Section 2

The term being is used in various senses, but with reference to one central idea and one definite characteristic, and not as merely a common epithet. Thus as the term healthy always relates to health (either as preserving it or as producing it or as indicating it or as receptive of it),

and as medical relates to the art of medicine (either as possessing it or as naturally adapted for it or as being a function of medicine)—and we shall find other terms used similarly to these—

so being is used in various senses, but always with reference to one principle. For some things are said to be because they are substances; others because they are modifications of substance; others because they are a process towards substance, or destructions or privations or qualities of substance, or productive or generative of substance or of terms relating to substance, or negations of certain of these terms or of substance. (Hence we even say that not-being is not-being.)

And so, just as there is one science of all healthy things, so it is true of everything else. For it is not only in the case of terms which express one common notion that the investigation belongs to one science, but also in the case of terms which relate to one particular characteristic; for the latter too, in a sense, express one common notion. Clearly then the study of things which are, qua being, also belongs to one science.

Now in every case knowledge is principally concerned with that which is primary, i.e. that upon which all other things depend, and from which they get their names. If, then, substance is this primary thing, it is of substances that the philosopher must grasp the first principles and causes.

Now of every single class of things, as there is one perception, so there is one science: e.g., grammar, which is one science, studies all articulate sounds.

Hence the study of all the species of Being qua Being belongs to a science which is generically one, and the study of the several species of Being belongs to the specific parts of that science.

Now if Being and Unity are the same, i.e. a single nature, in the sense that they are associated as principle and cause are, and not as being denoted by the same definition (although it makes no difference but rather helps our argument if we understand them in the same sense),

since one man and man and existent man and man are the same thing, i.e. the duplication in the statement he is a man and an existent man gives no fresh meaning (clearly the concepts of humanity and existence are not dissociated in respect of either coming to be or ceasing to be), and similarly in the case of the term one, so that obviously the additional term in these phrases has the same significance, and Unity is nothing distinct from Being;

and further if the substance of each thing is one in no accidental sense, and similarly is of its very nature something which is—then there are just as many species of Being as of Unity. And to study the essence of these species (I mean, e.g., the study of Same and Other and all the other similar concepts—

roughly speaking all the contraries are reducible to this first principle; but we may consider that they have been sufficiently studied in the Selection of Contraries 1 ) is the province of a science which is generically one.

And there are just as many divisions of philosophy as there are kinds of substance; so that there must be among them a First Philosophy and one which follows upon it.

For Being and Unity at once entail genera, and so the sciences will correspond to these genera. The term philosopher is like the term mathematician in its uses; for mathematics too has divisions—there is a primary and a secondary science, and others successively, in the realm of mathematics.

Now since it is the province of one science to study opposites, and the opposite of unity is plurality, and it is the province of one science to study the negation and privation of Unity, because in both cases we are studying Unity, to which the negation (or privation) refers, stated either in the simple form that Unity is not present, or in the form that it is not present in a particular class; in the latter case Unity is modified by the differentia, apart from the content of the negation (for the negation of Unity is its absence); but in privation there is a substrate of which the privation is predicated.—

The opposite of Unity, then, is Plurality; and so the opposites of the above-mentioned concepts—Otherness, Dissimilarity, Inequality and everything else which is derived from these or from Plurality or Unity— fall under the cognizance of the aforesaid science. And one of them is Oppositeness; for this is a form of Difference, and Difference is a form of Otherness.

Hence since the term one is used in various senses, so too will these terms be used; yet it pertains to one science to take cognizance of them all. For terms fall under different sciences, not if they are used in various senses, but if their definitions are neither identical nor referable to a common notion.

And since everything is referred to that which is primary, e.g. all things which are called one are referred to the primary One, we must admit that this is also true of Identity and Otherness and the Contraries. Thus we must first distinguish all the senses in which each term is used, and then attribute them to the primary in the case of each predicate, and see how they are related to it; for some will derive their name from possessing and others from producing it, and others for similar reasons.

Thus clearly it pertains to one science to give an account both of these concepts and of substance (this was one of the questions raised in the Difficulties 2 ), and it is the function of the philosopher to be able to study all subjects.

If this is not so, who is it who in will investigate whether Socrates and Socrates seated are the same thing; or whether one thing has one contrary, or what the contrary is, or how many meanings it has? 3 and similarly with all other such questions.

Thus since these are the essential modifications of Unity qua Unity and of Being qua Being, and not qua numbers or lines or fire, clearly it a pertains to that science 4 to discover both the essence and the attributes of these concepts.

And those who investigate them err, not in being unphilosophical, but because the substance, of which they have no real knowledge, is prior. For just as number qua number has its peculiar modifications, e.g. oddness and evenness, commensurability and equality, excess and defect, and these things are inherent in numbers both considered independently and in relation to other numbers; and as similarly other peculiar modifications are inherent in the solid and the immovable and the moving and the weightless and that which has weight; so Being qua Being has certain peculiar modifications, and it is about these that it is the philosopher’s function to discover the truth. And here is evidence of this fact.

Dialecticians and sophists wear the same appearance as the philosopher, for sophistry is Wisdom in appearance only, and dialecticians discuss all subjects, and Being is a subject common to them all; but clearly they discuss these concepts because they appertain to philosophy.

For sophistry and dialectic are concerned with the same class of subjects as philosophy, but philosophy differs from the former in the nature of its capability and from the latter in its outlook on life. Dialectic treats as an exercise what philosophy tries to understand, and sophistry seems to be philosophy; but is not.

Further, the second column of contraries is privative, and everything is reducible to Being and Not being, and Unity and Plurality; e.g. Rest falls under Unity and Motion under Plurality. And nearly everyone agrees that substance and existing things are composed of contraries; at any rate all speak of the first principles as contraries—

some as Odd and Even, 5 some as Hot and Cold, 6 some as Limit and Unlimited, 7 some as Love and Strife. 8 And it is apparent that all other things also are reducible to Unity and Plurality (we may assume this reduction); and the principles adduced by other thinkers fall entirely under these as genera.

It is clear, then, from these considerations also, that it pertains to a single science to study Being qua Being; for all things are either contraries or derived from contraries, and the first principles of the contraries are Unity and Plurality. And these belong to one science, whether they have reference to one common notion or not. Probably the truth is that they have not; but nevertheless even if the term one is used in various senses, the others will be related to the primary sense (and similarly with the contraries)—

even if Being or Unity is not a universal and the same in all cases, or is not separable from particulars (as it presumably is not; the unity is in some cases one of reference and in others one of succession). For this very reason it is not the function of the geometrician to inquire what is Contrariety or Completeness or Being or Unity or Identity or Otherness, but to proceed from the assumption of them.

Clearly, then, it pertains to one science to study Being qua Being, and the attributes inherent in it qua Being; and the same science investigates, besides the concepts mentioned above, Priority and Posteriority, Genus and Species, Whole and Part, and all other such concepts.