Being refers to anything we can think or talk about. It can include living beings, as well as tangible objects and intangible concepts. Anything that “is” can be considered a being. 

The ancient Greeks were the first civilization in the Western world to systematically ask and try to answer the question of what the world was fundamentally made of. Was there something common to all the beings that comprised the world and gave it an underlying structure and harmony? Pre-Socratic philosophers like Thales, Anaximenes and Heraclitus believed that everything was composed of elements such as water, air and fire. Similar to the Buddha at the time, Heraclitus (535-475 BCE) believed all things in the world were in flux, including its ultimate essence. 

Pythagoras (570-490 BCE) concluded that numbers made up the ultimate reality of the world, while Parmenides (515-450 BCE) was the first to phrase the answer in terms of Being. Since all beings are, the ultimate essence of the world is therefore Being (Greek to on). Being is permanent and unchangeable, while the things of the world that changed or perished are an illusion. This philosophy is considerably similar to the Vedanta philosophy of ancient India and was one of the first to distinguish between the realm of the unchanging world as real and the realm of the impermanent world as illusion.  

In Plato’s (428-348 BCE) view, the tangible objects of the world that we think are real because we can see and touch them are actually shadows of their real and perfect counterparts in the world of forms. Reality therefore cannot be grasped by our ordinary senses, but only by employing reason and logic. These ideal forms that inhabit the world of universals are permanent and stable unlike the physical objects, which are temporary and fleeting.

While Plato believed that most things in the material world had a counterpart in the world of universals, his most famous student Aristotle (384-322 BCE) believed all universals had their material counterpart. According to him, every object in the world could be reduced to an ultimate essence called “substance” (ousia) that contained the form and matter for the thing. For example, a wooden chair was composed of wood as its matter, while the form was the chair’s design. Only God, whose substance comprised only form, was devoid of matter, so he was not subject to change. 

These senses of being, and the turn away from the study of Being by itself to its study in terms of all beings, including God, strongly influenced the medieval philosophy of a Christianized Europe.

The next philosopher of importance, Plotinus, originated the idea of the World Soul (Latin anima mundi), which is the soul of the world considered as a single living being. All the beings of the world were related to one another, and the World Soul animated them in the way a soul animates a human body. 

For Plotinus (205-270 AD), the true well-being (eudaimonia) of humans lay beyond acquiring material things and could be attained by everyone. Its highest form was through union with the One. This concept that authentic well-being is within everyone’s reach is remarkably similar to the Eastern philosophy of Being.

We will look at the evolution of the meaning of Being in medieval and pre-modern times in another blog.