Aristotle on Metaphysics(2004) - Bibotu.com

82 ARISTOTLE’S METHOD IN METAPHYSICSdistinctive solution to this aporia: we may suppose that there is such athing as the nature of being in general and as a whole, provided that wecan draw a distinction between primary being (prōtē ousia, often simplyousia) and non-primary being; for then we can determine being as a wholeby reference to this focal point— primary being. (We will consider thisline of argument, and the aporia behind it, at length in Chapter 4§1–3.)But this of course raises the question, ‘What is primary being?’ And this isprecisely the question that he takes up, and pursues relentlessly, in books VII-IX, and to which eventually he offers a solution. So the question, ‘What isthe nature of being?’, which is the basic question of metaphysics, gives riseto an aporia: does being, in general and as opposed to the different kindsof beings, have a nature? And it is as part of the attempt to answer thisaporia that <strong>Aristotle</strong> introduces what is the absolutely central notion in theMetaphysics, the notion of primary being (prōtē ousia, often simply ousia).So when he goes on to search for an answer, and eventually to offer ananswer, to the question, ‘What is being?’, he does so by focusing on thequestion, ‘What is primary being?’; and this question is rooted in an aporia.In this precise and radical sense the Metaphysics is structured according tocertain fundamental aporiai. But we will also see that it is by workingthrough particular aporiai about being and, in particular, primary beingthat he tries to answer these two fundamental questions of metaphysics,‘What is being?’ and ‘What is primary being?’In general, we will have to look out for two things in order to determinewhether <strong>Aristotle</strong>’s procedure is in fact aporia-based. First, the aporiaimust be independent of the answers that he gives to them. That is to say,we must be able to appreciate how one can seriously ask these questionswithout already being familiar with <strong>Aristotle</strong>’s answers. In other words,<strong>Aristotle</strong>’s questions must not be tailored to fit his answers.Second, the answers must also in an important sense be independent ofthe questions. Of course, if the Metaphysics is structured according to theseaporiai, we need to understand the aporiai in order to understand theanswers to them. But we must also bear in mind that the overall aim of theMetaphysics is not simply to answer a set of aporiai, but to answer the basicquestion, ‘What is being?’ So answering the aporiai must be a means toanswering this overall question. This is also why the Metaphysics providesnot simply fifteen separate answers to fifteen different questions, but aboveall a single answer to a single basic question, ‘What is being?’ In otherwords, the answers to the different aporiai are intended to add up to asingle unitary theory about the nature of being. In this sense, the answers areindependent of the questions.