Being

Works to read

• Theaetetus by Plato, c. 369 BC · Great Books
• The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, c. 340 BCE · Great Books
• The Epic of Gilgamesh by Anonymous (Babylonian; standard version attributed to Sin-leqi-unninni), c. 2100-1200 BC
• Fragments by Heraclitus, c. 500 BCE
• Deliverance from Error (The Confessions of al-Ghazali) by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, c. 1100
• A History of Philosophy, Vol. XI: Logical Positivism and Existentialism by Frederick Copleston, 1956
• A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene, 1960

Passages

From the texts

• For even that which is not yet is capable of being; for that which is not comes to be, but nothing that is incapable of being comes to be.

  — Aristotle, Metaphysics

Verified quotations

• He only earns his freedom and existence

  — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part Two

• Throughout their whole existence men are blind

  — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part Two

• Their ESSE is PERCIPI, nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them.

  — George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge

• The whole land of the Egyptians, whom we take to be the most ancient of men, has evidently gradually come into existence and been produced by the river

  — Aristotle, Meteorology

• The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.

  — James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

• the perfect accordance of the will with the moral law is holiness, a perfection of which no rational being of the sensible world is capable at any moment of his existence.

  — Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason

Passages are verified quotations from the library that use one of these words: being, existence, exist. Sentences under “From the texts” are copied word for word from the full texts in this library. Read each in its context on the work's page.