In this, the third aspect which Aristotle's metaphysics assumes, the accent is on the universality of the science. There are in philosophy certain notions that run through all its branches, the most common or universal notions, as they are called. For each branch to make a study of these notions would lead to fruitless as well as endless repetition. Yet they are too important to go unexamined; somewhere they must be submitted to careful analysis and interpretation. Logically as well as by general agreement this task falls to metaphysics, the science universal.
Historical Derivation of the Metaphysics of Being
Among the universal notions just referred to is that of being. In Aristotelian thought, however, this notion is not simply one of many; it is first and most fundamental, the one the intellect conceives before all others. What, it may be asked, moved Aristotle to accord the primacy to the notion of being? The question is not idle; it has to do with what is perhaps the most significant adoption in all his philosophy. And as with other positions adopted by Aristotle, this one too had had a considerable history in Greek thought; so that once again it is in the speculations of his predecessors that Aristotle finds the direction his own thought will take.
As far as can be determined, it was Parmenides who first realized the preeminent value of the notion of being. For a century or two before him Greek philosophical schools had concentrated on determining the primordial element, the ultimate substance of which the physical world could have been constituted. The answers were many and varied. Thales held for water, Anaximenes for air, Heraclitus for fire. Others, going beyond the appearances of things, made some progress toward a first element or principle that was not sense-perceptible, Anaximander, for example, thinking he had found it in what he called the "indeterminate" (apeiron), and Pythagoras in number.
Parmenides, next on the scene, was not detained by these surmisings. In his poem on nature, as a man sure of his ground, he goes straight to the mark, unerringly showing the way to being, which he deems the way to truth. Being, he says, is (esti)- or, perhaps more aptly, exists; moreover, being is all one, and undivided, and immobile (unchanging) yet corporeal, resembling a vast sphere. But, he continues, if being is, then nonbeing is the absolute opposite, an absolute nothing; in a word, it is not - where "not" means the utter negation of being.22 We may note that the Parmenidean doctrine of being, if pushed to the limit, would mean the suppression of real becoming and real multiplicity in the world; nevertheless, the first foundations of the metaphysics of being are here in the making.
Plato, while not ignoring the Parmenidean doctrine and the problems it raises, gave the quest of the first principle a different turn. In his view the ultimate explanation of a thing lay rather in its end, meaning its perfection or good. Thus the master Idea, the one that excels all others, is that of the Good, in which the science of dialectics,23 for him the science par excellence, finds its true light and inspiration. Yet even Plato, in the later Dialogues, gives some indication of having gone beyond this initial position of his. There, in effect, we find him arguing that something still higher than the Good is needed, which he identifies as the One, source of the many. The decisive step in this direction was not taken, however, until some six hundred years later when Plotinus, leaving no doubt as to his position, categorically declared the One the first principle, and its contemplation the highest knowledge. In Plato, then, and in his school, being is a secondary notion, overshadowed by both the Good and the One: by the Good because as end it offers, in this view, the higher explanation of things; by the One because, again in this view, it is a simpler notion, hence more basic and primary.
Aristotle, countering Plato's persuasion, stuck to the view that for the absolutely primary notion of things one had to go back to Parmenides, back to being; and furthermore, if in being lay the primary notion, in being lay also the proper object of the primary science metaphysics. This was no derogation to the Good and the One; for these notions, too, belong to every being and are both of them every bit as universal and scarcely less primary - transcendentals they are, even as being. Absolutely speaking, however, being (to on) is prior; a thing must be before it can be one or good. Metaphysics, accordingly, is essentially the science of being.24 more adequate terminology, its subject of inquiry - subjectum, as the Schoolmen understand it. With the proper object as the point of reference it is not difficult, and logically quite consistent, to integrate the two other conceptions (science of first causes, science of the separate) with the third (science of being). For, the study of an object and the study of its causes may well pertain to one and the same science. This granted, the science of being as being should also seek out its causes (first causes, hence science of first causes), among which is God, the most immaterial, hence most separate cause (thereby, science of the separate). Thus, while there are three possible ways of viewing metaphysics, they are not exclusive = one implies the other. But only through one of them is its proper object formally stated, which is neither first causes nor separate being, but being as being.25