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the system of aristotle
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factual (e.g. Pegasus vs. Bucephalus), and that between the extant and the defunct
(e.g. the Great Pyramid vs. the Colossus of Rhodes). In different places, Aristotle
treats of all three problems. He deals with the problem about abstractions when
he discusses accidents: they are all modifications of substance. Any statement
about abstractions (such as colours, actions, changes) must be analysable into one
about concrete first substances. He deals with the problem about fictions by intro-
ducing a sense of ‘is’ in which it means ‘is true’: a fiction is a genuine thought,
but it is not, i.e. is not true. The problem about the extant and the defunct,
problems about things which come into existence and go out of existence, are
solved by the application of the doctrine of matter and form. To exist, in this
sense, is to be matter under a certain form, it is to be a thing of a certain kind:
Socrates ceases to exist if he ceases to be a human being. Being, for Aristotle,
includes anything that exists in any of these ways.
If that is what Being is, what then is Being qua Being? The answer is that there
is no such thing. Certainly, you can study Being qua being, and you can look for
causes of Being qua being. But this is to engage in a special sort of study, to look
for a special sort of cause. It is not to study a special kind of Being, or to look for
the causes of a special kind of Being. Aristotle more than once insisted that ‘An
A qua F is G’ must be regarded as consisting of a subject A, and a predicate ‘is,
qua F, G’. It should not be regarded as consisting of a predicate ‘is G’ which
is attached to a subject An-A-qua-F. One example he gives is that ‘A good can
be known as good’ should not be analysed as ‘a good as good can be known’,
because ‘a good as good’ is nonsense.
But if ‘A qua F’ is a pseudo-subject in ‘An A qua F is G’, equally, ‘A qua F’ is
a pseudo-object in ‘We study A qua F’. The object of that sentence is A, and the
verb is ‘study qua F’. We are talking, not of the study of a special kind of object,
but of a special kind of study, a study which looks for special kinds of explanation
and causes, causes qua F. For instance, when we do human physiology, we study
men qua animals, that is to say, we study the structures and functions which
humans have in common with animals. There is no object which is a man qua
animal, and it would be foolish to ask whether all men, or only some specially
brutish men, are men qua animals. It is equally foolish to ask whether Being qua
Being means all beings or only some specially divine beings.
However, you can study any being from the particular point of view of being,
that is you can study it in virtue of what it has in common with all other beings.
That, one might think, is surely very little: and indeed Aristotle himself says that
nothing has being as its essence or nature: there is nothing which is just a being
and nothing else. But to study something as a being is to study something about
which true predications can be made, precisely from the point of view of the
possibility of making true predications of it. Aristotle’s first philosopher is not
making a study of some particular kind of being; he is studying everything, the
whole of Being, precisely as such.
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