Being: meanings, grammar, and categories of entities
A concise overview of the word and concept “being”: its grammatical roles, senses as organism or entity, philosophical use in ontology, cultural and religious examples, and common distinctions.
Overview
“Being” is an English word with several related uses. It appears as a grammatical form, a noun referring to creatures or entities, and as a philosophical term about existence. Ordinary speech uses it to name living creatures (“human being”) and to talk about existence or the state of living.
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Forms and grammar
As grammar, “being” functions as the present participle or gerund of the verb “to be” (for example, “being happy”). As a noun it denotes an entity that exists: a person, animal, or any entity called into discussion. When used with an article—“a being”—it usually means a discrete creature or entity.
Categories of beings
Writers and scholars often sort beings into categories. Common groupings include:
- Biological beings: people and animals, sometimes described as a living creature (for example, men, women, and children).
- Fictional or speculative beings: characters in stories or films, including science fiction figures and imagined extraterrestrial beings.
- Supernatural or religious beings: entities described in belief systems.
Philosophical and religious meanings
In philosophy, especially ontology, “being” relates to existence itself and to what kinds of things can be said to exist. Religious traditions describe a range of nonphysical persons or agents: many religions refer to the supernatural, including spirits, angels, devils, various gods, or the singular concept of God.
Uses, examples, and distinctions
Common phrases—“human being,” “sentient being,” or “nonhuman being”—highlight different traits such as personhood or consciousness. Philosophers distinguish “being” (the fact or mode of existing) from related ideas like identity, essence, and personhood. In everyday use the term is broad and flexible, applied to biological organisms, imagined creatures, and entities posited by religion or fiction.
The concept of being
A first approach to the topic is the linguistic use of the expression sein. In colloquial German and in Indo-European languages in general, "sein" is used grammatically as a linguistic link, as a copula, to connect subject and predicate in sentences or in statements of logic. Whether this grammatical function as a mere copula corresponds to a semantic meaninglessness of the word "being" has been controversially discussed at least since Aristotle.
"Nor is being or non-being a sign of the thing [of which it is said] that has meaning, even if 'being' were said in itself naked, for it is itself nothing at all, but denotes a certain connection [to something] in addition, which cannot be thought of without the thing connected"
- Aristotle
Thereby, according to an observation of Aristotle, which even today many philosophers consider to be true, different meanings of the word "is" occur depending on the constellation of statements. "But since being, expressed par excellence, is used in multiple meanings." (Aristotle)
One can schematically distinguish the different meanings of the word "is" in German as follows.
- Existence. Example: Socrates is.
- Relation
- Identity
- mathematical equality. Example: Two times two is four.
- Labeling. Example: Aristotle is the teacher of Alexander.
- Definition. Example: Ontology is the study of being.
- Predication of properties. Example: Socrates is mortal.
- Classification. Example: An elephant is a mammal.
The use of "is" to denote existence can refer to the existence of objects, but also of facts (it is the case that ...). The other uses of "is", i.e. identity, predication or classification, denote relations or properties, each implicitly assuming the existence of the subject (so-called existential presupposition).
Categorical determination of being
A first systematic analysis of being is the writing Categories by Aristotle. In this writing, he examined basic propositions about being. He compiled a list of ten concepts that are completely independent of each other and, in his view, no longer traceable to other concepts.
| Designation | Greek | Question | Example |
| Substance | ousia, ti esti | What's something? | Man, Horse |
| Quantity | poson | How much/big is something? | two cubits long |
| Qualitative | poion | What is the nature of something? | literate |
| Relation | pros ti | What is the relationship of something (to something)? | double, half, bigger |
| Location | pou | Where's something? | at the Lyceum, on the market place |
| Time | pote | When is something? | yesterday, last year |
| Location | keisthai | What position is something in? | it's set up, sitting |
| Have | an | What's the matter? | has shoes on, is armed |
| Tun | poiein | What does anything? | cuts, burns |
| Suffer | paschein | What does something suffer? | is cut, burned |
The list of categories contains two classes of concepts, namely the substance and the remaining nine categories, the accidentals. The substance is that which underlies being (hypokeimenon). The substance is in each case the subject of a statement (predication). Accidences, on the other hand, do not exist independently, but only in a substance. They can only be stated in connection with a substance.
In a further step Aristotle distinguished first substances (prote ousia) from second substances (deutera ousia). The first substance cannot be predicated of another underlying. It is individual and one in number, that is, indivisible. The second substances are the species and genera which are predicated of the first substances. Socrates is said to be a man and a living being. The second substances are not accidentals, because they always belong to the first substance. They describe the essence of the first substance. Accidentals, on the other hand, always refer to a particular state of a substance.
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AlegsaOnline.com Being: meanings, grammar, and categories of entities Leandro Alegsa
URL: https://en.alegsaonline.com/art/10165