For the disclosure of the content of the philosophical category "Being", a number of provisions can be highlighted:
The world around us, objects, phenomena really exist; they (the world around us) do;
The surrounding world evolves, has an inner cause, a source of movement within it;
Nature, society, man, thoughts, ideas exist equally; they differ in the ways and forms of their existence, and they form, above all because of their existence, the whole unity of the infinite and permanent world, i.e. they exist;
Matter and spirit are one, but at the same time opposite essences exist, really; matter and spirit exist. These determinations are generalized by the term "substance" - an independent essence that needs nothing but itself for its existence.
So being is a truly existing, stable, independent, objective, eternal, infinite substance that includes all that exists.
The history of philosophy is dominated by the monistic approach, but there are two main forms of monism: idealistic monism in the form of religious or secular diversity; materialistic monism (the question of the first basis of the world).
In the new age, a number of powerful philosophical directions have emerged, especially rationalism and empiricism, which put the problem of standing in the background on ice. Priority began to focus on thinking, from which a considerable number of specific philosophical systems and concepts emerged. Here it is necessary to note the position of Hegel, who wrote: "There can be nothing more unimportant to thought than being.
In the second half of the 19th - first half of the 20th century the struggle against the concepts of continuation and even intensification continued. Instead of this category, most philosophers introduce concepts like "matter", "life", "spirit", etc. Positivists tried to replace ontology (and metaphysics) with specific sciences, and New Cantians replaced them with either science theory or value theory. E. Husserl, for example, considered pure consciousness, in which all other elements of being are rooted, to be the original category.
The main objections to the concept of "being" were as follows:
1) This category is not specific and does not characterize the properties of things;
2) This category can be completely replaced by terms such as "existence", "being", "substance", etc..
Why does the problem of being become important in every decisive epoch and what can it bring to the modern world? Let us first consider the arguments aimed at denying the problem of being or its transformation.
Over the last three centuries, many philosophers have argued that "being" is an unspecific concept and therefore detrimental to modern science. Representatives of the exact sciences claim is over.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, and over a longer period of time, it was often said that philosophy was no longer needed and that science would be able to explain in the near future all the complex questions related to man and society. But the end of the twentieth century brought with it completely different concepts and trends and aroused interest in religions, the irrational, mystical oils.
Recently, the most fashionable trend is to replace being with being not as a deeper level of the universe.
In the new age, the concept of substance appears - something single that produces a multitude of things and phenomena and to which everything returns after destruction. Substance is material (length) and ideal (thinking). According to the general orientation of a certain philosophical concept, one (monism), two (dualism) or many (pluralism) are distinguished. If one considers one substance as the basis for everything that produces another, such a position is called monism, which can be materialistic and idealistic.
Dualism - two substances exist independently and forever (Descartes). Pluralism is a multiplicity of substances, they are independent of each other, but from their interlocking, combinations things, objects, structures of consciousness emerge.
In the history of philosophy, the substance has been interpreted in different ways: as substrate, as concrete individuality, as essential property, as something capable of independent existence, as basis and center of changes in the subject, as logical subject.
The concept of matter, its world view and methodical meaning. Matter (according to Lenin) is a philosophical category to describe the objective reality that is given to man in his feelings, that copies, photographs, reflects and exists independently of him.
There are 2 main characteristics here:
1) Matter exists independently of consciousness;
2) is copied, photographed and represented by sensations. Thus, this definition appears as a concise formulation of the materialistic solution to the fundamental question of philosophy.