Aristotle on Metaphysics(2004) - Bibotu.com

302 CRITICISM OF PLATO’S THEORY OF FORMSThis passage is extremely important, because it indicates that <strong>Aristotle</strong> seesPlato and himself as engaged in a shared project—the project of searchingfor primary being (ousia). And he thinks that there is a shared notion ofprimary being, which is in general the notion of separate being (seeChapter 7§4). But the passage also introduces an important question ofinterpretation, namely what <strong>Aristotle</strong> means by ‘separate’ (chōriston),‘separately’ (chōris), ‘to separate’ (chōrizein), and ‘separation’ (chōrismos).For when he criticizes Plato and the Platonists for conceiving of forms asseparate, i.e. as separate from changing things, he is criticizing the viewthat essences are distinct from changing things. So he is using the term‘separate from’ to mean ‘distinct from’. We will see that often he uses theterm ‘besides’ or ‘over and above’ (para) to indicate separation in the senseof distinctness. But here (in the passage just quoted) he is, on the contrary,commending Plato and the Platonists for conceiving of forms as separate.For he says that it is correct to think of forms as separate, if indeed (eiper)one conceives of them as primary beings (ousiai). In other words, he saysthat if primary being were indeed the forms, which is the view of Plato andthe Platonists but not the view of <strong>Aristotle</strong>, then it would be correct tothink of the forms as separate; for it is part of the very notion of primarybeing that primary being is separate being. So apparently he is using theterm ‘separate’ here not to mean ‘distinct’, but to mean that primary being(ousia), on the shared notion of primary being, is, precisely, separate being.We saw earlier that when <strong>Aristotle</strong> in general characterizes primary beingas separate being, he means that a primary being is a being, something thatis, simply in virtue of itself and not in virtue of its relation to other things(see Chapter 7§4). We will return to the issue of separation, and differenttypes of separation, later (see §4 of this chapter).In a different place in which he is talking about Plato and the Platonists,he says:The reason why those who say that ousiai [primary beings] areuniversals combined these two views [i.e. the view that ousiai areuniversals and that they are separate] is that they did not make them[the ousiai] identical with the sense-perceptible things [tas autas toisaisthētois],(XIII. 9, 1086 a 35–37)This passage again indicates that <strong>Aristotle</strong> thinks of Plato and thePlatonists as addressing, like himself, the question, ‘What is primary being(ousia)?’ But it also indicates a central difference in their answers to thisquestion. For Plato and the Platonists do not, unlike <strong>Aristotle</strong>, think that