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“Being” is all that “is.” And it is there-because of what “is not”, that is, “non-being” (or “Nothing”). I will give you one, the simplest example.
There is “black” and there is “white” (let's say you see a zebra crossing in front of you). And they-these two “essences” (from “exist”) – are there for you because of the “contrast”. And where is “contrast”? There is NO contrast as such. There is no such “essence” – contrast (although there is a phenomenon).
Well. “White” and ” black “are phenomena of Being, and” contrast ” is a phenomenon of Nothing.
There are many such examples (of varying degrees of significance), but all this is too clever and hardly anyone is interested in it.
“Being” is nothing more than an unfortunate and annoyingly traditional translation of the Greek substantive participle τνν (the participial form of the neuter verb “to be”) or the Greek substantive infinitive τὸ εἶναι (the infinitive form of the same verb). There is no hard truth in translating these expressions with this term that is completely unclear to a modern native Russian speaker, but by inertia (and also due to the fact that in the XX century this word was used to translate other, more intricate concepts) it continues to be used.
In more modern Russian, these terms can be better translated by the word “existing”, and in very modern-by the word “existing”. Thus, the meaning of the term is very simple: by “being” is meant simply all that “exists”, i.e. that which exists as opposed to that which does not exist. The field of knowledge that deals with what exists precisely as it exists is called ontology: just as, for example, biology deals with the living because it is alive (it studies living organisms not in terms of, for example, their characteristics as physical bodies – and they also have such characteristics – but in terms of what it means to be alive), so ontology deals with the existing precisely in terms of its existence. Then there is the question of what actually exists and what does not exist (are there abstract entities, such as the concepts of “man”, “iron”, “smell” that we operate with, or are there only concrete people and pieces of iron?), whether it is possible to distinguish different types of existing objects (are there, say, people and pieces of iron in the proper sense, or, for example, existence in the proper sense can be attributed only to the elementary physical particles
A separate point here is Heidegger with his terminology of being (das Sein) and being (das Seiende). He has” being “in its own, Heideggerian sense, which would take too much time to tell (to put it briefly and roughly: “being” is, in fact, an existing thing, and “being” is the process of its existence). But here it should be understood that this is his personal use of words, marginal to the European tradition (although quite respected in modern philosophy) – that is, it is, in essence, equivocation and we are talking about “being” in a completely different sense than it was used before him. In general, the understanding of what is hidden behind the absurd word “being” (namely, just “what is”) in the European tradition for two and a half thousand years practically does not change, although the specific idea of what falls and what does not fall into this category changes from figure to figure.
This question cannot be answered with a clear definition. Rather, some insight can be gained by looking at the questions and attempts to answer about ” being “(inextricably intertwined with the properties of language) that have emerged throughout European philosophy – they are often combined by the term “ontology” – starting with the pre-Socratics. For example, what is “to be”? what does it mean that something “is”? what is “there” at all? why is something “there” instead of nothing? is existence a predicate? is being a property of existing or something existing? etc. We can say that “being” is a very broad concept that includes various subjective and objective aspects of reality and existence.
During the existence of ontology, many specific concepts for working with it were developed, which were included in the language of philosophy. (Although some of them have changed their meaning and application over the course of history, many are ambiguous, and some are used idiosyncratically by different authors.) For example, “substance” – that from which something is “made”, characterized by certain properties; “properties” – abstract characteristics of an object or substance; “categories” – classes of objects by types, traits, properties, predicates; “monism”, “dualism”, “pluralism” – terms that define the number and relations of substances in a given ontological model (one, two, whatever/infinite); “materialism”, “idealism” – groups of traditional monist ontological models; “essence” – what makes an existing or substance fundamentally what it is, and without which it ceases to be itself; etc.
In my opinion, the best way to properly understand “what is being” is to put yourself in the appropriate context by reading the history of philosophy, from the pre-Socratics to Heidegger.