The word being means a living person or animal. ‘Human being’ means the same as ’person’. Men, women, and children are human beings.
Some people write stories or make movies about beings from other planets. Most religions talk about supernatural beings, for example spirits, angels, devils, gods, or God.
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.
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).
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.
