I0gI* 29. It is not obvious why Aristotle should have chosen as his illustration of the identity of a xa airo term with its essence a class of ka’ otro terms which he does not believe in, the Ideas. The reason doubtless is that the argument in ® 29-> rr conveys a covert criticism of the ideal theory. Plato,*so Aristotle thinks, believes in a separate good which is neither a particular good thing nor ‘being good’ (or the essence of good). But the separation of the good itself from the essence of good leads to insuperable difficulties and is therefore con- demned. Instead of Ideas we should believe simply in essences or universals.
82. Laov, sc. aird 70 GGov. 716 Ov, sc. aitd 70 Ov.
bg-3r. These arguments only show that the Idea and the essence must not be thought of as existing independently of one another (dro\eupévan, 1. 3). But Aristotle uses them to show that Idea and essence are identical and cannot even be logically distinguished. One might hold that they are distinguishable but not independent, as is the case with any pair of correlatives. pév in ei pév (1. 3) looks as if Aristotle had noticed this point and meant to add another argument to show that if they are thus distinguished, but not treated as dzroXe- Avpévat, Other difficulties follow. But if this was his intention, he has not carried it out.
3. Tov pév, the Ideas. That they will not be knowable is proved in Nei6; "7.
4. es %, the essences. That they will not exist is proved in ll. 7-10.
10. Bz. objects that Aristotle has no right to say that if the essence
178 Commentary
of being is not, no other essence will be. The corresponding result for the other essences would be that the essence of good is not good, and soon. But the argument 'seems sound enough. ‘The reason for believing in essences holds of all terms alike. If the essence of being does not exist, there is no reason for supposing that any other essence exists.
-11. To his two main arguments against the separation of the Ideas from their essences (ll. 1-10) Aristotle now adds a third, that if the essence does not belong to the Idea or thing-itself, the ‘ good-itself’ will not be good, which is absurd. Alexander takes this sentence as proving that the essence of good is not good. But this has already been stated in ll. 6, 8, so that érx would be unexplained. Besides, it would be tautologous to say ‘ that to which being good does not belong is not good’. There is more point in saying ‘that to which being-good (the essence of good) does not belong is not good’. Aristotle has already said (1. 5) that being-good will not belong to the Good-itself’ ; he now draws the inference that the Good-itself will not be good. dya66 <ivat is used = 16 dyaG@ etva, Cf. 1030 1-2 n.
13. The question Aristotle stated in #28 was the general one whether self-subsistent entities are identical with their essences. He has discussed it in connexion with one class of alleged self-subsistent entities, the Ideas, but he now applies his conclusion to all self-sub- sistent or primary entities. These include not only substances (like horse, 1. 30) but also terms like ‘ white’ (1. 27) and ‘ one’ (1032 2), in fact presumably all terms except compounds of terms in two categories (1029» 23) like ‘white man’ (1031* 20). Things are identical with their essences if they are self-subsistent, even if they are not Ideas, or rather (Aristotle contemptuously adds), even if they are Ideas.
15-18. The reference to Ideas suggests to Aristotle a parenthetical remark about them. ‘If the Ideas are separate entities, it will not be substratum that is substance; for they are substances which involve no substratum, since if they were predicable of a substratum they would exist merely by being participated in by the substratum,’
16. obk éotar 1d SroKeipevoy ovdaia. Thus the belief in Ideas
conflicts with a well-founded view about the nature of substance (1029? I). 18. kara pé0egv seems to mean not ‘in the sense that they partici- pate in the substratum ’, but ‘in the sense that they are participated in by the substratum’, i.e. immanent in it; so Al. 483. 37. For the passive sense of xara péeéw cf. Top. 132% 35—133*%11. The Ideas according to Plato are participated in by the particulars, but he would not admit that they exist only by being participated in.
21. dote kal Kata Thy exdeow dvdyxyn ev te elvar &upw. On the meaning of exOeous, éxrifévar, éxriOecOa cf. A. g92P10n. Bz. inter- prets here s7 gus seorsem ponere susceperit rem et etus rye, ts inielliget, ul possit omnino esse sctentia, utrumque potius tdem debere esse. But xara tiv &kGeow would be a rather odd way of expressing the meaning here indicated, Schwegler translates der gegebenen Entwicklung zufolge,
which clearly will not do. In his commentary he suggests alternatively that kat xar& tHv éxfeow may mean ‘even from the standpoint of the Platonic separation of the Idea from particulars ’, What Aristotle says, however, is; ‘that each thing and its essence are fer se one and the same follows both from these arguments (those directed above against the Platonists), and from the fact that to know each thing is to know its essence, so that according to 4 éxOeaus, also, both are necessarily identical’. ékOecus seems therefore to be a way of proving, without reference to the ideal theory, that a thing and its essence are one. Alexander paraphrases éx@eois here by éraywyy, and this seems to be substantially right. e@eows here is éxfeous in the first of the technical senses explained in the note on A. 992 10—proof by means of instances, Take anything you please, and you will find that to know it is to know its essence.
27. ‘ The essence of white is not identical with the man (sc. who is white) or with the white man, but it is identical with the quality white.’ The reading 7G pév ... Kal ro@ clearly gives a better sense than Alexander’s and Bz.’s 76 pév ... kat 70.
30. Bz.’s excision of the second iaw seems necessary.
ZI. Katto. ti kwddevr kt. ‘Why should we not, to avoid such a duplication of essences, identify some things straight off with their essences ?’
1032° 4, éw éxetvwy, ‘in the case of terms like “essence of unity” ’. As we got one of the original terms by asking what was the essence of the other, we shall get a third by asking what is the essence of that essence, and so on. kal ém éxeivwy might be taken to mean ‘in the case of unity and essence of unity, as in the case of horse and essence of horse’ (1031 28-30). But then we should expect rovrwy, not éxeivwv.
7. Gow is used not in the technical sense defined in An. Post. 42%15, but = thesis. Cp. Bz. Zudex 327» 29-41.
8. The sophistical difficulties about Socrates and ‘ being Socrates’ were probably, as Alexander says, of the following type: If Socrates and being Socrates are different, Socrates will be different from him- self. If they are the same, and Socrates is white, being Socrates will be the same as being. white Socrates, a substance the same as its accident.
The fact that Aristotle treats the question whether Socrates and being Socrates are the same, as different from, though allied to, the question he has been discussing throughout the chapter, indicates that the latter is a question about universals, Regarding universals we should agree that they should not be distinguished from essences, but if Aristotle means that we should answer that Socrates and being Socrates are the same, as the universal of a group of substances is the same as their essence, it seems that he is either using Socrates in the sense of the form or soul of Socrates, orincluding matter in the essence of Socrates. He would answer the question about Socrates by saying (cf. 1037 7) that if by Socrates you mean his soul, that is the same as his essence ; if you mean the union of soul and body, that is not.
Q-I0. ovdev... émtdxou, i.e. the basis of both problems isa confusion
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between substance and accident; the basis of the answer to both is the clearing up of the confusion.
THE IMPLICATIONS OF BECOMING (chs. 7-9). Conditions of the various kinds of becoming (ch. 7).
1032° 12. Things that come to be do so (1) by nature, (2) by art, or (3) spontaneously. Genesis is by something, from something, of something ; the ‘things’ may be in any category.
15. (1) Natural genesis is that in which the agent and the resultant are natural beings such as man or plant; the ‘ from which’, here as in artistic production, is matter, i.e. the power of being or not being.
22. That from which and that according to which natural genesis takes place are both nature ; so is that by which it is produced, viz. the specifically identical nature in the parent.
26. (2) All other genesis is called making; it proceeds from art, faculty, or thought. Some artificial products, like some natural pro- ducts, can also be produced spontaneously.
32. Artistic production presupposes the presence of the form of the product in the soul of the artist. Contraries have in a sense the same form; disease is just the absence of health, and health is the definition in the physician’s soul and is the art of medicine,
b6. Health is produced (a) by thinking of the conditions of health and the conditions of those conditions, till we come to something that it is in our power to produce. (4) When the thought is complete, the making begins.
11. Thus in a sense health comes from health, house from house (the material from the immaterial) ; for medical science is the form of health,
15. The genesis, then, has two stages, thinking and making. Each intermediate stage in the production is produced similarly.
21. While the agent in artistic production is the form in the soul, the agent in (3) spontaneous production is that which starts the making in artistic production, e. g. the heat in the body, which is either a part or followed by a part of health. This, viz. that which produces a part of health, is the minimum necessary basis of health, as stones are of a house.
30. Thus some part of the product must pre-exist, viz. the matter. Is matter also an element in the definition of the thing? Yes; in defining a bronze circle we state both its matter and its form.
Ze 7s. 1032" 12 181
1033* 5. Some things are described by a name derived from the name of that from which they come, like ‘ wooden’; ! but a healthy man is not so described, The reason is that while genesis presupposes both a privation and a substratum, it is said to proceed from the privation, ‘sick’, rather than from the substratum, ‘ man’ (so that the healthy are not said to be sick but to be men);
13. but when the privation has no name, e.g. the privation-of-the- shape-of-a-house in wood, the house is thought to come from the wood as the healthy was said to come from the sick, so that as the healthy man was not said to be sick, the house is not said to be wood, but wooden ;
1g. though strictly it does not come from wood, since the ‘ from which’ must change and not persist.
1032°12, Aristotle’s object, says Alexander, is to prove that form is not generated. This will help him to show whether natural forms can exist without matter, as Plato maintained that they could, To show that form is not generated Aristotle shows that generation always pre- supposes a given substratum, whether it takes place (1) by nature, (2) by art, or (3) spontaneously. From this it follows that if form were generated, it would be generated from a substratum, and an infinite regress would be involved. The summaries in 11. 10378 21-» 7 and in H, 1. 1042 4-22 contain no reference to chs. 7-9, and confirm the view which the chapters themselves suggest, that they originally formed a separate treatise. They are, however, referred to in 15. 103926. Natorp considers that Z, is a combination of two treatises, viz. (1) chs. 1-6, 10-14 (with the addition of 16, 10418 3-5, which refers to 13. 1038) 8, 35, 1039 3, 16).
(2) Chs. 17, 7-9, 15, 16.
Ch. 17, he thinks, contains the transition from the first to the second treatise; cf. the first words of the chapter, in which Aristotle speaks of starting the inquiry froma fresh standpoint. The transition is from discussing the cause of being to discussing the cause of becoming (cf. 17. 1041%31). Chs. 15, 16 conclude the whole inquiry by saying what substance is not.