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Being Over Time
Posts
The Greeks on The Meaning of Being
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.
Being in The Medieval and Pre-Modern Period
The medieval period was highlighted by the growth of Christianity in the Western world. Aristotle’s notion of God as the highest being sparked the studies of Christian theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, mystics such as Meister Eckart, and pre-modern philosophers like Leibniz, Spinoza and Hegel.
Dasein and Being
Heidegger and Deleuze were the pre-eminent Western inquirers into Being in modern times. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) suggested an “overthrow” of metaphysics because he believed that philosophers from Aristotle onwards had forgotten to inquire what Being really meant on its own.
The Unfolding of Being
After failing to satisfactorily answer the central question on the meaning of Being in Being and Time, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) abandoned philosophical language and adopted a writing style that encouraged poiesis, where something is brought into being that did not exist before.
A Critique of Being as Identity
Gilles Deleuze (1925-95) exposed a major assumption underlying the West’s inquiry into Being: it had emphasized identity at the cost of difference.