Êtres

Êtres is the plural of être in French and is used in philosophy to denote beings or existents—everything that has being. In this sense, the term covers living creatures, inanimate objects, and, in some theories, abstract entities such as numbers or propositions. The notion of êtres underpins discussions in ontology and metaphysics by asking what exists and in what way.

The word derives from Latin esse, to be, and from ens, entis, the noun form meaning “being.” In French, être evolved from Old French estre, with êtres forming the plural by standard pluralization and the circumflex over the first e.

In philosophical usage, êtres are contrasted with processes or events and with non-existent hypothesized entities. The term serves as a generic label for whatever has reality or presence in a given framework. Traditions vary in how they classify êtres, for example by animate versus inanimate, contingent versus necessary, or actual versus possible. Some theories treat the set of êtres as diverse but related by a common mode of being.

Historically, l’être and les êtres appear across medieval and modern philosophy. Medieval writers distinguished beings created by God from the Creator, while modern ontology asks what it means for an être to be and how beings relate to their essence. In phenomenology and existentialism, attention shifts toward the conditions that make beings intelligible or meaningful to consciousness.

See also: Existence, Ontology, Being