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The Question of Being
What is Being? Many Western philosophers have thought about Being. For example, Hereclitus, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Heideggar and Sartre all thought about Being. But is it reasonable to ask what Being is?
A nihilist could argue that "Being" is a meaningless word because it refers to nothing. There is no such thing as "Being." After all, if it exists, where is it? You certainly cannot buy it at a store. Philosophical issues like "Being" may have personal meaning to professional rationalists, but ultimately they are empty words. They are toys for our intellectual amusement. To ask a question about a meaningless word is to ask a meaningless question. Moreover, it is unreasonable to ask a meaningless question.
The reply to the nihilist's argument is that "Being" must mean something because everyone can use this word in ordinary language. Everyone understands statements like "The apple is green," or "The girl will be late," or I am a human being." We must have some kind of understanding of "Being" (however muddled it may be) because we constantly refer to it by using the word "Being" (or its varients).
So much for nihilism! But a follower of Wittgenstein could launch a more sophisticated attack. The Wittgenstianian could admit that the word "Being" has an ordinary meaning, but still argue that it has no meaning beyond that. After all, the meaning of words is limited to how they are used by communities of people. Philosophers may try to expand the meaning of words, but the idea "expanding the meaning" contradicts itself.
After all, a meaningful word is by definition a defined word. In fact, the meaning of a word just is its definition. "Expanding" meaning is stretching it beyond its definition. To stretch a meaning beyond its definition is to render it meaningless.
A word is either meaningful or nonsensical. Even if there is a ground between meaning and nonsense, it is a place reserved for poets and other artists. Philosophers have no business there. The business of philosophy is truth, and meaningfulness is a necessary condition of truth. "Completely meaningless truth" is nonsense. If a statement is true, it is meaningful as far as it is true. Therefore, the search for truth (rather than meaningless poetic beauty) demands that philosophers say what is meaningful or remain silent.
Philosophers already know everything that is meaningful about Being. Moreover, they have no business stretching its meaning into nonsense as they attempt to find some "deeper meaning" (which is a selfcontradictory phrase). Therefore, it is unreasonable for philosophers to ask the (either obvious or nonsensical) "question of Being."
A reply to this argument comes from phenomenology. A phenomenologist could agree that meaningfulness is a necessary condition for truth. However, the phenomenologist would be quick to add that consciousness is a necessary condition for meaningfulness. So, a follower of Wittgenstein who analyzes philosophical issues in terms of word meaning has already missed the question. The question is not whether "Being" has a transcendent or only an ordinary meaning. The question is whether we can raise our level of consciousness about whatever meaning that Being does have (whether ordinary or transcendent).
In addition, even if we cannot raise our awareness of Being very much, just learning that we cannot and exactly why we cannot will raise our awareness of Being somewhat. This alone would have value even if it were only the value of clearly demonstrating why Being is a subject we should leave alone. Whether Being is a subject we should leave alone cannot be resolved by appeal to what Being means. It can only be resolved by analyzing how thinking about Being affects our consciousness.
Moreover, there is no reason to believe that thinking about Being could not greatly intensify our consciousness. After all, everyone will admit that "Being" is a central word in the English language. So, thinking about Being will almost certainly raise our awareness of language. In addition, there is no reason to believe thinking about Being could not intensify our consciousness concerning other important issues. It is reasonable ask the question of Being.
Then what is Being? Even if it is reasonable to ask this question, doing so may still seem like a hopeless task. After all, how can anyone request a definition of Being? Oscar Wilde once said, "To define is to limit." If so, how can anyone put a limit on Being? Isn't Being by definition beyond limitation? In fact, the idea of limitation presupposes the idea of Being. A person would do better seeking the being of Limitation than the limitation of Being. Because Being precedes all definitions, we cannot define or limit Being.
This argument is wrong because it says too little about Being. It focuses exclusively on Being as infinity. This seemingly profound argument goes as follows. Being is everything. Therefore, Being must be the infinite and undefinable (which is part of everything). Thus, Being cannot be defined.
However, it is no less profound to argue as follows. Being is everything. Therefore Being is the finite (because the finite is part of everything). Thus, Being can be defined.
In fact, we cannot define Being with reference to finite or infinite things. We can only define Being with reference to what it cannot be. Being is finite and infinite, because a thing may be finite at one time and infinite at another.
It is always attractive to try to define Being with an opposition. If only we can identify Being with one side of an opposition, then finally we can define Being, because we can finally say what Being is not (i.e. the opposing side). But the inevitable problem of our attempt is that both sides of an opposition can occur (even if they must occur at different times). Opposites are not each other. We should never mistakenly infer from this fact that opposites are never each other. In fact, a thing that is good today may be evil tomorrow. A thing that is high today may be low tomorrow. The rich become poor, the lost become found, what is inside becomes what is outside, etc. So, it is insufficient to define Being with reference to what it is not. We must define Being with reference to what it can never be.
But is there anything that Being can never be? The obvious answer is that Being can never be Nothingness. So, if we can get some insight into Nothingness, we may be able better to understand the nature of Being.
The Question of Nothingness
What is Nothingness? It may be immediately selfcontradictory to speak of Nothingness. After all, before we can speak of Nothingness we must think of it as something. But Nothingness is not something. It is nothing. So, we fall into error immediately whenever we speak of Nothingness.
The false premise in this argument is that Nothingness is nothing. First of all, as we saw with Being, the fact that we can use the word "Nothingness" with ordinary understanding shows that Nothingness means something. Therefore it cannot be nothing.
In addition, "not something" is not equivalent to "nothing." A thing may be neither something nor nothing. For example, a unicorn is "not something" but neither is it "nothing."
Of course, a person could reply to this argument by saying that a unicorn is indeed something: a creature of fantasy. But this strategy destroys the question instead of answering it. The question is not whether a unicorn can be seen as a "something." It is whether it can also be seen as "not something."
Nothingness is what is always secondary. Earlier we noted that Being is the universal unity that comes before all individual beings. However, Nothingness always comes after Being and never before or during being. It is always second to Being.
Fortunately, we may still be able to say something about Being. For example, considering that Being precedes all definitions, we can say also that it must precede everything else. Therefore, Being is the undifferentiated whole of everything that occurs before we analyze it into parts. In other words, Being is the ultimate starting point. First there is Being. Then we think. By thinking we become aware of individual beings. Of course, we never see the whole of Being before cognition breaks it up. But we can see individual beings and infer that these parts must first have been a whole.
But is this inference logical? Anyone can see that individual beings occur in space-time. For example, a person, a tree, a gust of wind, a trumpet blast, a glass of water, etc. are all beings. Each thing we perceive or otherwise cognize is a being. But can we infer from these beings that Being itself precedes them? After all, maybe nothing does. Maybe they are a free-floating group of beings with no underlying unity.
But wait a moment. If they have no underlying unity, how can they be a group? Before a person can even mention a group, the constituents of that group must have a unity. After all, the idea"group" by definition presupposes the idea "unity." So, because beings are a group (i.e., the group of beings) it is clear that a unity must have preceded this group. This unity is Being.
But are individual beings really a "group"? After all, what do they have in common? A castle is a being, the idea of a castle is a being, a horse is a being, a ribbon is a being, the smell of apple pie is a being, a tin can is a being, etc. Each thing that occurs is a being no matter how different it is from any other. In fact, even Nothingness is a being as far as it "is" Nothingness.
So, how can such a diverse "group" of things really be a group? Hasn't the idea of "group" become meaningless by this point? Notice that all the constituents of this so-called group have nothing in common. Of course, to say that they have "Being" in common only makes the question a statement. The question is whether the individual beings that occur really do have Being as their common ancestor. Maybe they do not. Maybe using the word "Being" merely fools us into believing there is unity when actually there isn't.
Moreover, it seems possible to imagine a diversity of beings with no underlying unity. In fact, we could put forth a Leibnizian argument by saying there is an infinite diversity of discrete monads that don't relate to one another in any way. In that case, it would be senseless to ask from what unity this diversity came. The diversity was always there. At least it preceded any idea of unity that we might conjure up later to imagine a beautiful world.
In addition, we could also use a Kantian argument to say that the category of unity that is necessary for human cognition says nothing about whether the "thing-itself" (or noumena) is unified. For all we know this thing-itself may be an absolute diversity. Ultimately, we can know nothing about the thing-itself except that it's there, and we know that only by inference (or perhaps intuition).
In any case, our business is with the phenomena. The underlying thing-itself that causes the phenomena to appear is beyond our immediate awareness. Therefore, we can't know whether the thing-itself is Being (i.e., the first unity of beings) or something else. Maybe it's pure diversity, or maybe it's Nothingness. To the question, "What is Being?" the only possible answer is that we cannot know.
However, to these Liebnitzian and Kantian arguments we can offer a Shopenhaurian reply. It is that we can know the thing-itself as far as we ourselves are the thing-itself. Of course, we are our appearances, but we must also be the underlying thing-itself that makes these appearances occur. In other words, every person must be partly "noumena."
So, we experience the thing-itself immediately. Moreover, we experience the thing-itself as Will. Therefore, we know that it's not Diversity or Nothingness. To the question, "What is Being?" we must answer, "Will." In addition, it makes sense to think that a massive willpower (or command) preceded the occurrence of individual beings. After all, this is exactly what an intelligent theist might believe.
However, there is a problem. When we say that Being is Will, are we not saying that Being is a thing? But how can Being itself be a being? This conflation would violate Heideggar's famous "ontological difference." Heideggar would tell us that the first thing to understand about Being is that it is not a being. Being precedes individual beings. Because Will itself is an individual being, it is impossible for it to precede individual beings. So, Being cannot be Will.
But why is Will an individual being? If it is Being, it must not be. It's true that individual beings may (in some sense) have Will, but this does not prove that Will is a being. Perhaps Will is Being and all the individual beings "partake" of it. Besides, even if Will is a being, it could still be the only meaning of Being. We could say that Being is just Being and nothing else, (not an individual being) but that its meaning is Will. This argument would allow us explain Being as Will while preserving Heideggar's "ontological difference."
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