Aristotle on Metaphysics(2004) - Bibotu.com

114 BEING QUA BEING AND PRIMARY BEINGwhat is said (being human, or his being human) and that of which it is said(Socrates) are two things, not one. To see this, we may consider a sentencesuch as This (pointing to an infant) is my daughter’. Our aim in usingsuch a sentence is evidently not to say that one thing (‘my daughter’) istrue of another thing (‘this’); it is rather, we may suppose, to specify morefully (‘my daughter’) something that one has referred to and is alreadyfamiliar with (‘this’). But perhaps we may suppose that this is also afunction of a sentence such as ‘Socrates is human’: to specify more fully (‘ahuman thing’) something that one has referred to and is already familiarwith (‘Socrates’). But in that case this sentence will not express a relationbetween two things: Socrates and a human thing, just as the sentence ‘thisis my daughter’ does not express a relation between two things. So wecannot argue that because being human (or his being human) is truly saidof Socrates, therefore one thing, being human (or his being human), ispredicated of another thing, Socrates. Of course, when we know theessence of a thing, we know more about the thing than before we know itsessence. But this does not show that what we know when we know theessence of a thing is something other than the thing itself; all it shows isthat when we know the essence of a thing, we know the thing itself morefully and more properly than before.Let us above all recall what <strong>Aristotle</strong> means by ‘the essence’ of a thing (toti estin, to ti ēn einai): the essence of a thing is that which is true of thething in virtue of the thing’s being the very thing that it is. This mayalready suggest that the relation between a thing and its essence is not arelation between two things, but rather a fundamental relation between athing and itself. It is true that the relation between a thing and the generalkind to which it belongs is a relation between two things, one being trueof another; for example, Socrates is one thing, and being human— thegeneral kind to which he belongs—another; and being human is true ofSocrates. But we must not suppose that the essence of a thing simply is thegeneral kind to which the thing belongs; all that we may suppose is thatthe essence of a thing determines the general kind to which the thingbelongs. In Chapter 7(especially §5viii–ix) we will ask: which view does<strong>Aristotle</strong> ultimately defend:(1) the view that the essence of a thing simply is the general kind to whichthe thing belongs; or(2) the view that the essence of a thing determines the general kind towhich the thing belongs, but without the essence being itself a generalkind?