will. In classical metaphysics, being is God.

Distinguish being and being . Existence is the totality of surrounding things. But among them one can find something that is common to all of them, a peculiar sign of the whole world (existing in general), which consists in the fact that it - the world - exists in general. This is expressed in the concept of being. Hence, the question is why is there anything at all, and on what does this “is” rest?

For the first time the concept of "being" was introduced by Eleatus Parmenides (504-501 BC). There is a being and there is the existence of this being, which is called being. Non-existence, "nothing" (of what does not exist) No. Thus, the first thesis of Parmenides is: « Being is, non-being is not at all» . It follows from this thesis that being- one, motionless, unchanging, indivisible, perfect, has no parts, one, eternal, good, did not arise, is not subject to death, because otherwise it would be necessary to admit the existence of something other than being, that is, non-being, and this is unacceptable. Parmenides also believes that « think and be are one and the same», « one and the same thought and that on which the thought rushes ". Since there is no non-existence, this means that it is impossible to think of it. Everything that is conceivable is being.

There are a number of concepts "true being" : Logos, World Mind (Heraclitus), number (Pythagoras), primary matter (ancient natural philosophers), atoms (Democritus), ideas (Plato), form of forms, prime mover, God (Aristotle).

3. Main types of life:

1) objective and subjective, 2) potential and actual, 3) material and spiritual, 4) natural and social

1) Objective Being(God, nature, society) - existing independently of man, subjective being (thoughts, feelings) - the inner world of a person, produced by himself, subjective-objective being (objective world, consciously transformed by man and dependent on him, "second nature"; objective-subjective character, for post-non-classical science it also has scientific knowledge).

In the philosophy of objective idealism, under being understand the true and absolute timeless

reality, as opposed to the present world of becoming. This being is Spirit, Mind, God. Subjective idealism identifies the object of knowledge with sensory perception, "muses", ideas (entities) - interpreting being as something ideal, dependent on consciousness, generated by it.

2) Aristotle in Metaphysics divided being into potential (possible) and actual ( valid) . Potential being - undeveloped, unformed, unfolded, but existing in reality ( future in the present- a child, for example). Actual being - fully manifested, formed, revealed (which is achieved at the stage of maturity - for example, a professional, a person). The process of turning possibility into reality is called becoming.

3) Being materialand being spiritual. Matter (from lat. material- substance) - a physical substance, opposite to consciousness (spirit). . There are several approaches to the concept "matter":

a) materialistic approach, according to which matter is the fundamental principle of being (substance), and all other existential forms - spirit, man, society - are the product of matter, matter is primary and represents existing being, subdivided into inert, living and social matter .;

b) an objective-idealistic approach - matter exists as a product (emanation, objectification) of the primordial (ideal) Spirit independent of all that exists;

c) subjective-idealistic approach - matter as an independent reality does not exist at all, it is only a product of human consciousness;

d) positivist - the concept of "matter" is false, because it cannot be proved and fully studied by experimental scientific research.

Matter (from the point of view of materialism) has the following properties: indestructibility, indestructibility, inexhaustibility, movement, space and time.

movement any change (both thoughts and matter) is called. Movement is the unity of change and preservation (continuity). It has a universal character (it is one of the few absolute truths known to us).

Traffic - way the existence of matter. Allocate five basic forms of motion of matter : mechanical, physical, chemical, biological, social (F. Engels "Dialectics of Nature"). A directed change, accompanied by the appearance of new qualitative states, is called development (ascending line –

progress, descending - regression). The development of nature is denoted by the concept " evolution ”, the development of society -“ story ”, the joint development of society and nature -“ coevolution ».

Space and time - forms the existence of matter. Space expresses the extent of phenomena, their structure of elements and parts. Space is three-dimensional (length, height, width) and reversible (you can return to your children's yard). Time expresses the duration, speed of ongoing processes, the sequence of changing their states. Time is one-dimensional (it flows along one line - past, present, future) and irreversible (it is impossible to return to childhood). Einstein proved that space and time are inseparable from each other, forming a single space-time continuum (chronotope).

There are different "rivers" of time: astronomical, geological, physical, biological ("biological clock"), historical, subjective (“I know that time is extensible, it depends on what kind of content you fill it with”, S. Ya. Marshak).

Spiritual life.In the philosophy of objective idealism being is understood as a true and absolute timeless reality, as opposed to the existing world of becoming. Such being is the World Spirit, the World Mind, the Absolute Idea, God. The spiritual is considered as a kind of unified principle of the universe, acting as a creative, transforming element of life and representing the highest force that determines the existence of the universe. In this case, the spiritual embodies the creative energy of being, bringing harmony and order into the world. Within the framework of this concept, the Spirit is not related to the being of a person, it is impersonal, supra-individual, although at the same time it finds its expression in the individual being of a person.

In the philosophy of subjective idealism spiritual being is a projection of human consciousness (thoughts, images, faith, dreams...).

Spiritual being is divided into individualized (opinions, value ideas of individual people) and objectified, outside/above/individual (religion, science).

4) Being social is divided into individual existence (the existence of an individual in society) and the existence of society. The being of nature (as the being of the material world that arose before man opposes the being of society as a spiritual and material being produced by people (and at the same time is in interaction with it).

In Marxism social being(understood as its own, internal material basis of society, not identical with its natural basis) is opposed to public consciousness(spiritual life of society), acting as the leading party (“being determines consciousness”).

Being is a philosophical category denoting a reality that exists objectively, regardless of the consciousness, will and emotions of a person, a philosophical category denoting a being as it is thought. By being, in the broadest sense of the word, we mean the extremely general concept of existence, of beings in general. Being is everything that is - everything visible and invisible.

The doctrine of being - ontology - is one of the central problems of philosophy.

The problem of being arises when such universal, seemingly natural prerequisites become the subject of doubt and reflection. And there are more than enough reasons for this. After all, the surrounding world, natural and social, now and then asks man and mankind difficult questions, makes you think about previously unexplained familiar facts of real life. Like Shakespeare's Hamlet, people are most often preoccupied with the question of being and non-being when they feel that the connection of times has broken up ...

Analyzing the problem of being, philosophy starts from the fact of the existence of the world and everything that exists in the world, but for it the initial postulate is no longer this fact itself, but its meaning.

The first aspect of the problem of Being is the long chain of thoughts about existence, the answers to the questions What exists? - World. Where does it exist? - Here and everywhere. How long? - Now and always: the world was, is and will be. How long do separate things, organisms, people, their vital activity exist?

The second aspect of the problem of being is determined by the fact that for nature, society, man, his thoughts, ideas, there is something in common, namely, that the listed objects really exist. Due to their existence, they form an integral unity of the infinite, imperishable world. The world as an enduring holistic unity is outside and, to a certain extent, independent of man. Being is a prerequisite for the unity of the world.

As a third aspect of the problem of being, the proposition that the world is a reality, which, since it exists, has an internal logic of existence and development, can be put forward. This logic precedes, as it were, pre-exists the being of people and their consciousness, and for effective human activity it is necessary to know this logic, to investigate the laws of being.

Being is divided into two worlds: the world of physical things, processes, material reality and the ideal world, the world of consciousness, the inner world of a person, his mental states.

These two worlds have different modes of existence. The physical, material, natural world exists objectively, regardless of the will and consciousness of people. The mental world - the world of human consciousness exists subjectively, as it depends on the will and desire of people, individual individuals. The question of how these two worlds relate is the main question of philosophy. The combination of these two basic forms of being allows us to distinguish several more varieties of forms of being.

Man occupies a special place in these worlds. He is a natural being, on the one hand. On the other hand, he is endowed with consciousness, which means that he can exist not only physically, but also talk about the existence of the world and his own existence. The human being embodies the dialectical unity of the objective-objective and the subjective, body and spirit. In itself, this phenomenon is unique. The material, natural acts in man as the primary prerequisite for his existence. At the same time, many human actions are regulated by social, spiritual and moral motives. In the broadest sense, humanity is a community that includes all individuals living now or who lived earlier on Earth, as well as those who are to be born. It must be borne in mind that people exist before, outside and independently of the consciousness of each individual person. A healthy, normally functioning body is a necessary prerequisite for mental activity and a healthy spirit. This is what the proverb says: “A healthy mind in a healthy body”. True, the saying, which is true in its essence, allows exceptions, since the human intellect, his psyche is not always subordinate to a healthy body. But the spirit, as you know, has, or rather, is able to have a huge positive impact on the vital activity of the human body.

Attention should also be paid to such a feature of human existence as the dependence of his bodily actions on social motivations. While other natural things and bodies function automatically, and one can predict their behavior in the short and long term with sufficient certainty, this cannot be done with respect to the human body. Its manifestations and actions are often regulated not by biological instincts, but by spiritual, moral and social motives.

A peculiar mode of existence also characterizes human society. In social being material and ideal, nature and spirit are intertwined. The existence of the social is divided into the existence of an individual in society and in the process of history, and the existence of society. We will analyze this form of being in the sections devoted to society.

The theme of the forms of being is of great importance for understanding the differences in philosophical views. The main difference usually concerns what form of being is considered the main and determining, initial, what forms of being are derivatives. So, materialism considers natural being the main form of being, the rest are derivatives, dependent on the main form. And idealism considers ideal being to be the main form.

BEING-FOR-OTHER AND BEING-IN-ITSELF (German: Sein-fur-Anderes and Ansichsein) are the categories of Hegel's "Sciences of Logic". Introduced in the 2nd chapter of the 1st section. The categorical group that includes these concepts is denoted by the word "reality" (Realitsst). Hegel outlines the connection between these categories as follows: first, the unity of pure being and nothingness is revealed, fixed by the category of becoming; then the transition to the presence of being (Dasein) takes place. “Determinant being as such is immediate, irrelevant...

being-in-the-world

BEING-IN-WORLD (In-der-Welt-Sein) is the first existential that Heidegger analyzes in Being and Time (section Existential Analytics, § 12, ff.). It is necessary to begin with an extremely general consciousness of how the world reveals itself to man, from the fact that man finds himself in the world. The "world" in this sense reveals itself in its very first, vague and indefinite form as the place in which a person "is". "Being-in-the-world" is more primordial than any knowledge, i.e.

Being in the philosophy of the 20th century

BEING IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE 20TH CENTURY The revival of interest in the problem of being in the 20th century is usually accompanied by criticism of neo-Kantianism and positivism. At the same time, the philosophy of life (Bergson, Dilthey, Spengler, etc.), considering the principle of mediation to be specific to the natural sciences and scientism oriented towards them (mediated knowledge deals only with attitude, but never with being itself), appeals to direct knowledge, intuition - but not the intellectual intuition of 17th-century rationalism, but an irrational intuition, akin to artistic intuition.

Being in 19th century philosophy

BEING IN PHILOSOPHY of the 19th century. The principle of the identity of thought and being, Hegel's panlogism, caused a wide reaction in the philosophy of the 19th century. The late Schelling and Schopenhauer opposed Hegel's voluntaristic conception of being. From the standpoint of realism, German idealism was criticized by F. Trendelenburg, I.F. Herbart, B. Bolzano. Feuerbach defended the naturalistic interpretation of being as a single natural individual. Kierkegaard opposed the existence of an individual personality, which is not reducible either to thinking or to the universal world.

Being in philosophy 17th–18th centuries

BEING IN PHILOSOPHY 17-18 centuries. As in the philosophy of the 17th century the spirit, the mind loses its ontological status and acts as the opposite pole of being, epistemological problems become dominant, and ontology develops into natural philosophy. In the 18th century, along with the criticism of rationalistic metaphysics, being is increasingly identified with nature (from which the principles of social life are also derived), and ontology with natural science. So, Hobbes, considering the body as the subject of philosophy (natural bodies - products of nature and artificial, created by the human will - states), excludes from philosophy the whole sphere that in antiquity was called "being" as opposed to changeable becoming ...

Genesis [medieval understanding]

UNDERSTANDING OF BEING IN THE MIDDLE AGES was determined by two traditions: ancient philosophy, on the one hand, and Christian Revelation, on the other. Among the Greeks, the concept of being, as well as perfection, is associated with the concepts of limit, one, indivisible and definite. Accordingly, the infinite, the boundless is perceived as imperfection, non-existence. On the contrary, in the Old and New Testaments, the most perfect being - God - is an infinite omnipotence, and therefore here any limitation and certainty are perceived as a sign of finiteness and imperfection.

Being as a concept of ancient Greek philosophy

BEING AS A CONCEPT OF ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY. In a theoretically reflected form, the concept of being appears for the first time among the Eleatics. There is being, but there is no non-being, says Parmenides (“On Nature”, B6), because it is impossible to know or express non-being - it is incomprehensible. “For to think is the same as to be... You can only speak and think what is; after all, there is being, but nothing is ... ”(Lebedev A.V. Fragments, part 1, p. 296).

Genesis (NFE, 2010)

BEING (Greek εἶναι, οὐσία; Latin esse) is one of the central concepts of philosophy. “The question that has been posed since ancient times and is now constantly posed and causes difficulties is the question of what being is” (Aristotle, Metaphysics VII, 1). Ontology - the doctrine of being - has been the subject of the so-called since the time of Aristotle. "first philosophy". Depending on how one or another thinker, school or trend interprets the question of being, its connection with knowledge, with nature (physics) and the meaning of human existence (ethics), the general orientation of this direction is determined.

Genesis (SZF.ES, 2009)

BEING (Greek einai, ousia; Latin esse) is one of the central concepts of philosophy. The revival of interest in the problem of being in the 20th century, as a rule, is accompanied by criticism and . At the same time, the philosophy of life, considering the principle of mediation as the specifics of the natural sciences and focusing on them

BEING (Greek - τ? ε?ναι, ουσ?α; Latin - esse), one of the central concepts of philosophy, characterizing everything that exists - both actual and potential (actual being, possible being), both in reality and in consciousness (thought, imagination). Ontology - the doctrine of being - has been the subject of the so-called first philosophy since the time of Aristotle. The concepts of "existing", "essence", "existence", "substance" represent various aspects of being.

Being in ancient Greek philosophy. Ancient philosophy, especially the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, for many centuries determined the general nature and ways of dividing the concept of being. In a theoretically reflected form, the concept of being first appears among the representatives of the Eleatic school, who opposed being, as something true and cognizable, to the sensible world, which, being only an appearance (“opinion”), cannot be the subject of true knowledge. The concept of being, as it was comprehended by Parmenides, contains three important points: 1) there is being, but there is no non-being; 2) being is one, indivisible; 3) being is knowable, and non-being is incomprehensible.

These principles were interpreted differently by Democritus, Plato and Aristotle. Leaving the main theses of the Eleatics in force, Democritus, in contrast to them, thought of being as multiple - atoms, and non-being - as emptiness, preserving the principle of indivisibility for atoms, to which he gave a purely physical explanation. Plato, like the Eleatics, characterizes being as eternal and unchanging, cognizable only by the mind and inaccessible to the senses. However, Plato's being is multiple, but these are not physical atoms, but intelligible non-material ideas. Incorporeal ideas Plato calls "essences" (Greek ο?σ?α from the verb "to be" - ε?ναι), that is, that which "exists." Becoming is opposed to becoming - the sensual world of transient things. Claiming that it is impossible to express or think non-being (“Sophist” 238 s), Plato, however, admits that non-being exists: otherwise it would be incomprehensible how delusion and falsehood are possible, that is, “opinion about the non-existent”. For the sake of substantiating the possibility of cognition, which presupposes a relationship between the cognizer and the cognized, Plato opposes to being something else - “existing non-existence”. Being as an interconnected set of ideas exists and is conceivable only by virtue of participation in the super-existential and unknowable One.

Aristotle retains the understanding of being as the beginning of the eternal, self-identical, unchanging. To express various aspects of being in terms of concepts, Aristotle uses rich terminology: τ? ε?ναι (substantiated verb "to be") - being (Latin esse); τ? δν (substantivized participle from the verb "to be") - su-schee (ens; the concepts of "being" and "existing" are interchangeable in Aristotle); ο?σ?α - essence (substantia); τ? τ? ?ν ε?ναι (substantiated question "what is being?") - whatness, or the essence of being (essentia); α?τ? τ? ?ν - being in itself (ens per se); τ? ?ν η оν - being as such (ens qua ens). In the teachings of Aristotle, being is not a category, because all categories point to it; the first among them - essence - stands closest to being, it is more existing than any of its predicates (accident). Aristotle defines the “first essence” as a separate individual - “this man”, and the “second essence” as a species (“man”) and a genus (“animal”). The first entity cannot be a predicate, it is something independent. Being as such can be understood as the highest of all first beings, it is a pure act, free from matter, an eternal and immovable prime mover, which is characterized as "being in itself" and is studied by theology, or the science of the "first being" - the Deity.

The Neoplatonic understanding of being goes back to Plato. According to Plotinus, being presupposes a super-existential principle, standing on the other side of being and cognition, the “One”, or “Good”. Only being is conceivable; that which is higher than being (the One) and that which is lower than it (the infinite) cannot be the subject of thought, for “mind and being are one and the same” (“Enneads” V 4. 2). Being is the first emanation, "the firstborn of the One"; being intelligible, being is always something definite, formed, stable.

Being in medieval philosophy and theology. The understanding of being in the Middle Ages was determined by two traditions: ancient philosophy, on the one hand, and Christian Revelation, on the other. Among the Greeks, the concept of being, as well as perfection, is associated with the concepts of the limit, the one, the indivisible, the formed and the definite. Accordingly, the infinite, the boundless is recognized as imperfection, non-existence. On the contrary, in the Old and New Testaments, the most perfect being - God - is infinite omnipotence, and therefore any limitation and certainty are perceived here as a sign of finiteness and imperfection. Attempts to reconcile these two tendencies or to oppose one another determined the interpretation of being for more than a millennium and a half. So, Augustine, in his understanding of being, is sent both from Holy Scripture (“I am who I am,” God said to Moses, Ex. 3:14), and from the Greek philosophers, according to which being is good. God is good as such, or "mere good". Created things, according to Augustine, are only involved in being or have being, but they themselves are not the essence of being, for they are not simple. According to Boethius, only in God, who is being itself, are being and essence identical; He is a simple substance that does not participate in anything, but in which everything participates. In created things, their being and essence are not identical, they have being only by virtue of participation in what being itself is. Like Augustine, being in Boethius is good: all things are good insofar as they exist, without, however, being good in their essence and their accidents.

Distinguishing, following Aristotle, the actual and potential states, Thomas Aquinas, following the famous formula of Albert the Great “The first among created things is being”, considers being as the first of the actual states: “No creation is its own being, but only participates in being” (“ Summa theologiae", q. 12, 4 p.). Being is identical with goodness, perfection and truth. Substances (essences) have an independent existence, while accidents exist only thanks to substances. Hence, in Thomism, the distinction between substantial and accidental forms: the substantial form gives things a simple being, while the accidental form is the source of certain qualities.

Revision of the ancient and medieval traditions in the understanding of being, taking place in nominalism and German mysticism of the 13th-14th centuries (for example, Meister Eckhart eliminates the distinction between creature and creator, that is, being and being, as Christian theology understood it), as well as in pantheistic and close to pantheism, the currents of philosophy of the 15-17 centuries (with Nicholas of Cusa, J. Bruno, the life of Spinoza, etc.), led in the 16-17 centuries to the creation of a new logic and a new form of science - mathematical natural science.

Being in philosophy of the 17th-18th centuries. As in the philosophy of the 17th century the spirit, the mind loses its ontological status and acts as the opposite pole of being, epistemological problems become dominant, and ontology develops into natural philosophy. In the 18th century, along with the criticism of rationalistic metaphysics, being is increasingly identified with nature, and ontology with natural science. So, T. Hobbes, considering the body as the subject of philosophy, excludes from the knowledge of philosophy the whole sphere, which in antiquity was called "being" as opposed to changeable becoming. In the formula of R. Descartes “I think, therefore I am”, the center of gravity is knowledge, not being. Nature as the mechanical world of effective causes is opposed by the world of rational substances as the realm of ends. This is how the split of being into two incommensurable spheres is realized. Substantial forms, almost universally expelled from philosophical and scientific use in the 17th and 18th centuries, continue to play a leading role in the metaphysics of G. W. Leibniz. Although essence coincides with being only in God, nevertheless, in finite things, essence, according to Leibniz, is the beginning of being: the more essence (that is, actuality) in a thing, the more “being” this thing is. Only simple (non-material and non-extended) monads have true reality; as for bodies, extended and divisible, they are not substances, but only collections, or aggregates of monads.

In the transcendental idealism of I. Kant, the subject of philosophy is not being, but knowledge, not substance, but subject. Distinguishing between the empirical and the transcendental subject, Kant shows that the definitions attributed to substance - extension, figure, movement - actually belong to the transcendental subject, whose a priori forms of sensibility and reason constitute the world of experience; that which goes beyond the limits of experience - the thing in itself - is declared unknowable. It is "things in themselves" - relics of substances, Leibniz monads in Kant's philosophy - that carry the beginning of being. Kant retains a connection with the Aristotelian tradition: being, according to Kant, cannot be a predicate and cannot be “extracted” from a concept. Self-activity of the transcendental I gives rise to the world of experience, the world of phenomena, but does not give rise to being.

Being in 19th century philosophy. In J. G. Fichte, F. W. Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel, who stood on the positions of mystical pantheism (its roots go back to Meister Eckhart and J. Boehme), an absolutely self-determining subject appears for the first time. Being convinced that the human Self in its deep dimension is identical with the divine Self, Fichte considers it possible to derive from the unity of self-consciousness not only the form, but also the entire content of knowledge, and thereby eliminate the concept of “thing in itself”. The principle of knowledge takes the place of being here. Philosophy, according to Schelling, is possible "only as a science of knowledge, having as its object not being, but knowledge." Being, as it was understood by ancient and medieval philosophy, in German idealism is opposed to activity as an inert and dead principle. Hegel's panlogism is carried out at the cost of transforming being into a simple abstraction, into "the general after things": "Pure being is a pure abstraction and, therefore, absolutely negative, which, taken just as directly, is nothing" (Hegel. Op. M .; L ., 1929. T. 1. S. 148). Hegel considers becoming to be the truth of such being. In the advantage of becoming over being, change over immutability, movement over immobility, the priority of relation over being, characteristic of transcendental idealism, affected.

The principle of the identity of thinking and being, the panlogism of G. W. F. Hegel caused a reaction in the philosophy of the 19th century. L. Feuerbach spoke in defense of the naturalistic interpretation of being as a single natural individual. S. Kierkegaard opposed Hegel's existence of an individual, which is not reducible either to thinking or to the universal world. F.V. Schelling declared his early philosophy of identity and Hegel's panlogism, which grew out of it, to be unsatisfactory precisely because the problem of being had disappeared from them. In the irrationalist pantheism of the late Schelling, being is not the product of a conscious act of the good divine will, but the result of the bifurcation and self-disintegration of the absolute; being here is rather the beginning of evil. This trend deepens in the interpretation of being as an unreasonable will, a blind natural attraction in the voluntaristic pantheism of A. Schopenhauer. Being in Schopenhauer is not simply indifferent to the good, as in T. Hobbes or the French materialists, but rather it is evil. The philosophical teachings of the 2nd half of the 19th century, which proceeded from the voluntarism of Schopenhauer - E. Hartmann's "philosophy of the unconscious", F. Nietzsche's "philosophy of life" - also consider being as the opposite of spirit, reason. According to Nietzsche, being, or life, lies on the other side of good and evil, “morality is the aversion from the will to being” (Poln. sobr. essay M., 1910, vol. 9, p. 12).

The result of this process was the deontologization of nature, knowledge and human existence, the reaction to which in the 2nd half of the 19th-20th centuries was a turn to ontology in the neo-Leibnizianism of J.F. Herbart and R.G. Lotze, the realism of F. Brentano, in phenomenology, existentialism, neo-Thomism, Russian religious philosophy. In the pluralistic realism of Herbart and B. Bolzano, the Aristotelian-Leibnizian understanding of being is revived. The subject of Bolzano's science is not an absolute subject, as in J. G. Fichte, but an existent in itself, timeless and unchanging, similar to the ideas of Plato. The ideas of Bolzano influenced the understanding of being by A. Meinong, the early E. Husserl, who opposed subjectivism and skepticism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from the standpoint of an objective ontology of the Platonic type. Brentano also came out in defense of Aristotelian realism, preparing the phenomenological movement.

From the middle of the 19th century, attempts to revive realistic ontology were opposed by positivism, which continued the nominalist tradition and that critique of substance that English empiricism began and completed by D. Hume. According to O. Comte, knowledge has as its subject the connection of phenomena, that is, exclusively the sphere of relations: the self-existent is not only unknowable, but it does not exist at all. The deontologization of knowledge was carried out in the last quarter of the 19th century by neo-Kantianism. In the Marburg school, the principle of relation is declared absolute, the unity of being is replaced by the unity of knowledge, which G. Cohen substantiates, relying on the unity of function, not substance.

Being in the philosophy of the 20th century. The revival of interest in the problem of being in the 20th century is accompanied by criticism of neo-Kantianism and positivism. At the same time, the philosophy of life (A. Bergson, W. Dilthey, O. Spengler, etc.), considering the principle of mediation to be specific to the natural sciences and scientism oriented towards them (mediated knowledge deals only with relation, but never with being itself), appeals to direct knowledge, intuition - but not the intellectual intuition of the rationalism of the 17th century, but the irrational intuition. According to Bergson, being is a stream of creative change, an indivisible continuity or duration given to us in introspection; Dilthey sees the essence of being in historicity, and Spengler - in historical time, which constitutes the nature of the soul. The role of being in phenomenology is restored in a different way. A. Meinong contrasts the neo-Kantian principle of “significance”, related to the subject, with the concept of “evidence”, which comes from the object and therefore is built not on normative principles (should), but on the basis of being. Meinong's theory of knowledge is based on the distinction between object and being, essence (Sosein) and existence (Dasein). The requirement of evidence as a criterion of truth also underlies the phenomenological "discretion of the essence"; however, the factual orientation of E. Husserl to psychology (like F. Brentano, he considers only the phenomena of the spiritual world to be directly comprehended) led to his gradual transition to the positions of transcendentalism, so that the true being of the late Husserl was not the world of “truths in themselves”, but the immanent life of transcendental consciousness. In the personalistic ontology of M. Scheler, being is a person understood as a “substance-act” not objectified in its deep essence, related in its being to the supreme person - God. Reviving the tradition of Augustinianism, Scheler, however, unlike Augustine, considers the higher being as powerless in relation to the lower: according to Scheler, spiritual being is no more primordial than the being of a blind life force that determines reality.

Starting, like M. Scheler, from neo-Kantianism, N. Hartmann declared being the central concept of philosophy, and ontology the main philosophical science, the basis of both the theory of knowledge and ethics. Being, according to Hartmann, goes beyond the limits of any being and therefore is not amenable to direct definition, but by investigating - in contrast to specific sciences - being as such, ontology thereby also concerns being. Taken in its ontological dimension, the existent differs from objective being, or "being-in-itself", that is, the object opposite to the subject; being as such is not the opposite of anything.

M. Heidegger sees the task of philosophy in revealing the meaning of the being of being. In "Being and Time" (1927), Heidegger, following Scheler, reveals the problem of being through consideration of the being of a person, criticizing E. Husserl for considering a person as consciousness (and thus knowledge), while it is necessary to understand him as being - “here-being” (Dasein), which is characterized by “openness” (“being-in-the-world”) and “understanding of being”. Heidegger calls the existential structure of man "existence". Not thinking, but precisely existence as an emotionally-practically-understanding being is open to the meaning of being. Offering to see being in the horizon of time, Heidegger thereby unites with the philosophy of life against traditional ontology: like F. Nietzsche, he sees the source of “forgetfulness of being” in the Platonic theory of ideas.

The turn to being was initiated in Russian philosophy of the 19th century by Vl. S. Solovyov. Rejecting, following Solovyov, the principles of abstract thinking, S. N. Trubetskoy, L. M. Lopatin, N. O. Lossky, S. L. Frank and others put the question of being at the center of consideration. Thus, Frank showed that the subject can directly contemplate not only the content of consciousness, but also being, which rises above the opposition of subject and object, being absolute being, or All-Unity. Starting from the idea of ​​the All-Unity, Lossky combines it with the doctrine of individual substances, dating back to Leibniz, G. Teichmüller and A. A. Kozlov, while highlighting the hierarchical levels of being: spatio-temporal events of the empirical world, the abstract-ideal being of universals, and the third, the highest level - the concrete-ideal being of extra-spatial and extra-temporal substantial figures; the transcendent Creator God is the source of the existence of substances. Thus, in the 20th century, there has been a tendency to return to being its central place in philosophy, associated with the desire to free itself from the tyranny of subjectivity that is characteristic of modern European thought and forms the spiritual basis of industrial and technical civilization.

Lit .: Lossky N. O. Value and being. Paris, 1931; Hartmann N. Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie. 2. Aufl. Meisenheim, 1941; LittTh. Denken and Sein. Stuttg., 1948; Marcel G. Le mystère de l'être. R., 1951. Vol. 1-2; Heidegger M. Zur Seinsfrage. fr. / M., 1956; Möller J. Von Bewußtsein zu Sein. Mainz, 1962; Sartre J. P. L'être et le néant. R., 1965; Lotz J.V. Sein und Existenz. Freiburg, 1965; Wahrheit, Wert und Sein / Hrsg. v. W. Schwarz. Regensburg, 1970; Man and his being as a problem of modern philosophy. M., 1978; Gilson E. Constantes philosophiques de l'être. R., 1983; Stein E. Endliches und ewiges Sein. 3. Aufl. Freiburg u. a., 1986; Dobrokhotov A. L. The category of being in classical Western European philosophy. M., 1986.

There is no consensus on what being is. Generally speaking, this concept is interpreted as a philosophical category that denotes an objective reality: space, man and nature. Existence does not depend on human will, consciousness or emotions. In the broadest sense, this term refers to general ideas about everything that exists; everything that exists: visible and invisible.

The science of being is an ontology. Ontos in Greek means being, logos is a word, i.e. ontology is the study of beings. Even the followers of Taoism and philosophers of antiquity began to study the principles of the existence of man, society and nature.

The formation of questions about existence is relevant for a person when natural, ordinary things turn out to be the cause of doubts and reflections. Mankind still has not clarified to the end the questions of being and non-being. Therefore, again and again, a person thinks about the incomprehensible topics of real life. These themes rise especially brightly at the junctions of two different eras, when the connection of times breaks up.

How philosophers discovered the universe

The first to single out reality as a category called "being" was Parmenides, an ancient Greek philosopher who lived in the 6th-5th centuries. BC. The philosopher used the work of his teacher, Xenophanes and the Eleatic school, to classify the whole world, using mainly such philosophical concepts as being, non-being and movement. According to Parmenides, existence is continuous, heterogeneous and absolutely motionless.

Plato made a great contribution to the development of the problem of being. The ancient thinker identified being and the world of ideas, and considered ideas to be genuine, immutable, eternally existing. Plato contrasted ideas with inauthentic being, which consists of things and phenomena accessible to human feelings. According to Plato, things perceived with the help of the senses are shadows that display true images.

Aristotle at the base of the universe located the primary matter, not amenable to any classification. The merit of Aristotle is that the philosopher was the first to bring out the idea that a person is able to cognize real existence through a form, an accessible image.

Descartes interpreted this concept as dualism. According to the concept of the French thinker, the existent is a material form and a spiritual substance.

The XX philosopher M. Heidegger adhered to the ideas of existentialism and believed that being and being are not identical concepts. The thinker compared the existent with time, concluding that neither the first nor the second can be known by rational methods.

How many types of reality exist in philosophy

The philosophy of being includes everything in human consciousness, nature and society. Therefore, its categories are an abstract concept that unites various phenomena, objects and processes on a common basis.

1. Objective reality exists independently of human consciousness.
2. Subjective reality consists of what belongs to man and does not exist without him. This includes mental states, consciousness and the spiritual world of a person.

There is another distribution of being as an aggregate reality:

• Natural. It is divided into what existed before the appearance of man (atmosphere) and that part of nature that has been transformed by man. This may include selective plant varieties or industrial products.
• Human. Man, as an object and subject, obeys the laws of nature and at the same time is a social, spiritual and moral being.
• Spiritual. It is divided into consciousness, the unconscious and the realm of the ideal.
• Social. Man as an individual and as part of society.

The material world as a single system

Since the birth of philosophy, the first thinkers began to think about what the world around is and how it arose.

Existing, from the side of human perception, is twofold. It consists of things (the material world) and spiritual values ​​created by people.

Even Aristotle called matter the basis of being. Phenomena and things can be combined into one whole, a single basis, which is matter. The world is formed from matter as a unity that does not depend on the will and consciousness of man. This world acts through the environment on a person and society, and those, in turn, directly or indirectly affect the surrounding world.

But no matter what, being is one, eternal and infinite. Various forms: space, nature, man and society exist equally, although they are presented in various forms. Their presence creates a single, universal, infinite universe.

At each stage in the development of philosophical thought, mankind has striven to understand the unity of the world in all its diversity: the world of things, as well as the spiritual, natural and social worlds that form a single reality.

What makes up a single universe

Being as a total unity includes many processes, things, natural phenomena and the human personality. These components are interconnected with each other. Dialectics believes that the forms of beings are considered only in inseparable unity.

The variety of parts of being is extremely large, but there are signs that generalize the being and single out some categories from it:

• Universal. Universe as a whole. Includes space, nature, man and the results of his activities
• Single. Every person, plant or animal.
• Special. It comes from the singular. This category includes various types of plants and animals, social classes and groups of people.

The existence of man is also classified. Philosophers distinguish:

• The material world of things, phenomena and processes that arose in nature or were created by man
• The material world of man. Personality appears as a bodily being and part of nature, and at the same time as a thinking and social being.
• Spiritual world. It unites the spirituality of each individual and universal human spirituality.

Differences are revealed between ideal and real being.

• Real or existence. This includes material things and processes. It has a spatio-temporal character, unique and individual. It was considered the basis of being in materialism.
• Ideal or essence. Includes, the inner world of a person and the mental state. Deprived of the character of time and action. Unchanging and eternal.

Real and ideal worlds

The two worlds, the real and the ideal, differ in their mode of existence.

The physical world exists objectively and does not depend on the will and consciousness of people. The ideal is subjective and is possible only thanks to a person, depends on the human will and desires.

A person is simultaneously in both worlds, therefore a special place is assigned to a person in philosophy. People are natural beings, endowed with material bodies, which are influenced by the world around them. Using consciousness, a person argues both about the universe and personal existence.

Man is the embodiment of dialectical unity and idealism, body and spirit.

What did philosophers think about the universe?

N. Hartmann, a German philosopher, opposed the "new ontology" to the theory of knowledge and believed that all philosophical trends study being. Being is many-sided, it includes physical, social, mental phenomena. The only thing that unites parts of this diversity is that they exist.

According to M. Heidegger, a German existentialist, there is a connection between nothing and being. Denying nothing arises and helps to reveal being. This question is the main question of philosophy.

Heidegger rethought the concepts of God, reality, consciousness and logic from the point of view of bringing philosophy under a scientific foundation. The philosopher believed that mankind had lost awareness of the connection between man and being since the time of Plato, and sought to correct this.

J. Sartre defined being as a pure, logical identity with itself. For man, being-in-itself: repressed moderation and complacency. According to Sartre, as humanity develops, the value of being is gradually lost. This softens the fact that nothing is a part of being.

All philosophers agree that the universe exists. Some consider it to be the basis of matter, some - ideas. Interest in this topic is inexhaustible: the questions of being are of interest to people at all stages of human development, because a definite answer has not yet been found, if it can still be found.