Being and its Primary Determinations (2)

In section (e) of Coffey’s Being and its Primary Determinations, Coffey explains that “being” is the “most abstract of all notions, poorest in intension as it is widest in extension.” (Being and its Primary Determinations, ch. 1, p. 48) Certainly “being” is not just an abstract concept that does not maintain concrete existence. For as Coffey explains throughout sections (a), (b), (c) and (d), "being" certainly maintains concrete existence in some degree. Nonetheless, I take Coffey to mean that “being”, understood as abstract, is considered in one’s mind independent from other objects of thought. It is in this sense, where "being" is understood as the most abstract of all notions, that Coffey implies that being is the greatest concept of consideration. 

Still, as Coffey later explains, “being” lacks exhaustive depth insofar as one attempts to distinctively define “being”. Likewise, “being” remains kept as continual, inhering within all things in the broadest sense, as it is positively predicated of all things.

Nevertheless, the concept of “being” is derived from our, either collective or particular, experience, while this process of derivation is arrived at by method of abstraction. Thusly, in reference to abstraction, Coffey explains that the differences which distinguish one object from another are not strictly considered as differences. Rather, such differences aren't taken into consideration but are abstracted from mentally. For what is of utmost importance is not the difference between two objects as they exist in relation to one another but rather what is universal to all being, irrespective of its particular mode.

From this, Coffey concludes: “This common element forms the explicit content of our notion of being.” (Being and its Primary Determinations, ch. 1, p. 48)