Aristotle on Metaphysics(2004) - Bibotu.com

202 THE SEARCH FOR PRIMARY BEINGaddition to’ or ‘besides’ (para) the other. But he criticizes Plato forthinking that universals are distinct from sense-perceptible and in generalchanging particulars (see Chapter 9, especially §4).Second, when he says that primary being is separate from non-primarybeing, he does not mean that a primary being can exist without nonprimarybeings existing in relation to it. None of the candidates forprimary being that he mentions (e.g. in VII. 1–2), whether they are hisown or those that he attributes to other thinkers, imply that a primarybeing can exist without a non-primary being existing in relation to it.Consider, for example, a particular human being, or its essence, i.e.<strong>Aristotle</strong>’s own preferred candidates for primary being. Evidently theycannot exist without non-primary beings, such as being pale, healthy, etc,being true of them and so existing in relation to them. In particular, itdoes not follow from the claim that a particular human being, or itsessence, are primary beings, i.e. that they are beings simply in virtue ofthemselves and not in virtue of their relation to other things, e.g. to thingssuch as being pale, healthy, etc., that they can exist without such things asbeing pale, healthy, etc, also existing in relation to them and being true ofthem.Or consider the materialists’ candidate for primary being, i.e. thematerial elements of things, e.g. the elements fire, earth or water, fromwhich all things are composed. One may think that all other things arebeings because they are composed of the material elements, but also at thesame time think that the elements can exist only as part of compoundmaterial things that are composed out of them.Or consider the Platonic candidate for primary being, i.e. the universals.One may think that the universals are the primary beings; and one maythink that this is because the particulars are, in virtue of themselves,completely indeterminate and depend, for their determination, on theirrelation to the universals. (See §3 of this chapter for this point.) But one mayat the same time think that universals cannot exist without being true ofparticulars—they cannot exist without being instantiated in particulars. Soone may, without contradiction, think both that the universals are theprimary beings and that they cannot exist without particulars also existingin relation to them. Here we need to remember that, on this view, theparticulars are non-primary beings, since they depend on universals fortheir determination. It is true that, as <strong>Aristotle</strong> understands him, Platothinks that universals can exist separately from particulars, in the sense of‘separate’ in which this means that universals can exist without being trueof particulars, hence without particulars existing in relation to them. Butthis is not, we should note, simply a consequence of Plato’s thinking that