It might sound like a silly question, but I am just asking for interests
sake... I already understand how to use them in which situation.

If you were to say 田中さんは先生でいます, it would mean that Tanaka exists "by means of"
a or the teacher(sensei), ie. "as a teacher." Thereby, it is 田中 doing the
existing.

So I wonder.. who or what is doing the ある'ing in であります?

Is it sort of like 感じがする, where it is not the person that is feeling
something, but rather the feeling that is doing something?

In other words and to rephrase my question, is it like as if Tanaka's reality
exists in a way that he is a teacher(sensei)?

Is there some sort of historical story that gave way to the difference between
いる and ある?
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word-choice etymology
であります compared to でいます
Formerly, ある could with persons or living beings as well.

> 「昔、男ありけり」 (from 伊勢物語5; 全訳古語辞典 gives the meaning 昔、ある男がいたという).

It can even be used with persons today.

> そうしないではいられない人がある。

[A paper on ある vs. いる in (modern) Japanese, where I also took the above
sentence
from.](http://taweb.aichi-u.ac.jp/tgoken/bulletin/pdfs/NO22/03Yamamoto.indd.pdf)

* * *

There have been many copulas throughout Japan's history, such as なり(に+あり),
たり(と+あり) and で+ある as well as で+ございます. Note how they are all made up of
particle+ある and could be interpreted as "to exist as".

(彼は)先生である, by established usage, means "He is a teacher", a native speaker
would not interpret it literally. Has a sentence with a copula such as "A is
B" got a subject? The grammatical (or syntactical) subject is "A", of course,
but there is no real action going on here, and so there is no semantic
(meaning-wise) subject.

You can of course talk about its etymology "He exists as a teacher.", and here
he is doing the existing, as a teacher.

で居る, on the other hand, is not a standard copula, and is interpreted
literally.

> 「笑顔で居ると幸せな気持ちになれる」 (lit. "You will/can feel happy when you exist with a
> smiling face", ie "Smile and you will feel happy.")

Before I get to 先生でいる, the 広辞苑 gives this helpful insight on 居る:

> 動くものが一つの場所に存在する意。現代語では動くと意識したものが存在する意で用い、意識しないものが存在する意の「ある」と使い分ける。

[It once meant 座る, とまる or 住む as
well.](http://kobun.weblio.jp/content/%E5%B1%85%E3%82%8B)

先生である focuses as something (or someone) being (defined as) a teacher. On the
other hand,

> 「元気な先生」でいるために、皆さんは…

focuses on acting as or like a teacher.

* * *

As for 感じがする, it is again important to distinguish between syntactical and
semantic subject. It might prove to be of interest to inquire the etymology of
this idiom, what the people were originally thinking (about) when they said
this. I can imagine that, as a metaphor, they really ascribed an active role
to their feelings, similar to English "my emotions are over-whelming me."
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answer