Aristotle on Metaphysics(2004) - Bibotu.com

THE SEARCH FOR PRIMARY BEING 193primary being, i.e. something that is a being simply in virtue of itself, or tobe a non-primary being, i.e. something that is a being in virtue of itsrelation to a primary being (see also this chapter, §4).So the central question in the central books of the Metaphysics is, ‘Whatis primary being (ousia)?’ And addressing this question serves above all toaddress the basic question of metaphysics, ‘What is being?’ It is interestingto note (both from the passage at the end of VII. 1 and especially fromwhat he says in VII. 2) that <strong>Aristotle</strong> thinks that different thinkers arguefor very different answers to just this question: ‘What is primary being?’ Forexample, materialists argue that it is above all the basic material elementsof physical bodies, such as the elements fire, water and earth, that areprimary beings (see VII. 2, 1028 b 8f.). But Plato and the Platonists arguethat what is primary being above all is certain everlasting beings that aredistinct from (para) the sense-perceptible and physical things; i.e. theyargue that the forms (eidē) are the primary beings (see 1028 b 18f.). This,we may note, is nicely summed up also at the beginning of book XII:The present-day thinkers hold that the universals are more properlyprimary beings…. But the past thinkers hold that the particulars aremore properly primary beings, such as fire and earth, but not what iscommon to both, i.e. body.(XII. 1, 1069 a 26–30)So <strong>Aristotle</strong> thinks that just as he shares the basic question, ‘What isbeing?’, with other thinkers, so the question, ‘What is primary being?’, is ashared one. His view here, apparently, is that other thinkers, too, want toexplain in virtue of what something, anything, is a being, and that they,too, argue that this explanation will take the following form: for somethingto be a being is for it either to be something that is a being simply in virtueof itself or to be something that is a being in virtue of its relation to aprimary being. Platonists, for example, argue that the forms are beingssimply in virtue of themselves (auta kath’ hauta, which is Plato’s standardphrase for the forms) whereas sense-perceptible things are beings only invirtue of their relation to the forms —the relation to which he variouslyrefers as ‘participation’ and ‘communion’ (see, for example, Phaedo 100d).But materialists argue that the basic material elements of physical bodies,such as the elements fire, water and earth, are beings simply in virtue ofthemselves, whereas the physical bodies that are composed out of theseelements are beings only in virtue of their relation to the elements in them,i.e. the relation of physical composition.