Philosophy: Being and Reality

[Truthstalker]

Is there a difference between ultimate being and reality? Is there a difference between ultimate being and any other kind of being?

Woody Allen, I think, pointed out that if God is everywhere, then if you gain weight you are more full of God, so fat people are holier. How that relates to this thread I have no idea.

 

[stanmaxkolbe]

1. I’m not here.
2. Woody Allen? The guy that was committing adultery with his step-daughter, yeah that’s the guy quote from.

 

[Greg27]

I think it depends on what your intellectual approach to the problem is. Do you think the terms ‘Being’ and ‘Reality’ refer to the same underlying thing or substance? Or do you think both are encompassed in a higher principle or entity?

St Thomas held God was the highest reality, though God’s essence could be expressed in terms of ‘unconditioned’ or infinite Being. God’s essence is so rich all the names we could apply to God could be reduced to the ‘isness’ of his essence, while the ‘whatness’ of his essence could never be known as to what exactly it is.

Secular Philosophers today will often take the same approach except ‘reality’ is synonomous with the physical cosmos, since with the great progress of science in the past three centuries, many intellectuals in the West only believe sensible or intelligible reality can really only be reduced to the physical cosmos. Reality then is whatever reality science can uncover, and Being is a convertible term with the reality of the physical universe.

 

[cpayne]

Is there a difference between ultimate being and reality? Is there a difference between ultimate being and any other kind of being?

Woody Allen, I think, pointed out that if God is everywhere, then if you gain weight you are more full of God, so fat people are holier. How that relates to this thread I have no idea.

Easiest question first: Is there a difference between ultimate being and any other kind of being? Yes.