Likewise, the term being refers us to the essence and nature that that being holds, for example, the being of any animal will be subsistence on the one hand and reproduction on the other.
The term being is generally used to refer to those things that were created and that are endowed with life, human beings and animals are considered beings, because when we talk about being we immediately know that we are talking about something that is, that has life and own existence.
Meanwhile, being has a special presence in a philosophical context and therefore, within philosophy, it has been through the centuries a question widely debated and addressed by most philosophers and thinkers of all times and of course it has also been subject to a diversity of approaches.
Traditionally and as we mentioned at the beginning of this review, the term being has been conceived as a synonym of entity or entity, that is, the same as saying a thing that has existence and autonomy. But if we delve into the thought of those great philosophers like Aristotle or Plato, we find certain and serious contradictions regarding the concept of being.
Because for Plato, for example, being is the idea, however, for Parmenides being is what there is or exists, that which opposes nothingness and for Aristotle, who expanded a little more what Parmenides proposed, taking up a little the meaning that this gave to the term, being is the most intimate of everything that is or exists, because according to him not everything is the same way.
From these philosophical contradictions emerged two conceptions, of course dissimilar, on the term.
On the one hand the univocal conception of being which maintains that being is the most general characteristic of different things, that is, all particular considerations are eliminated, leaving and importing the fact that they are, that it corresponds to them to be.
And on the other hand, the analogical conception of being, argues that being is what can be attributed to everything that is but in different ways, being is what different objects and things are distinguished but also coincide. For this, the opposite of the concept of being will be nothing.
