Abstract
ABSTRACT A long-standing problem in Aristotelian scholarship concerns the question of how to reconcile Aristotle’s twofold description of metaphysics as ontology (the universal science of being qua being) and theology (the science of the changeless and separate substance). An important attempt to answer this question (advanced first by G. Patzig) consists in saying that the changeless and separate substance is focally prior to (or the focal meaning of) substance and therefore to being in general (since substance is focally prior to being in general). This article aims to refute this kind of approach to the problem of the unity of Aristotle’s metaphysics by arguing that (i) relations of focal meaning entail the logical (definitional) priority of the prior items over the dependent items standing in such relations; (ii) the changeless and separate substance is not logically prior to the other types of substances distinguished by Aristotle; and, therefore, (iii) the changeless and separate substance is not focally prior to (the focal meaning of) substance.
Highlights
RESUMO Um problema de longa data na erudição aristotélica diz respeito à questão de como reconciliar a dupla descrição de Aristóteles da KRITERION, Belo Horizonte, no 148, Abr./2021, p. 7-27
This passage suggests at least one thing, namely that the clue to solve the tension between Aristotle’s characterizations of metaphysics lies in the concept of priority: it is in virtue of its being ‘first’3 – as he tersely points out – that first philosophy, even if it is concerned with one particular being, can coincide with the universal science of being qua being
Patzig-types strategies aim to unify ontology and theology by organizing S1 and the other types of substance in accordance with relations of focal dependence, which implies the logical priority of S1
Summary
Patzig-types strategies aim to unify ontology and theology by organizing S1 and the other types of substance in accordance with relations of focal dependence, which implies the logical priority of S1. Patzig-type accounts attempt to explain the relationship between theology and ontology by relating the different types of substances in accordance with a model of conceptual or definitional inclusion What this model claims to be prior is prior in the logical, definitional sense of priority. Patzig-types accounts, the approach favoured by them conceived of S1 as the external explanatory principle in which the program of an inquiry into being as being finds its final consummation On this view, S1 is not that way of being on which the metaphysician must primarily focus and whose understanding would enable him to understand the other, dependent ways of being. No knowledge of the intimate essence of the divine substance is formally implied by this reference: what is known of S1 is the (more modest) fact that it-is-a-cause. The identification of the divine substance as a cause makes possible to know scientifically those beings which depend on the cause, yet not (primarily) the nature of that which is cause
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