Presuppositions about Being

“At the beginning of our investigation it is not possible to give a detailed. . .

1) Being is the most universal concept

2) Being is indefinable.

3) Being is the most self-evident concept.

Being is not a universal, because it is a uniquely Indo-European concept. But of course Heidegger did not take that into account.

Being is paradoxical if not absurd. It is not so much that it has no definition as that it has so many definition from the many eras of the change in the meaning of Being.

Being is obscure but seems perhaps self-evident because we are constantly using it to say what something IS and we think we know what we are saying when we use the term.

Part of the problem is that Being is the highest concept in the Indo-European languages by which all others are defined. And because it is used to define all other terms its own definition is quickly put into question because we have to say “IS is IS.” Which seems a mere tautology.

The different kinds of Being come out of the realization that the recursion of the term Being leads to different meanings.

Heidegger’s point is that these presuppositions block our correctly formulating the question of the meaning of Being.