Aristotle on Metaphysics(2004) - Bibotu.com

THE ULTIMATE CAUSE OF CHANGE: GOD 297in the first instance, about changing and material things—the things withwhich we are directly familiar from sense perception and experience. And<strong>Aristotle</strong> thinks that it is especially with regard to such things that it isdifficult to establish how they can be intelligible and subject to explanation.So the answer includes in particular anything that is required for changingand material things to be intelligible and subject to explanation. But inbook XII <strong>Aristotle</strong> goes on, naturally enough, to ask, ‘Why are the changing,material things intelligible and subject to explanation in the first place?’Still, if there is really to be a direct relation between the question inbook XII and the basic question in the Metaphysics, the question in book XIImust be understood to mean not only (1), ‘Why are there changing,material things whose change is intelligible and subject to explanation ?’ Itmust also be understood to mean (2), ‘What is it for a changing, materialthing to be intelligible and subject to explanation ?’ For only if thequestion is understood in this way can the answer to it be at once ananswer to the basic question in the Metaphysics, ‘What is it for something,anything, to be a being, something that is?’ So we must ask whether thequestion in book XII includes not only question 1, but also question 2.There is good reason to think that it does. We saw that the conception ofGod as a moving and generating cause (kinētikon, poiētikon) is associatedespecially with question 1 (see §10 of this chapter). But we recall that Godis a very peculiar moving and generating cause; for it does not move orgenerate by interacting with what it moves and generates. In particular,God moves and generates the rationally changing universe because therationally changing universe somehow imitates God—he moves as aparadigm (paradeigma). But what the rationally changing universe imitatesabout God is nothing but what God is—his essence, i.e. reason andrational activity. So God is not only a moving and generating cause; he is alsoa final and especially a formal cause. For he moves simply in virtue ofbeing the very thing he is, i.e. reason and rational activity (see §§6–8 ofthis chapter.) But this indicates that what God explains is not only whythere are changing, material things whose change is rational (i.e. theanswer to question 1); he also explains what it is for changing, materialthings to be things whose change is rational (i.e. the answer to question 2).So we may perhaps conclude that the promise made earlier in theMetaphysics (VI. 1), namely that theology, i.e. the science of divine beingand God, is precisely ontology, i.e. the science of all things and of what itis for something, anything, to be—this promise is kept in book XII.