Defining what it means to exist as a human being has never been straightforward. Some define the meaning of a human existence as a gift from God, others as a biological product of millions of years of evolution. What ‘being’ is,however, is no easy question. It may be a state, a state of consciousness, a state of bodily function, or a state which is primarily to do with the soul. It may be, though, that being is an action, rather than a state, something is achieved through doing, and may only be attained by a few, rather than many. Anything that exists can be said to have ‘being’, but what human ‘being’ consists of is a hazy concept.
Hegel distinguished between the being of objects and being as human, but concluded that attaining any meaning from ‘being’ is difficult since it lacks a predicate (‘I am’ without a predicate means very little, if anything at all). Being may in fact be just as meaningless a term to us as non-being, even if we exist, because it is so intangible to define it-it is so subjective. Although we have a concept of what non-being might be like, we really have no experience or tangible idea of what it is or what it consists of. Being for humans may be defined as consciousness or sentience, yet this comes with a bundle of moral dilemmas and problems. Being cannot be clearly defined, since being may either something very simple or something very complex, so complex that it is subjective.
What it means ‘to be’ cannot be easily defined, and being without a context may in fact be a meaningless term.