THE PHILOSOPHY OF BEING

1. INTRODUCTION
   The problem of being is the central and fundamental problem of philosophy. This problem may be simply stated as follows: What is being? In the attempt to answer this problem, philosophy has developed various solutions. The history of philosophy is the history of these solutions and attempt to develop the philosophy of being.

2. HISTORY OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF BEING
   1. The Eleatics.
      The Eleatics is the school of early Greek thinkers who lived during the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. at Elea in southern Italy. The oldest of the Eleatics was Xenophanes, a wandering rhapsodist, who was born about 570 B.C. at Colophon in western Asia Minor, on the Aegean Sea, and migrated to Elea in southern Italy probably because of the Persian invasions in about 546 B.C. He died about 470 B.C. Little is known of his philosophy; he wrote several poems of which only 108 lines have survived. He rejected the Greek polytheism, attacking the anthropomorphism of the Greek gods. He set forth the doctrine that there is only one ultimate reality, "One god, supreme among the gods and men, and not like mortals in body and mind". This being does not have sense organs like men's, but "the whole of him sees, the whole of him thinks, the whole of him hears". He sets in motion all things by the power of his mind; he always remains in the same place, moving not at all; he is omnipresent, not needing to move.

      The true founder of the Eleatic school is not Xenophanes, but Parmenides of Elea (c.515 B.C.-c.450 B.C.). He is probably the most important philosopher before Socrates, being the first to focus on the central problem of metaphysics, the problem of being. He held that "thought and being are the same thing", and that "being is and it is impossible for it not to be; it is impossible that non-being is". That is, being exists and non-being does not exist. Being is ungenerated and indestructible. It cannot come into being out of what does not exist. Neither can it cease to be, since being is not non-being. Hence being is eternal and unchanging. Change is impossible; for if anything changes, it ceases to be what it is and becomes what it is not; and since being cannot cease to be and non-being does not exist, change is impossible. And also movement is impossible; for if anything moves, it must occupy empty space where it was not; and since empty space is non-being and does not exist, movement is not possible. And there can be only one being. For if there were more than one being, these beings would have to be separated by empty space; since empty space is non-being and does not exist, they cannot be separated and thus they must occupy the same space; thus the many are one and being is one. Finally being is homogeneous and simple, not having parts; for if it has parts, then it would be many; but since being is one, it has no parts and thus is it simple and homogeneous. From this homogeneity, Parmenides argued that being is finite. Since being is homogeneous, it must be solid, and, like the surface of a sphere, being is "perfected on every side", equally distance from its center at every point. Thus being must be finite. Parmenides' student, Melissus of Samos (5th cent. B.C.), rejected his teacher's conclusion that being is finite; being must be spatially and temporally infinite. For if being is finite, then beyond it there would be empty space; but since empty space is nothing, non-being, it does not exist and thus being occupies all space. Thus being is spatially infinite. Mellisus, like Parmenides, rejected a void or vacuum, empty space, as impossible and non-existent, "for what is empty is nothing. What is nothing cannot be". Zeno of Elea (c. 490-430 B.C.) was a firm adherent to Parmenides' ideas and tried to show that they are true by showing their opposites are impossible and absurd (reductiones ad absurdum). By this form of argument he attempted to show that pluralism (that being is many, not one), empty space, and motion are impossible.

   2. Platonism.
      Plato (428-348 B.C.) in his dialogue named Parmenides describes a meeting in Athens of Parmenides, Zeno, and Socrates. Though the meeting is probably fictitious there is no reason why the issues discussed should be ignored. In this dialogue Plato discussed the concept of the One, ostensibly without conclusion. In one passage he asserts hypothetically that if the One existed, it would be ineffable and unknowable. Whether this assertion was supposed to reveal the contradictory and, therefore, unacceptable character of the One, or to express Plato's acceptance of this assertion about the character of the One, is debatable. In the dialogue the Sophist the problem of negative judgments is handled in such a way that it is not possible to make Parmenides' mistake of supposing that what is not does not exist. In his dialogues Plato divides all reality into the realm of forms or ideas (intelligibles) and the realm of sensibles, treating the intelligibles alone as that which really is (Greek, ousia, being) and implying that they are eternal and unchanging. One of these ideas, the idea of the Good, Plato elevated above the others, calling it beyond being (Greek, epekeina ousias). He compares it to the sun as the source of being and knowledge of all beings. In a lecture (or course of lectures) Plato seems to have identified the Good with the One. As to the realm of the sensibles, Plato in his dialogue Timaeus explains the origin of the cosmos in the form of a myth. According to this myth, the cosmos is the work of a divine artisan or "demiurge" (Greek, demiourgos, craftsman), who using the realm of Ideas, forms out of them something, which Plato calls the "receptacle", which is void of any qualities. Then the ideas in some way enter this void and by so doing form the rudiments of the four elements. In addition to the formation of the physical world, the demiurge also forms a cosmic soul and the immortal part of individual souls. Both of these consist of a mixture of the same ingredients, on which mixture the demiurge imposes a numerical and geometrical structure.

   3. Neo-Platonism.
      Neo-Platonism, as the name suggests, begins with the teachings of Plato and develops it in distinctive manner. It holds that Being is God, the One, the eternal principle of unity. The One is completely separated from all things, the many, but is the source of all things as being. This transcendent being is related to all things by a series of intermediaries, which are derived from the One by the principle of emanation. In this view reality is a graded series from the divine One Being to material world and man, who has in him some part of the divine and thus longs for union with the eternal source of things. The Egyptian-Roman philosopher Plotinus (205-270 A.D.) interpreted these emanations as logical, not temporal, progressions from the divine One into non-being and occurs by the refulgence of the original principle. According to him, there are three levels of emanation:
      (1) the Nous (Mind or Intelligence), which is Plato's realm of Ideas or forms, is the reflection of the One into multiplicity;
      (2) the Psyche or Soul, which, like Plato's divine artisan, the demiurge, who is the principle of life and active intelligence, uses the forms as the patterns on the formation of the world; and
      (3) the Hyle or Matter itself, which, when devoid of form, is next to nothing or non-being. The evil in world and in man is due to this material principle. Evil is non-being, a privation of being. But by this Plotinus does not mean that evil is unreal; it is a real turning from being to non-being.
      Then there is man, combining in himself the material and spiritual principles; he is in an uncomfortable position. He longs for the eternal forms and for the One, but is imprisoned in a body. He looks for liberation in contemplation, both intellectual and spiritual and by a mystical union with the divine.

      Plotinus was born in Egypt and studied in Alexandria under Ammonius Saccas. After accompanying the emperior Gordian on a campaign in the East, he settled in Rome about 244, opening his own school. He wrote essays for his students about their philosophical discussions. His pupil, Porphyry, collected these and arranged them systematically into six Enneads [groups of nine], that are the major source of Plotinus' philosophy. Porphyry published the Enneads after A.D. 300 with an accompanying Life of Plotinus. Prophyry reports that Plotinus had a mystical experience of union with the divine on four occasions, which union is described in the Enneads and is one of classics of mysticism.

      In the fourth and fifth Christian centuries, Neoplatonism provided the philosophical basis for pagan opposition to Christianity. Prophyry in addition to his numerious philosophical treatises, wrote a massive fifteen volume work, now lost, Against the Christians. The Roman emperor, Julian, in addition to decrees against Christians, wrote Against the Galileans, which can be reconstructed from Cyril of Alexandria's refutation of it. In addition to providing the philosophical basis for the opposition, Neoplatonism provided the philosophical framework for the thought of several Christian theologians: Gregory of Nyssa, Victorius, Ambrose, Augustine, and later Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. The influence of Neoplatonism continued in both the Western and Eastern churches. Even in the twentieth century elements of it has appeared in the thought of Paul Tillich.

   4. Origen.
      It was Origen (c.185-c.254 A.D.) who attempted to develop a system of Christian philosophy on a larger scale, more complete than before. He was prodigious student, scholar of tremendous applications, voluminous writer, lover of the philosophers, an ascetic, and of fiery temper. Origen was a controversial churchman in and out of the good graces of the office of the Bishop.

      Origen was born of Christian parents, probably in Alexandria, between A.D. 182 and 185. He studied under Clement of Alexandria in the Catechical School in Alexandria. During the persecution under Septimus Severus, in 202, Origen's father, Leonidas, was captured and martyred. Origen wanted to die with his father but his mother prevented him fulfilling his wish by hidding his clothes. He was able to continue his studies after his father's death by the generosity of a wealthy widow. The persecution had driven his teacher, Clement, from Alexandria, and in 203 he became, in spite of his youth, teacher and head of the catechical school. He held this position until the 215, when the Emperor Caracalla drove all teachers of philosophy from Alexandria. He was permitted to return to Alexandria, in probably in 216, and resumed his teaching. There followed a period of scholarly productivity. Origen's labors in Alexandria was broken by a journey to Greece and Palestine in 230 and 231. While he was in Palestine, a friendly bishop in Caesarea ordained him as a presbyter, probably so he would be free to preach. This ordination of an Alexandrian layman was viewed by the Bishop of Alexandria as an intrusion on his jurisdiciton. As a result Bishop Demetrius held synods by which Origen was banished from Alexandria and deposed from the ministry. He had to abandon the headship of the Alexandrian Catechetical School because of the synodical action (about A.D. 231) that was directed against certain features of his doctrine and also against his ordination. He subsequently founded a school at Caesarea in Palestine, where Gregory Thaumaturge was one of his pupils. Origen died in A.D. 254 or 255, his death being the consequence of the torture he had to endure during the persecution of Decius in 250. Three hundred years later he was accused of Subordinationism, by Jerome and Epiphanius and condemned by some synods, such as the Synod of Constantinople in 543. In 553 he was declared a heretic at the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople.

      Origen's commitment to tradition was stronger than that of his teacher, Clement. Origen edited an authoritative text of the Old Testament scriptures, the Hexapla, containing the Hebrew with Greek transliteration and four versions translated into Greek. Besides his commentaries on certain New Testament gospels and letters, he wrote a monumental work on systematic theology, De Principiis. Under Clement and Ammonius Saccas, who was the teacher of Plotinus and taught at Alexandria in the first half of the 3rd century A.D., Origen learned the Platonic philosophy and set out to wed the Christian faith to it. His anti-Gnostic thought is seen in the guiding principle of his thinking that nothing is to be believed as unworthy of God. Thus, those Christian Gnostics, who would have difficulty believing that the world could have been created by a good God, he denounced. And to help him in his cause he allegorized the scriptures. In his use of allegorizing he made famous the three senses of interpretation:
      (1) the bodily, somatic, or literal meaning,
      (2) the psychic or moral meaning, and
      (3) the spiritual or allegorical meaning, which is highest of all.
      All of Origen's speculations were grounded in the belief that the scriptures were the standard or basis for all speculation.

      Origen's God is less abstract than Clement's, although incomprehensible apart from the revelation of the creative divine Logos or Sophia (wisdom) from God, the latter is subordinate to God and yet of the same substance (homo-ousios). Origen's doctrine of subordination was later appealed to by the Arians, but they were unwilling to use the term "homoousios", which term became the key-word in the Trinitarian controversy before, at and after the Council of Nicea (A.D. 325). The Son of God is eternally generated from God, so also is the third hypostasis in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. The Son is the divine Logos joined to a created spirit which in turn was joined to a human soul in the man Jesus Christ. It is the Son of God through whom the nature of God is revealed and the way of salvation made known. All beings, archangels (with very fine bodies), angels down through man and to arch-fiends (with very coarse bodies), will ultimately be saved (universalism) in the Apocatastasis, when all things will return to their ultimate principle and God will be all in all. The physical world was created ex nihilo. Men have, as spirits, pre-existed. Origen held that evil is privation and non-being and that man by a premundane fall from grace led to them being clothed with a body. He regarded the story in Genesis of Adam's sin and his explusion from the Garden as an allegory of this pre-mundane fall, pointing out that where Moses seems to be speaking of an individual he really has human nature as a whole in mind. He thus held that man having a material body is a sign of his sin and of his fall into sin, of having used the free will that God had given him, not for its intended purpose, but for evil purposes. Man retains his initial freedom, although hampered by the body, to turn toward God and goodness. Their acts depends not merely on their free choice but also on the grace of God, which is apportioned to them according to their conduct in the pre-embodied state. The common man can be expected only to follow the pathway of faith (pistis); but the educated man will rise to knowledge (gnosis) or to the level of philosophy. Here he will think through by deductive analysis the truth of the scriptures and tradition and go on through further processes of reasoning to new levels of truth.

      Origen was the most prolific and learned of all Christian writers before the Council of Nicaea, and there is no doubt that he had every good intention of being and remaining an orthodox Christian; but his desire to reconcile the Platonic philosophy with Christianity and his use of the allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures to accomplish this, led him into some heterodox views. Thus, under the influence of Platonism or rather of NeoPlatonism, he held that God, who is purely spiritual, the One (monos or henas), who transcends truth and reason, essence and being, created the world from eternity and by a necessity of His Nature, God, who is goodness could never have been "inactive" not creating, since goodness always tends to self-communication. Moreover, he argued, if God had created the world in time, if there was ever a time when the world was not, God's immutability would be impaired, which is an impossibility. Both these arguments are conceived in dependence upon NeoPlatonism. As evil is privation and non-being, and not something positive, God cannot be accused of being the author of evil. The Logos or Word is the exemplar of creation, the idea of ideas (idea ideon), and by the Logos all things are created, the Logos acting as mediator between God and creatures. The final procession within the Godhead is the Holy Spirit, and immediately below the Holy Spirit are the created spirits, who, through the power of the Holy Spirit are lifted up to become sons of God, in union with the Son, and are finally participants in the divine life of the Father. Souls were created by God exactly like one another, in quality, but their sin in the pre-existence state led to their being clothed with bodies, and the qualitative difference between souls is due to their behavior before their entry into the world. They had freedom of will on earth, but their acts depend not merely on their free choice but also on the grace of God, which is apportioned according to their conduct in the pre-embodied state. Nevertheless, all souls, and even the devil and the demons, too, will at last, through purificatory sufferings, arrive at union with God. This is the doctrine of the restoration of all things, whereby all things will return to their ultimate origin and God will be all in all. This view, of course, is a denial of the orthodox doctrine of hell.

      From what little that has been said here concerning Origen's thought, it should be clear that his attempt to fuse Christian doctrine with Platonic and NeoPlatonic philosophy led him into a denial of some of those doctrines. For example, the Son and Holy Spirit in the Trinity, though within the Godhead, are spoken of in a manner which indicates the influence of the emanationism of NeoPlatonic thought. The theory of the Logos as "Idea of ideas" and that of an eternal and necessary creation come from the same source, while the theory of pre-existence of souls is Platonic. Of course, the philosophical ideas which Origen adopted were incorporated by him into a Christian setting and framework, so that he might be considered the first great synthetic thinker of Christianity. Accordingly his ideas and influence was widely spread in succeeding centuries.

   5. Augustinianism.
      This is the philosophy of Aurelius Augustinus, better known as Saint Augustine, and of his followers. He was born at Tagaste in the Province of Numidia of North Africa on November 13th, 354 A.D.; his father, Patricius, was a pagan and his mother, Monica, was a Christian; she brought him up as a Christian but his baptism was deferred, as was the practice of the time. He learned the rudiments of Latin and arithmetic and a little Greek. In 370 A.D., the year his father died after becoming a Christian, Augustine began the study of rhetoric at Carthage and broke with Christian teaching and morals, taking a mistress, with whom he lived for ten years and by whom he had a son in his second year at Carthage. He became a follower of the teaching of the Manicheans. The Manicheans, founded by a Persian named Mani, taught a dualism of two ultimate principles, a principle of good that is the light, God or Ormuzd, and a principle of evil that is the darkness, Ahriman. These principles are eternal and are engaged in an eternal strife, which is reflected in the world and in man. Man's soul is composed of light, the principle of the good, while the body, composed of grosser matter, is the work of the principle of evil, darkness. This religio-philosophic system commended itself to Augustine because it seemed to explain the problem of evil and because of its materialism, since Augustine could not yet conceive how there could be an immaterial reality. Although the Manicheans condemned sexual intercourse, the eating animal flesh and prescribed various ascetic practices, such as fasting, for the "elect", but not for the "hearers", Augustine did not follow them, being only a "hearer". Eventually Augustine became dissatisfied with Manichean when it was not able to answer his questions and the difficulties he had with its teachings. After returning to Tagaste in 374 A.D., he taught rhetoric and Latin Literature for a year. He then returned to Carthage to open a school of rhetoric; but becoming frustrated with his students, he went to Rome in 383 and started another school of rhetoric. Although giving up belief in the teachings of Manicheans, being attracted to Academic skepticism, he retained an outward adherence to Manicheanism, still accepting its materialism. Having obtained a position at Milan of municipal professor of rhetoric in 384 A.D., he moved to Milan and finally broke with the Manicheans through the influence of his new friends in Milan, the Bishop Ambrose and the circle of Christian Neo-Platonist around him. He got the answers to his questions about Manichean doctrine, and encountered a more satisfying interpretation of Christianity than he had previously found in the simple, unintellectual faith of his mother. The Neo-Platonic teaching of evil as privation, non-being, rather than as second kind of being, matter, showed him how the problem of evil could be solved without recourse to the Manichean dualism. In this Christianized Neo-Platonism he believed he found the truth and he began to read the New Testament, particularly Paul's letter to the Romans. After an intense moral struggle, in the summer of 386, while he was sitting in the garden of his friend Alypius' house, weeping, he heard a child's voice outside singing the words, "Tolle lege! Tolle lege!" ["Take up and read! Take up and read!"]. He picked up the New Testament and, opening it at random, his eyes lighted on Romans 13:13b-14:
      "not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness,
      not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ,
      and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof."
      "No further would I read", he tells us later, "nor had I any need;
      instantly, at the end of this sentence, a clear light flooded my heart
      and all the darkness of doubt vanished away".
      On Holy Saturday of 387 A.D. Augustine was baptized by Bishop Ambrose and soon after he returned to North Africa in 388 A.D. He was ordained a priest in 391 and was consecrated Bishop of Hippo in 396 A.D. He also wrote extensively against pagan philosophy, the Donatist and the Pelagains. He died on August 28th, 430 A.D.

      Although Augustine wrote against pagan philosophy, he still showed a strong predilection for Neoplatonism. There is a depreciation of sense-objects in comparison with eternal and immaterial realities; a grudging admission of practical knowledge as a necessity of life; the insistence on "theoretic" contemplation and purification of the soul and liberation from the slavery of the senses. Philosophically this predilection is shown in the Platonic and Neo-Platonic view that the objects of the senses, corporeal things, are inferior to the human intellect, which judges them with reference to objective standard as falling short. These standards are the immutable and eternal universal ideas or forms. The standards of goodness and beauty, for example, correspond to Plato's first principles or archai, the exemplary ideas, and the ideal geometrical figures correspond to Plato's mathematical objects, ta mathematika, the objects of the dianoia. To the question, which was asked of the Platonic Ideas, "Where are these ideas?" Augustine answers that they are in the mind, the Nous, of God, they are the thoughts of God. The Neo-Platonics had made this suggestion and Augustine apparently accepted it as the answer to the question: Where are they? Augustine does not accept the emanation theory of Neo-Platonism, where the Nous emanates from the One as the first hypostasis. But Augustine held that the exemplar ideas and eternal, immutable truths are in God. This theory must be accepted, Augustine argues, if one wishes to avoid having to say that God created the world unintelligently. Thus creation is like Plato's formation of the sense-world by the divine artisan, the demiurge, except that there is no pre-existent matter; God created it out of nothing. Thus the world of creatures reflects and manifests God, even if it does in a very inadequate way. The order and unity of creatures, their positive reality, reveals the goodness of God and the order and stability of the universe manifest the wisdom of God. But God, as the self-existent, eternal and immutable Being, is infinite and, as infinite, is incomprehensible. God is His own Perfection and is "simple", without parts, so that His wisdom and knowledge, His goodness and power, are His own essence, which is without accidents. God, therefore, transcends space in virtue of His spiritually and simplicity, as He transcends time in virtue of His eternity.

      "...He is above all things. So too He is in no interval nor extension in time, but in His immutable eternity is older than all things because He is before all things and younger than all things because He is after all things."

      From all eternity God knew all things, which He was to make. He does not know them, because He has made them, but rather the other way around. God first knew the things of creation though they came into being in time. The species of created things have their ideas or rationes seminales in the things themselves and also in the Divine Mind as rationes aeternae. God from all eternity saw in Himself, as possible reflections of Himself, the things that He could create and would create. He knew them before creation as they are in Him, as Exemplar, but He made them as they exist, that is, as external and finite reflections of His divine essence. Since God did nothing without knowledge, He foresaw all that He would make, but His knowledge is not distinct acts of knowledge, but "one eternal, immutable and ineffable vision". In virtue of this eternal act of knowledge, of vision, to which nothing is past or future, that God sees, "foresees", even the free acts of men, knowing them "beforehand". This exemplarist doctrine passed into the Middle Ages and was taken as characteristic of Augustinianism.

   6. Boethius.
      The Roman philosopher and statesman, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c.480-524 A.D.), attempted a synthesis of Hellenistic, Roman, and Christian thought, "saving" the best of old, and engendering the new. He was "the last representative of the Ancient Philosophy," according to some, and "the first of the Scholastics," by others; he belonged to the Neo-Platonic tradition and attempted the typically Platonic task of reconciling Plato and Aristotle, to the advantage of Plato, who in a sense was the founder of both the Academic and Peripatetic schools. He planed to translate the works of both Plato and Aristotle into Latin, but was able to complete only Aristotle's works on logic, the Organon, together with some commentaries on them, including Porphyry's Introduction to the Categories of Aristotle. Beothius was educated at Athens and Alexandria, and served as Consul of Rome and minister to Theodoric, Arian king of the Ostrogoths in Italy; later near the end of his life he was accused of treason and imprisoned in Italy, where he wrote his most famous work De Consolatione Philosophiae (Consolation of Philosophy), in five books, while in prison awaiting death. It is a dialogue between Boethius and "Philosophy", who leads him from despair over his situation to "the true contentment which reason united with virtue can give". It is concerned with philosophy leading the soul to God, but its failure to introduce Christianity has lead some to doubt whether Boethius was a Christian. But this doubt can be dismissed on the basis of his other works; his De Trinitate, studying Augustine on the Trinity, a short tract on the Trinity addressed to John the Deacon, and a treatise against Eutychus and Nestorius. It is also believed that he wrote De fide catholica, which summarizes central Christian doctrines and rejects tenets of the Arians, Sabellians, and Manichaeans. About 520 A.D. he wrote the theological Tractates, known as Opuscula sacra, which established his theological authority, even to getting a commentary on it by Aquinas. His theological works were taken seriously throughout the Middle Ages, as many commentaries witness, and he was canonized. By his translations, his commentaries and his original works, Boethius bequeathed to Scholaticism much of the terminology and many of its definitions. For example, eternity as totum simul (Latin totum, "the whole, all", and simul, "at the same time") and, by equating the "hypostasis" with "persona", Boethius defined "person" as "an individual substance of rational nature". In his logical works he raised the problem of the universals; he was much bolder than the logicians ( Porphyry) from whom he had received it, but he made it clear that the Aristotelian solution that he was proposing in his commentary was by no means satisfactory to him. Also in both the Trinitate the Consolation, he preferred to consider the universals as pure forms, somewhat like the Platonic Ideas. The Boethius also made the influential distinction between that which is (id quod est) of a substance and that by which a substance is what it is (quo est, esse). He identified the latter with the "form" of the thing or substance and he used this distinction to distinguish between God and all other things. In creatures the form (esse) is mentally separable from the substance that is (id quod est), whereas in God His being is identical with "that which is". Note that this is not the first statement of the famous Thomistic distinction between essence and existence; it is rather the distinction between a substance and its being or essence.

      Concerning education he wrote on the trivium (On Arithmetic) and quadrivium (On Music). Boethius is ranked among the founders of the Middle Ages because of his great influence on medieval education as well as its thought. The influence of Boethius upon the thinkers of the early scholastic perior (1000-1150) cannot be exaggerated. It was the Boethian age as the next age was Aristotelian.