Aristotle on Metaphysics(2004) - Bibotu.com

ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS 3apparent to us and present to us, they are all around us and make up theworld which we inhabit. It is of such familiar things that he thinks that wemay want to ask ‘What is it for something to be?’: humans, plants, animals,which we encounter around us; the sun, the moon and other planets,which we see in the sky and which are central to our conception of motion,time and space; even the whole universe which appears to us to be madeup of all these things. Of course, once we ask ‘What is it for something tobe?’ of such familiar things, we may go on to ask this question also ofthings that are not directly apparent or present to us, but in whoseexistence we believe on other grounds. But this is a second step, and wemust begin with the beings with which we are already familiar.But it is important to recognize that when <strong>Aristotle</strong> asks, ‘What isbeing?’, he intends this question to be understood in a particular way. For,as he understands it, this is not primarily the question, ‘What is there?’; itis above all the question, ‘What is it for something to be?’ The question‘What is there?’ asks for a complete general description of what there is; wemay say that it asks for the extension of being. But the question, ‘What is itfor something to be?’, asks of anything that is, what it is for that thing tobe. It asks for an explanation of why something that is is, or in virtue ofwhat something that is is. We may say that this question asks for theessence of being, and for an explanatory account of the essence of being.<strong>Aristotle</strong> says (e.g. at the opening of book IV) that he wants to investigate‘being qua being’, by which he means that he wants to investigate beings,and to investigate them simply in so far as they are beings, things that are.But this is precisely to investigate what it is for something to be—the essenceof being. So metaphysics, as <strong>Aristotle</strong> understands it, is not so much thesearch for a complete and general description of what there is; it is aboveall the search for an explanation of why something that is is, or in virtue ofwhat something that is is.From the very beginning of the Metaphysics (in book I, chapter 2) <strong>Aristotle</strong>characterizes metaphysics, or what at this stage he calls ‘wisdom’ (sophia), asa search for explanations (aitiai, which can also be translated as ‘causes’)and explanatory knowledge (epistēmē), i.e. knowledge why something is asit is. This kind of knowledge we may call ‘scientific knowledge’ and‘science’; and <strong>Aristotle</strong> repeatedly speaks of metaphysics as a search for suchknowledge (epistēmē). In particular, he says that metaphysics is the mostfundamental science (prōtē epistēmē, see VI. 1, 1026 a 29), for it is thesearch for the most fundamental explanations. These explanations he calls‘first explanations’ and ‘first principles’ (prōtai aitiai, prōtai archai); and hesays that they are explanations of all beings (panta) and of everything there