Aristotle on Metaphysics(2004) - Bibotu.com

THE SEARCH FOR PRIMARY BEING 201being is separate from non-primary being in just this sense: it does notdepend for its being a being on its relation to anything else (i.e. to nonprimarybeing). And non-primary being is not separate from primary beingin just this sense: it depends for its being a being on its relation to primarybeing. This, we recall, is the fundamental distinction between primarybeings and non-primary being as introduced already in book IV. 2: forsomething to be a primary being is for it to be a being simply in virtue ofitself (kath’ hauto) and not in virtue of its relation to other things; and forsomething to be a non-primary being is for it to be a being only in virtue ofits relation to other things (pros ti). So the claim that primary being isseparate being (in VII. 1) does not introduce a new idea; it simply serves tocapture the original characterization of the very notion of primary being.It is crucial to recognize also what kind of separation <strong>Aristotle</strong> does nothave in mind when he says that primary being is separate being. This iscrucial especially because, in his criticism of Plato in particular, he tends touse the term ‘separate’ in a different sense or senses.First, when he says that primary being is separate from non-primarybeing, he does not mean that primary beings and non-primary beings aredistinct from one another, e.g. that they exist in different places. Here wemay also note that the notion of distinctness is symmetrical: if x is distinctfrom y, then y is distinct from x. But the notion of primary being is,precisely, asymmetrical: primary being is separate from non-primary being,but non-primary being is, precisely, not separate from primary being. Werecall that when he initially (here, in VII. 1) set out to make plausible thetwo suggestions and candidates for primary being, i.e. the essence and theultimate subject of predication, he said that a primary being is, forexample, a human being, i.e. the ultimate subject and the particular; or itis what it is to be human, i.e. the essence of the ultimate subject and of theparticular. And he set these primary beings against, for example, being pale,or five foot tall, or healthy, or walking or sitting, etc, which are each ofthem non-primary beings. But evidently he does not think that a humanbeing, or what it is to be human, on the one hand, and being pale, fivefoot tall, etc, on the other hand, are two sets of distinct things, e.g. thingsthat exist in different places. This is evident from his examples, butespecially from his criticism of Plato’s view that universals are distinct fromsense-perceptible and in general changing particulars. Being pale, forexample, is a universal, since it is true of other things and many things; anda human being is a sense-perceptible and changing particular. In general,<strong>Aristotle</strong> tends to use the word para (‘in addition to’, ‘besides’) when hewants to consider whether two things are distinct from one another. Whenthis is his concern, he will generally ask whether the one thing exists ‘in