Aristotle on Metaphysics(2004) - Bibotu.com

192 THE SEARCH FOR PRIMARY BEINGThe aim of <strong>Aristotle</strong>’s distinctive answer to this aporia is to show that wecan ask the basic question of metaphysics, ‘What is being?’, only if we doso by asking, ‘What is primary being?’ In other words, if we are at all tosearch for an answer to the question: ‘What is being?’ and ‘What is it forsomething, anything, to be?’, we must from the start suppose that theanswer must take the following form: for something to be a being,something that is, is for it either to be a primary being, i.e. something thatis a being simply in virtue of itself, or to be a non-primary being, i.e.something that is a being in virtue of its relation to a primary being. So ifwe are at all to ask the basic question of metaphysics, ‘What is being?’, wemust above all ask: ‘What is primary being?’ This is just what <strong>Aristotle</strong> saysat the end of VII. 1: ‘So we too [i.e. like other thinkers that have asked thebasic question, ‘What is being?’] must, most of all, primarily, and so tospeak exclusively, investigate about that which is being in this way [i.e.that which is being in the primary way]: what is it?’ (1028 b 6–7).So we see that <strong>Aristotle</strong>’s direct association here (in VII. 1) of the basicquestion of metaphysics, ‘What is being?’, with the peculiar question,‘What is primary being?’, is the consequence of his raising and answering,earlier in the Metaphysics, an aporia about the very notion, being, and thevery question, ‘What is being?’ We also see how the peculiar notion,primary being, is to be understood. In general, to be a primary being is to besomething that is a being simply in virtue of itself and not in virtue of itsrelation to other things, whereas to be a non-primary being is to besomething that is a being in virtue of its relation to a primary being. Inother words, to be a primary being is to be something that directly explainswhat it is for itself to be, i.e. for a primary being to be, and explainsindirectly also what it is for non-primary beings to be, i.e. things that arebeings in virtue of their relation to a primary being. In sum, this notion,primary being, is the notion: that which ultimately explains what it is forsomething, anything, to be. <strong>Aristotle</strong> will make explicit this characterizationof primary being at the end of book VII, when he says that ousia is the‘ultimate explanation of the being of each thing (prōton aition tou einai[hekastou])’ (VII. 17, 1041 b 27–28). But this is the notion of primary beingthat he is working with from the start of book VII, and indeed since IV. 2,when he says that to answer the question, ‘What is being?’, the basicquestion of metaphysics, is really to answer the question, ‘What is primarybeing?’ For to answer the question, ‘What is being?’, is to determine invirtue of what something, anything, is a being; i.e. to determine whatexplains why something, anything, is a being. But it has emerged that suchan explanation must crucially appeal to primary being, and it must takethe following form: for something to be a being is for it either to be a