Aristotle on Metaphysics(2004) - Bibotu.com

ARISTOTLE’S METHOD IN METAPHYSICS 793The list of aporiai and how they structure theMetaphysicsBook III opens with <strong>Aristotle</strong>’s reflections on the method which he wantsto adopt in metaphysics: the aporia-based method. But does he live up tothese methodological reflections ? Apparently it is his intention to conductthe search for the nature of being in an aporia-based way. For heimmediately goes on to provide a list of some fifteen aporiai which it is hisaim to engage with and eventually to answer, and we will see that theseaporiai in a radical way inform the structure of the Metaphysics. But beforewe review the individual aporiai, first some general comments on theaporiai and on how they serve to structure the Metaphysics.It is striking that all the fifteen aporiai are dilemmatic in structure, i.e.they are two-sided questions of the form: whether such and such or suchand such (poteron…ē…). This contrasts with the overall question, ‘Whatis being?’, which is not dilemmatic and so perhaps is not itself strictly anaporia—although of course it is supposed to be closely associated withaporiai. Why does <strong>Aristotle</strong> think that fundamental questions ofmetaphysics take the form of dilemmas? Part of the answer appears to bethat presenting metaphysical questions in the form of dilemmas will helpto motivate and to direct the search for an answer (see §1 of this chapter).But perhaps there is also a deeper reason why <strong>Aristotle</strong> thinks thatmetaphysical questions take the form of two-sided aporiai. For he thinksthat questions as general and fundamental as the question ‘What is being?’,or indeed any question of metaphysics or even philosophy in general, bytheir very nature pull us in apparently opposite directions when we try toanswer them; and they do so not because of confusion or ignorance on ourpart, but because different and apparently conflicting answers genuinelyhave reason behind them (see this chapter, §2). So an adequate attempt toanswer such questions must work itself through apparently conflictinganswers, rather than look directly for an answer that will be evident andindisputable to any right-thinking person.Another striking feature of the list of fifteen aporiai is that it dividesnaturally into two sets of aporiai: on the one hand, aporiai aboutmetaphysics, its nature and its possibility (see aporiai 1–4, and 7), and onthe other hand, particular aporiai within metaphysics. As an example ofthe former kind of aporia, we may emphasize especially the third aporia,which raises the radical question: is it the task of a single investigation toinvestigate all being or is it simply the task of fundamentally differentinvestigations to investigate different kinds of beings? This question is