Episode 327 - Friday, May 11, 1979

2. The concept of "being" is indefinable. This conclusion was drawn from its highest universality. And correctly so--if definitio fit per genus proximum et differentiam specificam [if "definition is achieved through the proximate genus and the specific difference"]. Indeed, "being" cannot be understood as a being. Enti non additur aliqua natura: "Being" cannot be defined by attributing beings to it. Being cannot be derived from higher concepts by way of definition and cannot be represented by lower ones. But does it follow from this that "being" can no longer constitute a problem? Not at all. We can conclude only that "being" is not something like a being. Thus the manner of definition of beings which has its justification within limits--the "definition" of traditional logic which is itself rooted in ancient ontology--cannot be applied to being. The indefinability of being does not dispense with the question of its meaning but forces it upon us.

Martin Heidegger, "The Necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of Being," from Being and Time, 1927. Trans. Joan Stambaugh.

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