Talk:Being

message: I cut the following text from this article, as it is seemingly unrelated to the ontological concept of being:
:Eckhart Tolle in his best-selling book, The Power of Now, uses the word "Being" as a substitute and more accurate word for "God".
If that use of "Being" is important, perhaps it belongs in the Supreme Being article or in the Eckhart Tolle article or, if The Power of Now is an important enough book, in an article about that book. The Rod 05:22, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The Power of Now

message: Continuing to make this article more about a single topic (ontological being), I cut the following content from the article, as it seems unrelated to the ontological concept of being:
:The film "Being There" starring Peter Sellers was influenced by existentialism and the works of Martin Heidegger.
If the existentialist aspect of the film is important enough, perhaps it belongs in Existentialism or perhaps the film merits its own article. The Rod 05:29, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Film: [[Being There]]

message: There is an inappropriate mixture of definitions in this article. We start out by talking about the subjective meaning, how it is the inner self and all that. Then we start talking abouth the universal meaning of being, which is essentially objective. Which is it? The article goes on blithely speaking as if they were one and the same thing. The key to the problem is the lack of references. They seem to help clarify everything. Since the article clearly intends to cover the universal, or objective, status of being, I propose that is where we start. As this is a long-standing tagged article and everyone interested has had an ample shot at it I hope you do not mind if I turn my hand to organizing and referencing the article. There are a whole lot of articles on the same topic but they are all equally tagged and equally problematic. But, let's try to do it right and then see what we really have before we make any final decisions (if there is any such thing on WP).00:44, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestion

message: Actually the writing here as far as it goes is very good, nor have I yet found evidence of plagiarism. The name-dropping, however - well, that is something else. I know the walls of institutions, such as the Boston Public Library, have the names of great thinkers inscribed in them as a monument. This isn't a monument, however, it is an article. Nothing is said about the names, no information given, no refs, the articles do not mention this article, we are left to guess the relevance. I think what we want are the refs. The first ref I put in contains those names and gives more detail. So, I'm removing name lists, or shall we say monumental names, which are being dropped, shall we say, like names of battles invoked by people who never fought in them.Dave (talk) 04:19, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Name dropping

message: "French Academy member Étienne Gilson wrote once that if a notion had to be universally recognized as the first of all principles of philosophy that would be being."
Try as I might I cannot find the source of this statement. Maybe he did say it, maybe not. Whatever the case may be, it appears to be out of context. However, it is signal that the editor should have chosen for this article probably the most notable Thomist of modern times, a metaphysician's metaphysician, an ontologist's ontologist. What he says is easily taken out of context because he often likes to develop the subject by going along with a given hypothesis to the point where it can't be gone along with any further, as a device for getting you to make the leap into an otherwise extraordinary realization. This method appears to imitate St. Thomas' method. The latter makes statements that have an ordinary and an extraordinary sense. He brings you along the ordinary path until you suddenly realize he cannot possibly be talking about the ordinary. Other metaphysicians abd ontologists do that also, although some prefer straight exposition. Now, I cannnot follow down any misunderstandings or statements out of context the editor may have had. I think for purpose of what he is trying to say he may dropped one name too many. However I will respect his wishes and start using Gilson as the main basis for this article! What is missing of course is about 2000 years of the philosophy of being; I presume the editor ommitted that as of no value, as he says. Well, there might be some small value. Might. There are so many articles around this topic one has to be careful to stick right to the topic, which is being and beings, as opposed to entities, ousia, existents, essences, and all the rest.Dave (talk) 11:27, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Etienne Gilson

message: Unless differences between Islamic and non-Islamic philosophies are going to be discussed, I see no purpose on keeping that there.Glorthac (talk) 02:50, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I was intrigued to hear that being is discussed in Islamic philosophy, but frustrated by the lack of any quote or discussion of what Islamic philosophy has to say about being. Rather than deletion of this section, I'd like to see more detail. Riversider (talk) 15:54, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Being in Islamic philosophy

message: Merging is not the answer...Any language is called a rich language, because it is rich in terms of trminology. It is noticeable clearly that the English language is shrinking lately by folloewing the method of merging (and other reasons which does not concern our subject, now)not specificaly, just an example, i.e; SOUL (Area = LIFE)while MIND (Area = THOUGHT). And now 'Existance' and 'Being'. though might be very close in SOME meanings, but never carries the same specs. Existence versus nothingness , while Being versus nonpresence. Actually what disturbes me most is the use of definitions derived from the brain understandings of the universe, especially when they don't exists as such, i.e; Time= is a sequence of moments,etc...past,present,future. Well excuse me but there is no such thing in oneness time...this is simply an understanding IN ACCORDANCE TO THE BRAIN, and not a definition of time, to be fair it might be a good understanding to the verb time, but what about time the noun? 
Michel Nakouzi (talk) 22:14, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: merging is not the answer

message: I highly recommend looking at the German wikipedia article on Being (Sein): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sein
It's much better than the English wiki one. --Caute AF (talk) 16:42, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: There's a duplication of effort here, a redundant English article. Placed merge tag on it pointing here but I'm unlikely to have the time to perform it. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 18:50, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Im not sure if merging is a good idea. "Existence" Refers to a very specific thing, and does so clearly. "Being" however, has many definitions; "I am a human being" "I'm being robbed!" and the like. Perhaps the "being" article could be merged into the Existence article? 74.132.249.206 (talk) 03:44, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well this supports an Existence article , while there is no entry there for being. Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 03:10, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Improvement/Merge

message: The current version of the article is filled with pretentious, unclear writing. For example, the first sentence of the lead is:
: Being is what one who is sentient is in the way of mind, body, spirit, and their union, and what one knows about these things and those of similar life forms. 
The first sentence of the body is:
: The deficit of such a bridge was first encountered in history by the Pre-Socratic philosophers during the process of evolving a classification of all beings (noun).
The section titled "The transcendental being" begins:
: Some of Thomas Aquinas' propositions were reputedly condemned by the local Bishop of Paris (not the Papal Magisterium itself) in 1270 and 1277, but his dedication to the use of philosophy to elucidate theology was so thorough that he was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1568. Those who adopt it are called Thomists.
I haven't read the whole article, but most of what I've sampled is similarly unclear, irrelevant, and pretentiously worded. To future editors: Please don't hesitate to delete large portions of text, even the entire article, and write from scratch. Much writing in philosophy, and especially in philosophy classes, is pretentious, unclear, and incoherent. An encyclopedia article should not follow that precedent. An encyclopedia article should summarize the main facts about the topic, in a form understandable to a nonspecialist reader.
For some guidance on writing appropriate for Wikipedia, please see WP:BETTER. WP:TONE is a good place to start. For guidance specifically about the lead, please see MOS:INTRO. The place to start editing to fix the article is probably the body, not the lead, as explained at WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY. To get content to put into the article, start with leading secondary sources such as textbooks, not with the philosophers' writings, and certainly not with your own philosophical ideas (see WP:NOR, WP:NPOV). Just summarize the main facts, accompanied by references to the sources. That's all there is to it. (It's much harder than it sounds, though, especially with a topic like "being".)
When all the pretentious writing is replaced with straightforward, factual writing, then it will be time to remove the  tag.
—Ben Kovitz (talk) 16:53, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi! I agree with your assessment that the article can be, in places, difficult to understand without a backing in philosophy. However, this has more to do with the subject matter of the article, than it has to do with the word choice of its authors. In order to be factually robust, this article must talk about things that could come off as complicated. If you are still unsatisfied with the article's readability, a better solution would be to tag it as needing help from an expert-- somebody with a backing in the topic, who can re-write portions of it so that they're easier to read, without compromising their educational value. Generally, the tone tag is reserved for articles which fail to meet a basic standard-- articles that are poorly written, or which are clearly biased. As this article meets those standards, I will be removing the tone tag and including a link to the relevant portion of the technical content guideline. Atomic putty? Rien! (talk)  (talk) 20:08, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

text: "Making articles more understandable does not necessarily mean that detailed technical content should be removed." -- Quoted from Wikipedia:Make_technical_articles_understandable#Technical_content_assistance Atomic putty? Rien! (talk)  (talk) 20:08, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Write an encyclopedia article, not a paper for a philosophy class 

message: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3APrefixIndex&prefix=Being&namespace=0
NoToleranceForIntolerance (talk) 01:24, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shoukd there be a disambiguation page? 

message: I transpose the initial paragraph in Ontology article.
:"Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality as well as the basic categories of being and their relations."
Surprisingly the entire lead of the present article on Being contains no mention to Ontology. If there is no serious objection to it, I will proceed to introduce this missing connection.--Auró (talk) 12:23, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Being and Ontology 

message: The first two paragraphs mention Presocratics, Heidegger, William James, and W.V.O. Quine, leaving out the whole history of the development of the concept of being. Thus, the article appears to ignore the whole philosophical tradition, which resulted in the contemporary popular notion of being and enabled aforementioned recent philosophers to advance their ideas. Based on the choice of terminology and authors, I suspect that the author of the introductory paragraphs does not have an appreciation for the history of philosophy from Plato to recent times, but this makes the further sections, discussing some of the most important developments in the theory of being, look like unimportant minutiae.  
Also, "Metaphysics" is the term which means "theory of being" in philosophical traditions, which continue to develop the concept of being found in Aristotle.  Again, to ignore this term, even if, as it seems, ignoring it is based on Heideggerian developments, leads to a skewed perspective on the development of the theory of being, and prevents the reader from achieving an adequate understanding of the concept of being, even if the author of the introductory paragraphs thinks otherwise.  A wikipedia article should be a comprehensive survey of perspectives on the concept of being, not a one sided take on it, implicitely devaluing other approaches.   
To summarize, the introduction is inadequate, as it ignores the most basic common terminology and important authors in favour of a one-sided approach, based on a rather peculiar tradition.    — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pernambuco1 (talk • contribs) 20:37, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I couldn't agree more. The lead of this article is inadequate, misleading, skewed, false in at least some instances, and suggests to me a lack of understanding of the terms being used.  (This is not an indictment of the editor[s] that wrote the lead, as I've been guilty of that kind of thing plenty of times in my editing career.  Instead, it is an observation about the content of the lead.)  For example, the sentence "Anything that exists has being" makes me shudder, and claims like these in the lead surely have led to some confusing undergraduate papers from students who sign on to Wikipedia to "research" such matters.  I don't have the patience to undertake an extensive rewriting of this but would be very happy to see another editor address some of these issues, such as the ones mentioned above.  Best, CCS81 (talk) 14:28, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction 

message: This sounds like a joke article  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lotofnot (talk • contribs) 04:45, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Joke article? 

message: The entire Vedanta philosophy is based on the topic of "being" and is arguably the most ancient one too. It is the foundation for the Buddhist philosophy as well. Yet it is not covered (not even mentioned) in this article. Also, the introduction mentions that the very first idea on this topic came from the West, which is again biased in the light that the Vedas already contain rich discussions on this topic.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Serratiamars (talk • contribs) 06:42, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  No mention of "Being" in Vedanta Philosophy. 

message: .change from: In philosophy, being means the material or immaterial existence of a thing.
..change to: Phenomenagoogle search: a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question. of being, in philosophy means material or immaterial existence75.82.19.242 (talk) 23:03, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't see your post here before I reverted your change. This article could be improved, but that edit is not a good start, for several reasons. Among other, 'being' is not just about 'phenonema', and google search links are not sources. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:29, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Rather than re-post that change, you should discuss it here. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:31, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: A new ref. @ https://www.encyclopedia.com/TRANSITIONAL PHENOMENA, The original concept of transitional phenomena was used by Donald Winnicott to describe the intermediate area of human experience between inner reality and the outside world....My take towards being is a Socratic approach, 'description and being are just here/there', as in before a philosophy of being, hence the request to change the lead from philosophy to phenomena in respect of reality...
Another way to put it...being is about the differences between understanding and knowledge...thanks for the challenge.Arnlodg (talk) 00:34, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change lead sentence 

message: 167.201.243.117 (talk) 19:45, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Source of being? 

message: after reviewing the content of this article, it appears that almost all of it was original research, which has now been removed. I've restubbed the article and retained what little content was supported by academic, secondary sources. I'm not sure if this article even needs to exist or if any content that could be put here would be better off being covered by pages like dasein, metaphysics, ontology, and existence, but I'm creating this topic for discussion in case anyone has concerns about the removal of content. I do not think any of the removed content should be re-instated without support from secondary sources, as most of it was both inaccurate and poorly written.  - car chasm (talk) 21:43, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: looking at the article we have on ontology, it appears to already cover most of the topics an article on Being would need to. And I can't really think of anything that would belong on an article on "Being" that would not be better suited for "Ontology" as the study of being. Is there anything I'm missing here or should this maybe just redirect to that article?  - car chasm (talk) 00:00, 20 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  A fresh start