Aristotle on Metaphysics(2004) - Bibotu.com

194 THE SEARCH FOR PRIMARY BEINGSo <strong>Aristotle</strong> thinks that the question, ‘What is primary being?’, iscommon to very different thinkers, and that very different answers can bedefended in response to it. This has two important consequences. First, hedoes not immediately (in book VII) associate this question with any oneparticular answer. In particular, he does not associate it with his ownearlier answer—the one that he defended in the Categories, In theCategories he argued that primary being with regard to each thing is simplythe ultimate subject of predication (to hupokeimenon) with regard to thatthing; i.e. primary being is simply that of which other things are true butwhich is not itself true of other things. (See Chapter 4§4 for the theory ofthe Categories.) We will see shortly that here (in VII. 3) he will argue thatalthough being an ultimate subject of predication may be a necessarycondition of primary being, it is not a sufficient condition. At the openingof VII. 3 he will set out three very different candidates for primary being:the ultimate subject; the universals; and the essence. (We will considerthese candidates in a moment.) This also confirms that he does notimmediately associate the question, ‘What is primary being?’, with any oneparticular answer.Second, it is wrong to translate ousia as ‘substance’, or prōtē ousia as‘primary substance’. For the claim that prōtē ousia is substance is aparticular answer to the question, ‘What is prōtē ousia?’ It is not what theterm prōtē ousia means in the question, ‘What is prōtē ousia?’ The Latinterm substantia, which literally means ‘that which lies under’, translates<strong>Aristotle</strong>’s term to hupokeimenon, i.e. ‘that which lies under’ (fromhupokeisthai, ‘to lie under’). It is true that in his earlier work, theCategories, he argues that prōtē ousia is simply to hupokeimenon. But this isa particular view about what prōtē ousia is, i.e. a particular answer to thequestion, ‘What is prōtē ousia?’ It is not what the term prōtē ousia means orwhat the question ‘What is prōtē ousia?’ is asking. We have chosen to usethe term ‘primary being’ for prōtē ousia and in general for ousia.We have focused on how (at the beginning of books VII-IX, the centralbooks of the Metaphysics) <strong>Aristotle</strong> understands the question, ‘What isprimary being?’, and its relation to the basic question of metaphysics,‘What is being?’ But this has also indicated something of <strong>Aristotle</strong>’sdistinctive method in these central books of the Metaphysics. For it hassuggested that the method is dialectical and above all aporia-based. It isdialectical in so far as the search for an answer to the two central questionsof metaphysics, ‘What is being?’ and ‘What is primary being?’, is to beconducted by investigating very different and apparently conflictinganswers, answers that are, in one way or another, defended by differentthinkers. It is aporia-based at least in so far as the very question, ‘What is