What is the meaning of 'being'?

Answer 1

Most of us define our lives by what we do. Our occupation or lack of. How much we possess or what we know. Who our friends are.It is in all of our activities that we imagine who we are.

But in reality, that is not the case. Take away what we do or know and what do we have?

At this point in time the best way I can describe it is this: try to imagine yourself without any " doing". That is, doing nothing.
Close your eyes so you are not seeing, you are not sitting, you are not holding a mouse, you are not thinking, you are just barely breathing, you are not doing anything other than "being".

It's not often easy because our brains are such chatterboxes but try a visualization to help. Imagine you are watching the water drain out of a bathtub. watch it closely thinking only of it. Contemplate what happens.

Peace

Bob

Answer 2

Look up Alexius Meinong's theory of objects. Meinong claims that "existence" is merely a property of an object, just as color or mass might be a property. Thus, a figure such as Sherlock Holmes would lack the property of existence, just as Sherlock Holmes lacks the property of being a female. So Sherlock Holmes has being (we can discuss this object) but it does not exist.

Answer 3

"Being" the word has many meanings, almost all revolving around the idea of an entity or existing, as opposed to not existing.

Being, or existing, has no inherent meaning, but humans seem compelled to ascribe some purpose to existence. Religions mostly ascribe meaning or purpose to existence, though Asian thought and some Western philosophers find that meaning is to be avoided.

Answer 4

For a person or other life form with consciousness the state of being conscious is 'being'. But for everything outside the state of consciousness 'being' simply means that a thing exists.

Answer 5

Thylawyer is right. Life can be confusing and complex. Being is one of the ways we seek to rest... a supposed ultimate goal. There's no need to look for other answers. That's the way 'being' comes to our our mind and heart and anything else are just additions.

Answer 6

1. Existence. Something IS. My clock is on my desk.

2. Human BEING....Cognizance of existing as a cognizant entity; as first and necessary knowledge.

Answer 7

being is being at all.

being
This article is about ontological being. For theological Supreme Being, see Supreme Being.
In ontology, a being is anything that can be said to be, either transcendently or immanently. The nature of being varies by philosophy, giving different interpretations in the frameworks of Aristotle, existentialism, Islam, and Marxism.


Being and substance in Aristotle
Among the first inquiries into what "being" encompassed was that undertaken by Aristotle. The term "substance" in Aristotle was a precise metaphysical term denoting an individual thing about which specific assertions may be made. The term used in Greek for what we now call substance was ousia, which is the present participle for the verb "to be". Ousia was translated into English as substance but also, at times, as essence.

Since the Aristotelian view of matter is negative, the "substance" or "being" is a real thing that exists. Since matter renders things more obscure to our perception, it follows that the true essence of an object is independent of matter, its "being" is independent of the material world.

To Aristotle, only spirits and Gods 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.


Being in continental philosophy and existentialism
Some philosophers deny that the concept of "being" has any meaning at all, since we only define an object's existence by its relation to other objects, and actions it undertakes. The term "I am" has no meaning by itself; it must have an action or relation appended to it. This in turn has led to the thought that "being" and nothingness are closely related, developed in existential philosophy.

Existentialist philosophers such as Sartre, as well as continental philosophers such as Hegel and Heidegger have also written extensively on the concept of being. Hegel distinguishes between the being of objects (being in itself) and the being of people ( Geist). Hegel, however, did not think there was much hope for deliniating a "meaning" of being, because being stripped of all predicates is simply nothing. Heidegger, in his quest to pioneer the path by which we might learn how to meaningfully ask the question of the meaning of being, distinguishes between different modes of being, which are present-at-hand or objectively present (the kind of being possessed by objects), ready-to-hand, which is the kind of being possessed by tools, and Da-sein ("there-being"), which is the kind of being possessed by the beings which we ourselves are. Sartre, popularly understood as mis-reading Heidegger (a reading supported by Heidegger's essay "Letter on Humanism" which responds to Sartre's famous address, "Existentialism is a Humanism"), employs modes of being in an attempt to ground his concept of freedom ontologically by distinguishing between being-in-itself and being-for-itself.


Being in Islamic philosophy
The nature of being has also been debated and explored in Islamic philosophy, notably by Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi, and Mulla Sadra.[1]


Being in Marxism
According to Georg Lukacs, a Marxist philosopher, "It is only when the core of being has shown itself as social becoming, that the being itself can appear as a product, so far unconscious, of human activity, and this activity, in turn, as the decisive element of the transformation of being." (§5 of "What is Orthodoxical Marxism?" in History and Class Consciousness) Thus, the Being in marxism is the historical product of human activity or labour. Antonio Negri carries on the same analyse in The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics.

Answer 8

Being: to be aware of your surroundings... to feel...

...........to wake up in the moring and be able to experience different stimuli
...........to have control, or illusion of control over what we do when our senses prompt us to become active or inactive...

If you want the 'meaning' or being, I can't tell you. No one can. We can only try to guess.

Answer 9

it's a form of the verb "to be." Like that weak verb, being is just a starting point.

Answer 10

I don't think the human mind is fully capable of understanding that.