Being

Few words appear more often in these books than “is,” and few are harder to account for. The idea of being covers what it is for anything to be or to exist, how the being of a thing differs from its nature or essence, and whether what appears to us is what truly is. It reaches into the theory of substance and accident, into the dispute over whether sensible things exist apart from a mind that perceives them, and into the theological question of whether created things have being of their own or only borrowed from a Being who alone is. It is a great idea for the Harvard Classics because it is never far beneath the surface of the others. Philosophers debate it directly. Poets, fabulists and dramatists return to it whenever they set the shadow beside the substance, and the religious writers make it the hinge between the creature and the Creator.

The first question is whether being can be defined at all. Pascal answers that it cannot. Nothing is more general than being, and any attempt to define it must already use the word “is”^1,2. On his view being is among the primitive terms that reason must take for granted. A related wariness appears in Kant, who finds the ontological conception of perfection empty and indefinite. Used to ground morals, it presupposes the very morality it was meant to explain³. Goethe stages the question as a quarrel over words. Mephistopheles mocks the man who scorns words yet wishes to penetrate the depths of Being, while Faust holds that a thing’s essence may be read from its name⁴.

If being cannot be defined, it can at least be distinguished from what a thing is. Descartes observes that the properties of a triangle can be demonstrated without proving that any triangle exists, so essence does not of itself carry existence⁵. Hume presses the point to its limit. The non-existence of any being whatever is as conceivable as its existence, and denying that something exists implies no contradiction⁶. Lessing takes the opposite course for one case. A perfect conception of God, he argues, must include God’s necessary reality and not mere possibility⁷. Pascal joins the two sides in a single thought. He is not himself a necessary, eternal or infinite being, yet a necessary, eternal and infinite Being exists⁸. The modern separation of essence from existence thus leaves one exception standing, and much of the later argument turns on whether that exception holds.

There is a second exception, nearer at hand: the being of the self. Descartes finds that he can doubt his body and the whole world, but not that he who doubts exists. His thinking is what makes his existence certain⁹. Pascal asks the harder question of what this self is. He answers that the Ego is identical with none of its qualities, since any of them might be lost without one’s ceasing to be oneself¹⁰. Schiller puts the matter more abstractly. In a finite being the person and its condition are distinct, whereas in the absolute being they coincide; at bottom, he says, we are because we are¹¹. The Buddhist writings, as will appear, deny exactly what these authors find most certain.

The contrast between reality and appearance runs through nearly every period represented here. Plato divides existence into two sorts, the seen and changing and the unseen and unchanging¹². He holds that true being is revealed to the soul in thought, when it aspires after being rather than after the body’s impressions¹³. The Bhagavad-Gita teaches that what truly is can never cease to be, and it separates essence from accident and substance from shadow¹⁴. George Long, expounding Marcus Aurelius, says that beginning and ending, being and ceasing to be, belong to appearance and not to the Nature of Things¹⁵. Among the moderns Emerson is the most insistent heir of this tradition. The friend is a shadow of the phenomenal and not Being itself¹⁶. In poetry Being passes into Appearance and Unity into Variety, which Emerson calls the secret of the world¹⁷. Our senses and understanding are servile, and one day we shall deal with real being, essence with essence¹⁸. Wordsworth speaks of seeing into the life of things, which lightens the burden of an unintelligible world¹⁹. Penn turns the doctrine to practical counsel: show is not substance, and realities govern wise men²⁰.

Not everyone accepts the comfort. Prospero’s speech foresees the great globe itself dissolving and leaving not a rack behind, which puts the solidity of everything in question²¹. William Johnson Cory recoils from the claim that only a reality above this world is substantial²². Berkeley, as one might expect, treats the distinction less as a vision than as a puzzle. He asks which colours are real when nearer inspection or a microscope changes what we see²³.

Literature makes the problem vivid. Aesop’s dog loses its meat by snatching at its reflection, and the moral warns against giving up the substance for the shadow^24,25. Another fable exposes a fair outward show that has no inner substance²⁶. Cervantes makes a whole book of the confusion. Don Quixote insists that the barber’s basin really is Mambrino’s helmet, merely disguised to others²⁷. When his giant turns out to be a wine-skin, he explains it as enchantment, while Sancho holds to the plainer account²⁸. Calderón goes further, because he doubts whether the distinction can be drawn at all. Segismund wonders whether the shadow in the mirror is himself²⁹. Clotaldo suspects that waking life is itself a dream, earthly life the shadow of a shade³⁰. Segismund asks whether the glittering host before him is substance or shadow³¹. He concludes that shadow and substance cannot be told apart, but that even if all is a dream one must act rightly within it³². Andersen’s mirage castle dissolves into churches, ships and sea-mist³³. His shadow acts as if independent of its master, so that appearance takes on a life of its own³⁴. Dana, returning after many years, finds the place so changed that he doubts the genuineness of what he sees, as though among “worlds not realized”³⁵.

Kant gives this ancient contrast a critical form. Behind appearances we must posit things in themselves, and an ego, whose nature remains unknown to us³⁶. The laws of such things need not match the laws of appearances³⁷. The real is no longer what the philosopher beholds; it is what he must suppose and cannot know. Schiller reverses the valuation. He separates the reality that things produce from the appearance that man makes³⁸. Man has no sovereignty in the realm of being, but in appearance he is sovereign³⁹. For Plato appearance was a falling short. For Schiller it is the field of human freedom.

The theory of substance supplies the vocabulary for much of this. Augustine recalls reading the Categories, which treat substances such as a man and their accidents. He realised that God does not fit them, since God is His own greatness and beauty and does not merely possess them as accidents⁴⁰. Milton’s college entertainment personifies the scheme: Ens, father of the ten Predicaments, addresses his eldest son Substance⁴¹. Rousseau’s Vicar defines substance and argues that incompatible primitive qualities require distinct substances, so that matter, being extended and divisible, cannot think⁴². Even physics keeps the word. Kelvin declares the ether the only substance we can be confident of in dynamics⁴³.

Berkeley attacks the notion at its root. In the Three Dialogues, Philonous examines substance as a support of qualities. He argues that sensations cannot exist in an unperceiving substance⁴⁴, and that the image of a substratum standing under accidents conveys nothing intelligible⁴⁵. A substance stripped of its accidents cannot be conceived⁴⁶. Hylas, pressed, cannot form any positive idea of entity in general apart from thinking beings and corporeal ones, and abstract existence vanishes under examination⁴⁷.

From this criticism comes Berkeley’s positive thesis. Hylas begins by holding that real existence is absolute and distinct from being perceived, and Philonous asks whether reality does not instead consist in being perceived⁴⁸. If reality meant absolute existence outside the mind, sensible things would have none⁴⁹. Philonous therefore defines the reality of sensible things as existence in a mind⁵⁰. Ascribing absolute external existence to them leads either to contradiction or to nothing at all⁵¹. Their existence consists in being perceived, and unperceived material being is a contradiction^52,53. Berkeley insists that this is common sense rightly understood: the gardener calls real what he perceives⁵⁴. A cherry is a collection of sensible ideas, and only some unknown nature behind them could be doubted⁵⁵. Sensible things are therefore real, but they exist only in being perceived⁵⁶. To the objection that the tree outside my mind would vanish, Philonous answers that it exists in the infinite mind of God⁵⁷. Created minds have relative existence, and absolute existence is denied⁵⁸. Hylas argues that matter is at least possible and so may actually exist. Philonous denies that it is even possible⁵⁹, while allowing that spiritual substance is⁶⁰.

Hume records the same tension from the side of the ordinary believer. Common belief holds that the table exists independently of our perception, but philosophy shows that only perceptions are ever present to the mind⁶¹. Rousseau’s Vicar dismisses the dispute over whether bodies are real or only appear so. For him it is the intelligent being who gives sense to the word “exist”⁶².

The Buddhist writings take a different road to a more radical conclusion. Looking for a persisting self behind name and appearance, they find none⁶³. The search among the aggregates turns up no underlying owner⁶⁴. In the absolute sense there is no Ego and no chariot, and conventional being is set against ultimate reality⁶⁵. There is no house, tree or living entity, only name and form, and the Ego is a figment⁶⁶. Yet the Buddha’s middle doctrine refuses both extremes, that things have being and that they have none⁶⁷. The elements of being arise continually from their antecedents, so they are neither eternal nor annihilated⁶⁸. One meditative state is said to be neither conditioned nor unconditioned, since it has no positive reality⁶⁹. Berkeley dissolves matter and keeps spirit. The Buddhist dissolves the self as well, leaving only conditioned process.

In the theological writers the question of being becomes the question of dependence. Augustine says that he could not exist unless God were in him, or he in God, from whom all things are⁷⁰. Created things neither wholly are nor wholly are not, and only what remains unchangeably truly is⁷¹. In a single glance his mind arrived at THAT WHICH IS⁷². Descartes, having found his own existence, concludes that he is not the only being and depends on a more perfect one⁷³. Sir Thomas Browne holds that God alone is, and that other things have a dependent existence and are something only by distinction⁷⁴. Pascal compares the creature to a severed limb, uncertain of its being because it has no principle of life in itself⁷⁵. The Gita speaks of a twofold being, the Divided and the Undivided, with the Highest beyond both⁷⁶.

Dependence admits of degrees. Augustine holds that in God essence and life are one, and that God upholds all things and gives each its measure of being⁷⁷. Browne sees the universe as a scale of creatures rising by proportion from mere existence through life and sense to man and angels⁷⁸. Man unites in himself five kinds of existence⁷⁹. In Milton’s Paradise Lost all things proceed from one Almighty and one first matter, endowed with various forms and degrees of substance and life⁸⁰. Pope makes the great chain of being stretch from God through angels and men to beasts, and warns that breaking one link ruins the whole⁸¹. Darwin touches the older picture only obliquely. He remarks that whoever believes in the separate creation of each being should be surprised by animals whose habits disagree with their structure⁸².

The last question is whether evil has any being. Augustine asks how we can fear what may not exist⁸³. He concludes that a thing deprived of all good would cease to be, so that existence and goodness coincide⁸⁴. Pascal calls God veritable being and sin nothingness⁸⁵. Emerson finds beneath the sea of circumstance a real Being, the vast affirmative, of which vice is only the absence and falsehood a shade⁸⁶. Manzoni treats the scholastic apparatus with irony, describing reasoners who divide everything into substances and accidents to decide whether the contagion has any being⁸⁷.

Several questions remain open across these books. Is existence a perfection contained in some essence, as Lessing and Pascal hold, or is any being’s non-existence conceivable, as Hume holds? Is the self the first certainty, with Descartes, or a figment, with the Buddhist texts? Is the real the unchanging object of thought that Plato and Augustine describe, Kant’s unknowable thing in itself, or simply what is perceived, as Berkeley maintains? Calderón’s answer to that last question is perhaps the most durable. Whether or not we can tell shadow from substance, we must still act as if the difference mattered.