Being Jim Davis

1. "Being" is the most "universal" concept: to on esti katholou malista panton. Illud quod primo cadit sub apprehensione est ens, cuius intellectus includitur in omnibus, quaecumque quis apprehendit. "An understanding of being is always already contained in everything we apprehend in beings." But the "universality" of "being" is not that of genus. "Being" does not delimit the highest region of beings so far as they are conceptually articulated according to genus and species: oute to on genos ["Being is not a genus"]. The "universality" of being "surpasses" the universality of genus. According to the designation of medieval ontology, "being" is a trancendens. Aristotle himself understood the unity of this transcendental "universal," as opposed to the manifold of the highest generic concepts with material content, as the unity of analogy. Despite his dependence upon Plato's ontological position, Aristotle placed the problem of being on a fundamentally new basis with this discovery. To b