being

In philosophy, the basic state of existence shared by everything and everybody. Being is a fundamental notion in ontology and metaphysics generally, but particularly in idealism and existentialism.

Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle insisted that to say something exists adds nothing to its description. Being or existence is sometimes distinguished from subsistence, as by Austrian philosopher Alexius Meinong (1853–1920). Idealist philosophers tend to believe that there are not only different kinds but also different degrees of being. The American Willard Quine holds that ‘to be is to be the value of a variable’ in a system of formal logic – that is, that to be or exist is always to have a quality or feature. The ontological argument for the existence of God turns on whether being can be a predicate or property.