Concept in Definition ABC

The concept of becoming has different meanings. First of all, it is synonymous with becoming something or becoming and is used as a cultism (for example, his greatest wish was to become a NASA scientist). On the other hand, becoming is equivalent to happening or happening and is related to the passage of time and its consequences (the course of events led him to resign from his position as a politician). Finally, becoming is a concept of the philosophy.

Becoming as a philosophical problem

The idea of ​​becoming refers to the process by which something becomes something else. In this sense, in metaphysics what does not change is known as being and, in contrast, there is the changing, that is, what becomes something else. This implies that becoming as an idea expresses the different ways of becoming something.

In philosophy we speak of the problem of becoming, which is equivalent to the problem of change. In other words, from philosophy an explanation has been sought that allows us to understand why things change, which has sometimes been called as

beginning change.

The Ionian philosophers considered that it was necessary to understand what remains within what is changing, what becomes. The Pythagoreans understood that the changing and diverse of becoming is expressible through the math. Heraclitus identified reality with becoming, since everything changes and nothing remains.

Instead, Parmenides said that change is apparent, since the idea of ​​being rationally implies the absence of change (if something stops being logically it is not and what it is not is meaningless). The problem of becoming as a philosophical question has traversed the history of thought from the Greeks to the present.

Today the problem of becoming continues to be debated. There are philosophers who argue that understanding becoming is equivalent to understanding life itself. In this sense, everything human is transformed and changed, which means that everything is subject to becoming: human existence, history, language, culture or ideas.

We could say that there are two dimensions of becoming, one dimension material (physical changes that affect an individual) and a spiritual dimension (for example, internal changes of a mental or intellectual nature). In some way, the human being cannot ignore the problem of becoming, since all reality is related to the notion of time.

Becoming and dialectic

The idea of ​​becoming philosophy has a direct relationship with the idea of dialectics, a key concept in the history of thought. Becoming and dialectic are ideas that allow us to understand the changes and transformations that affect humans (for example, the understanding dialectic of history).

Photos: iStock - choja / poba

Themes in Becoming