Ontology

What is Being, or, what Does it Mean to Be, to Exist?

Although it may seem that this question would be central to ontology, most philosophers gave [Page 949]up on any serious research in this direction as something problematic, perhaps even impossible. Already Aristotle, in his polemics with Parmenides (540–450 BCE), considered it disputable to think of being as such—that is, as the most general concept in a single meaning, and he emphasized its polysemie nature. Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), for example, pointed out the danger of circular definition (circulus in definiendo) in such generally understood being (as it can only be determined with the help of the word “is”). Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued that being, or existence, is not an attribute (predicate). There is no empirical attribute within the concept of an existing object by which it would differ from the concept of a similar, but nonexisting, object. with similar intentions, modern logic solves the problem of statements about existence; for example, it transforms the statement Man is into a formally correct form of the statement with an existential quantifier, that is, There exists a thing that is a man

Despite difficulties in thinking about being (existence), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) attempted early in the 20th century to build a fundamental ontology, the main aim of which is exactly to seek the meaning of being. As opposed to the previous philosophy (ontotheology), which forgot about being, replaced it with entity, and would explain one entity with the help of another (even divine) entity, it is necessary to clearly distinguish an entity from the being of this entity (ontological difference). The key to the understanding of the meaning of being is the analytics of a particular type of entity—human being, being-there (dasein), through the medium of objectless forms of thinking—existentials. The project of fundamental ontology remained unfinished, but it inspired phenomenological, existentialist, and hermeneutical thinking in the given field (Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905–1980; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1980–1961; and others).

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