Becoming (philosophy)

Becoming is a basic concept of dialectics that describes the processual nature of the world, the emergence and decay of essences, things and states. In contrast to change, becoming describes an event that develops from itself. Starting from this concept, philosophical thinking attempts to interpret processuality and changeability.

The word “becoming” is a substantive verb. The concept of becoming is a fundamental category of metaphysics. While the opposite term “being” in the absolute sense refers to a permanence, a stability in time, becoming refers to a progressive change of what sometimes is not and then is again, through a change in its attributes.