Have you ever come across children arguing about something on playground? One says “is so” and the other “is not”? Each is emphatically stating that something is or is not the case. Each is attempting to persuade the other about reality. Perhaps unknowingly, each is making a metaphysical statement and assuming an ultimate truth belonging to reality. Each is tacitly assuming there is a reality to argue about. Reality is assumed. To say something is the case is to already assume “what is,” to assume reality. No one can deny that Being is. The question arises, however, because Being is so fundamental to our human experience, how does one go about presenting a definition of Being?

The inquiry into Being is the most foundational question of all. It is the basic starting point of ontology, or the study of Being and existing things. It is the study of reality. This fundamental and most basic feature of reality, that Being is, perplexed the great mathematician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal. He thought that any attempt to define what is, or Being, amounts to a tautology. In On Geometrical Demonstration, Pascal writes:

There are even those who go to the absurdity of explaining a word by the word itself. I know of some who have defined light in this way: “Light is a luminary motion of luminous bodies,” as if we could understand the words luminary and luminous without understanding the word light [lumière].

We cannot undertake to define being without falling into this absurdity, for we cannot define any word without beginning with these words it is, either explicitly or implicitly. Therefore to define being we would have to say it is, and thus use the word defined in the definition.

It is sufficiently clear from this that there are words incapable of definition. And if nature had not made up for this defect by giving a like idea to all men, all our expressions would be confused; whereas we make use of them with the same assurance and the same certainty we should have if they had been explained in a perfectly unambiguous way, because nature itself has given us, without words, a clearer understanding of them than we gain through art with all our explanations.¹

The perplexity Pascal is pointing to is that Being, or “what is” is defined as that which is and seems to be circular because the words “it is” belong to the definition of Being. In a very strict sense, Pascal is correct. It is difficult to precisely define Being without using the terms “what is.” The reason, logically, is that Being is the most fundamental aspect of reality. It is the most basic point of departure for the metaphysician. No one can deny that Being, or something, is. Long ago, Aristotle pointed out that philosophy must have some very basic starting points and it is the mark of ignorance to not recognize this fact. We must have these first foundational starting points in order to avoid an endless regression of explanations. So, when the metaphysician starts from the basic assumption of what it is, and then explicates what is, he is not engaging in circular reasoning. Being is the fundamental principle of reality and why Pascal points out that it is difficult to define. The most fundamental aspects of reality are difficult to define ontologically. Pascal correctly points out that Being is so basic that it is intuitively correct—And if nature had not made up for this defect by giving a like idea to all men, all our expressions would be confused. Being is both the logical and intuitive starting point for the metaphysician.

Being, is not as much a tautological worry as Pascal feared. And he partially answered his concern. I do believe that Being can be correctly defined even if it is a little imprecise. As Aristotle pointed out, Being can be said in many ways. Different kinds of being exist in different ways. Fictional characters such as Hamlet exist in a different way than my writing desk. But the philosopher is not alone regarding the difficult nature of ontology, or being. The physicist can give a definition of energy (a capacity for change) but can not explain its ontology (being). Definitions are elusive indeed. No one, however, denies that things that things like fictional characters exist in one way, while things like energy, or tables exist in another. The nature of Being forces us to re-examine the claims of children who passionately question what is or what is not.

Next time, we’ll begin our study of Hegelian idealism and the nature of Being. Hopefully, this excursus helped to clarify the foundational nature of Being.

1 Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters; Pensées; Scientific Treatises, ed. Mortimer J. Adler and Robert McHenry, trans. W. F. Trotter, Second Edition., vol. 30, Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990), 432.