Being with a capital 'B', on the other hand, is often used in philosophy to refer to divine Being, God, or ultimate reality.
To Aristotle, only spirits and God are independent of matter, and thus these entities are purely "substance" or "being." This is the origin of the phrase "One in substance with the Father" or modernly "One in being with the Father" in the Catholic Nicene Creed.
This in turn has led to the thought that "being" and nothingness are closely related, developed in existential philosophy.
In Heidegger's philosophy being in itself is contrasted with the Being of persons, which he calls Dasein.
Being in itself can justifiably be used as a means to an end - that is, things can be used as tools - whereas Dasein is subject to moral laws.
In Sartrean existentialism, being-in-itself is also contrasted with the being of persons, which he describes as a combination of, or vascillation or tension between, being-for-itself and being-for-others.
Being in itself is the self-contained and fully realized (The state or fact of existing) Being of objects.
In Heidegger's philosophy being in itself is contrasted with the Being of persons, which he calls (additional info and facts about Dasein) Dasein.
In Sartrean existentialism, being-in-itself is also contrasted with the being of persons, which he describes as a combination of, or vascillation or tension between, (additional info and facts about being-for-itself) being-for-itself and (additional info and facts about being-for-others) being-for-others.
Being is everywhere...We must understand that this being is no other than the transphenomenal being of phenomena and not a noumenal being which is hidden behind them...It requires simply that the being of that which appears does not exist only in so far as it appears.
The meaning of the being of the existent in so far as it reveals itself to consciousness is the phenomenon of being...This elucidation of the meaning of being is valid only for the being of the phenomenon....For being is the being of becoming and due to this fact it is beyond becoming.
Central to the argument of Being and Nothingness and Sartre's insistence on the primacy of human freedom is his insistence that consciousness cannot be understood in causal terms.
For-Itself is a witness of reflection, reflecting upon a form of flight in the face of being (Sartre, 1956: 1213).
Then Nike is being what it is not, that is being the savior to the Third World, the promoter of codes of conduct, and investigator of subcontractor abuse.
The flight of the for-itself is the refusal of contingency by the very act which constitutes the for-itself as being the foundation of its nothingness.
"Being" is derived from the verb "to be".
Thus it is constitutive of the being of Dasein to have, in its very being, a relation of being to this being.
Roughly, ontology is the study of (enquiry into) being in the widest sense whereas the ontic sciences are the special positive sciences of beings, e.g., mathematics, physics, biology, history, and even theology.
Being and Nothingness, Sartre’s major philosophical work, is considered to be one of the most influential text of this movement, as well as being an important work in the history of philosophy as a whole.
Human consciousness itself exists only by the act of "nihilation," a word coined by Sartre: The consciousness cause a "nothingness" to arise between itself and the objects of consciousness, that Being-in-itself is the consciousness.
Being and Nothingness must stand as one of the most ambitious and influential philosophical works of the twentieth century and certainly as Sartre’s philosophical magnum opus.
being for the "We," and this change is thus due to the presence of the "We." This is a "reversal" of ordinary consciousness because ordinary consciousness changes whenever its content changes in simply apprehending another object.
What the "We" refers to here is that in facing itself, self-consciousness is a "We" in the sense that as confonting itself, self-consciousness is two, once as subject and once as object, or apparently as two "I's." At the same time they are identical, since both are one and the same self-consciousness.
Insofar as a being coincides with its predicates, it is not its being that is in question, but its relation to the sentient others for whom the assertion of those predicates seems true.
It is not the replacement of one errant seeming by a seeming that eliminates the error, for the error lies not in the determinate details of the appearance, but in the general attitude that the being that in fact is aimed at by the appearance is the being of any determinate set of details whatsoever.
Being is operative in the act of cognition as its very center of concern.
Sartre disagrees with Hegel that Being and Nothingness are opposite, or are opposed as thesis and antithesis respectively.
The For-itself is sustained in being by the In-itself.
The Future is the Being projected by the For-itself, because the For-itself is perpetually apprehending itself as unachieved in relation to it.
Now being to which no addition is made is universal being which is predicated of all things.
Thirdly, because, just as that which has fire, but is not itself fire, is on fire by participation; so that which has existence but is not existence, is a being by participation.
Or we may understand a thing to have nothing added to it, inasmuch as its essence does not require that anything should be added to it; thus the genus animal is without reason, because it is not of the essence of animal in general to have reason; but neither is it to lack reason.
The truth of Being may thus be called the ground in which metaphysics, as the root of the tree of philosophy, is kept and from which it is nourished.
The thinking which is posited by beings as such, and therefore representational and illuminating in that way, must be supplanted by a different kind of thinking which is brought to pass by Being itself and, therefore, responsive to Being.
Being metaphysics, it is by its very nature excluded from the experience of Being; for it always represents beings (on) only with an eye to what of Being has already manifested itself as beings (i on).
To say that God is The ground of being or being itself, is to say that there is something we can sense that is so special about the nature of being that it hints at this fundamental reality upon which all else is based.
The term "Being itself" gives one the impression that God is the actual fact of "my existence," or the existence of my flowerbed, or any object one might care to name.
What is being said is not that God is the fact of the being of some particular object, but, that he is the basis upon which being proceeds and upon which objects participate in being.
With this interpretation of being-with and being one's self in the they, the question of the who in the everydayness of being-with-one-another is answered.
If the being of everyday being-with-one-another, which seems ontologically to approach pure objective presence, is really fundamentally different from that kind of presence, still less can the being of the authentic self be understood as objective presence.
Authentic being one's self is not based on an exceptional state of the subject, a state detached from the they, but is an existentiell modification of the they as an essential existential.
The Master is independent of being determined by an "other." The Slave is dependent on being determined by an "other." The consciousness of the "other" is unessential to independent self-consciousness, but the consciousness of the "other" is a determining factor for dependent self-consciousness.
This "unhappy consciousness" is conscious of itself as being divided and as not being able to reconcile itself with the "other." On the other hand, the undivided consciousness is a dual self-consciousness which brings unity to the self and the "other."
Hegel says that Dissemblance is a separation of the inherent being of moral consciousness from the self, but that Conscience is a mode of spirit which is certain of itself as absolute truth and objective being.
Being, as all embracing and objective, is not existence, which is individual and subjective.
Sartre did not dwell so much on what being is but in his twofold division of being into the in-itself and the for-itself.
It is the realm of the human being, characterized by consciousness and freedom, which enables man to decide meaning for himself.
‘The being by which Nothingness arrives in the world is a being such that in its Being, the nothingness of its Being is in question.
Being free is the essence of human beings—we are Being-for-itself, our existence precedes our essence.
The woman who doesn’t acknowledge the sexual advances made towards her; the waiter who plays being a waiter and thinks that is all he is; the homosexual who refuses to admit his sexuality; his friend who wants to reduce the homosexual to his homosexuality.
The finite is thus inwardly self-contradictory; it sublates itself, ceases to be.
This identity with itself, the negation of negation, is affirmative being and thus the other of the finite, of the finite which is supposed to have the first negation for its determinateness; this other is the infinite.
This yields the decried unity of the finite and the infinite — the unity which is itself the infinite which embraces both itself and finitude — and is therefore the infinite in a different sense from that in which the finite is regarded as separated and set apart from the infinite.
Therefore such creatures as these have in their nature to be necessarily, and cannot not-be; for there can be no potentiality to not-being, either in the form which has being of itself, or in matter existing under a form which it cannot lose, since it is not in potentiality to any other form.
For the being of every creature depends on God, so that not for a moment could it subsist, but would fall into nothingness were it not kept in being by the operation of the Divine power, as Gregory says (Moral.
Wherefore the potentiality to not-being in spiritual creatures and heavenly bodies is rather something in God, Who can withdraw His influence, than in the form or matter of those creatures.
This consciousness of being is examined by a method called phenomenological, which suggests that no pretension is being made to uncover the ultimate nature of reality in a "metaphysics," but that Sartre intends to describe as accurately as possible the structures of reality as it appears.
The dichotomy of being and nothingness is a new version of platonic and cartesian dualism with several severe qualifications.
Since for Sartre the "relation of the For-itself with the In-itself in the presence of the Other" is the constituent relationship of sexuality (361), the concept of the body becomes crucial for Sartre's views.
A confession of being "a homosexual" would be for him tantamount to a reduction of his personality to his sexual orientation.
It is possible because the difference between being and non-being vanishes as soon as we separate human existence from what it is in the mode of not being what it is, or as Sartre puts it, if one is cut off from his project.
For ontologically there is no big difference between "the being of 'being cowardly'", "which I am in the mode of not being what I am" and "the 'non-being' of not-being-courageous which I wish to hide from myself".
Therefore that existence which is being of itself and by itself, must be uncaused.
IN whatever being there are found two elements, the one complementary to the other, the proportion of the one element to the other is as the proportion of potential to actual: for nothing is completed except by its own actuality.
What is in any being, and comes of the agent that produced it, must be the actuality of that being: for it is an agent's function to make a thing be in actuality.
For this to be possible, man himself "must be separated from his being in a way which enables him to look at it as something strange and questionable" .
Although it is symbolic or metaphorical to speak of being-itself as the "power of being" (the power by virtue of which things are rather than are not), this symbol seems to be Tillichs favorite: "Being is the power of being" .
One could say that "being is the negation of the primordial night of nothingness." But in doing so one must realize that such an aboriginal nothing would be neither nothing nor something, that it becomes nothing only in contrast to something, in other words, that the ontological status of non-being is dependent on being" .
We would like to have a determinate nature and meanings given (to be both a being-for-itself and in-itself), but that is an impossible project, for that would be the death of conscious freedom.
She used existentialism as a foundation for her analysis of the situation of women, drawing on many disciplines, but her understanding of existentialism was modified in turn.
Women need to be acknowledged as free beings, giving them a firm basis to freely choose projects in the world and move into a future of multiple possibilities.
Being for others, in Sartrean existentialism, is that part of human existence that is social and socially defined.
The opponents of existentialism assert that it fosters the particularization of human beings, stripping them of a universal sense of identity, which is entirely consistent with the claims of existentialists as the only universal allowed human beings is their fundamental freedom.
It refers to Being and means beings as beings.
We are faced with the fact that metaphysical thinking understands man's selfhood in terms of substance or-and at bottom this amounts to the same in terms of the subject.
such an attempt, which starts from this representation, must still represent, in a certain sense, the truth of Being, too;; and any such representation must of necessity be heterogeneous and ultimately, insofar as it is a representation, in-~~ adequate for that which is to be thought.