Table Of Contentthe doctrine of being
in the Aristotelian metaphysics
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THE DOCTRINE OF BEING
IN THE
ARISTOTELIAN 'METAPHYSICS'
A STUDY IN THE G R E EK B A C K G R O U ND
OF M E D I A E V AL T H O U G HT
JOSEPH OWENS
With a Preface by ETIENNE GILSON
PONTIFICAL INSTITUTE OF MEDIAEVAL STUDIES
TORONTO, CANADA
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Owens, Joseph, 1908-
The doctrine of being in the Aristotelian
Metaphysics
Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph.D.),
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1951.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-88844-409-5
1. Aristotle. Metaphysika. 2. Aristotle -
Ontology. I. Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies. II. Title
B434.085 1978 185 C77-001495-X
First published, 1951
Second printing, 1957— with addition of an Index of Aristotelian Texts,
and bibliographical supplement.
Third printing, 1961
Second edition, revised, 1963.
Fourth printing — with a complete revision of text, notes, and bibliography.
Third edition, revised, 1978.
© 1951,1963, 1978 by
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
59 Queen's Park Crescent East,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 2C4
Printed by Les Editions Marquis Ltee, Montmagny, Quebec, Canada.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE vii
AUTHOR'S FOREWORD xi
FOREWORD TO SECOND EDITION xii
FOREWORD TO THIRD EDITION xxviii
ABBREVIATIONS xxxi
PART ONE. The Approach to the Aristotelian Treatment of
Being
Chapter 1. The Problem of Being in the Metaphysics 1
Chapter 2. The Nature and Composition of the Metaphysics
a. The Nature of the Metaphysical Treatises 69
b. The Methodical Sequence of the Treatises 83
c. The Chronological Order of the Treatises 92
Chapter 3. The Aristotelian Equivocals 107
Chapter 4. The English Translation of Aristotelian Terms 137
PART Two. The Science of Separate Entity (A-E 1)
Chapter 5. The Science of the Four Causes (Book A) 157
Chapter 6. The Aporematic Treatment of the Causes
(Book B) 211
Chapter 7. The Science of Being qua Being (Books F-E 1)
a. The Science of Entity (P) 259
b. The Science of the Divine (E 1) 287
PART THREE. Sensible Entity as the Way to Separate Entity
(E 2-1)
Introduction. The Expressions of Being (E 2-4) 307
A. Being as in the Categories (Books ZH)
Chapter 8. The Expressions of Entity (Z 1-3) 315
Chapter 9. Entity as Substrate (ZH) 329
Chapter 10. Entity as Form (Z 4-12) 347
Chapter 11. Form and Universal (Z 13-16) 366
Chapter 12. The Form as Cause (Z 17) 375
Chapter 13. The Form as Separate and a 'This' (Book H) 379
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS
B. Being as Act, Truth, and Unity (Books 91}
Chapter 14. Being as Act (9 1-9) 403
Chapter 15. Being as Truth (S 10) 411
Chapter 16. The Role of the Central Books in the Main Series
(B ook I) 415
PART FOUR. Separate Entity (M N A)
Chapter 17. The First Principles (Book M)
a. Non-Aristotelian Conceptions (Book M 1-9) 421
b. The Individuality and Universality of the Principles
(M-9-10) 426
Chapter 18. The Aristotelian Separate Entities (N A)
a. The Polemical Conclusions (Book N) 43 5
b. The Unmoved Movers (Book A) 438
Chapter 19. Separate Entity and Being (Conclusion) 455
BIBLIOGRAPHY 475
INDEXES
1. INDEX OF GREEK TERMS 505
2. INDEX OF PERSONS 507
3. INDEX OF SUBJECTS 515
4. INDEX OF ARISTOTELIAN TEXTS 519
PREFACE
WHEN the Institute of Mediaeval Studies began its work in 1929, its
founders could easily foresee many difficulties ahead of them. To
find competent masters, or, if necessary, to prepare them for their work;
to build from the beginning a specialized library; to bring at least a
small number of students up to the level where they could usefully
receive the professional type of teaching which they would be given —
all these difficulties were then in our minds, but we were confident that
they could be overcome. There was one more difficulty, however,
which we could not possibly envisage with any certainty of overcoming
it, and it was the most serious one. A scholarly institution has among
its higher ambitions the desire to keep scholarship alive in some
particular field. Its ultimate test does not lie in the number of its
professors, nor in their own contribution to the increase of knowledge
in this particular field; rather, it lies in its success in turning out a small
number of young scholars who, each in his own way, will help to keep
unbroken the priceless tradition of scholarship. Scholars are both born
and made. In 1929, we could only hope that such students would come
to us, and we could only keep ourselves in readiness for their possible
coming. In fact, they did come, and this first volume is for us the
tangible proof that twenty years of silent work have not been in vain.
Its author still has to learn from personal experience the extent of our
gratitude to him for granting us such a reward.
Mediaeval philosophy has largely been a reinterpretation of Greek
philosophy in the new light of the Christian revelation. This dual
character of mediaeval thought exposes its historian to two contrary
errors: either to make it exclusively Christian or to make it exclusively
Greek. In order to know what was new in it, one has first to know
what was old. This is a much less easy task than it is sometimes thought
to be, precisely because it has become difficult for us to read Greek
philosophers otherwise than through their mediaeval interpretations.
No English translator of Plato will hesitate in calling the Demiurge of
Plato a "creator," nor in designating his work as "creation;" yet, even
when a Christian theologian expressly invokes Plato's authority on this
point, he is not at all speaking of the same thing. The case of Aristotle
is still more confusing. To practically all the men of the middle ages,
he was The Philosopher, but because they themselves were Christians
and theologians, they held a general view of the world very different
from his own. Hence the remarkable freedom with which they made
use of his doctrine. Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Ockham and many
vn
viii PREFACE
others have often said, in Aristotle's language, things of which he would
have sometimes disapproved, or which he would not always have
understood. One of the present tasks of history is to give back to
Aristotle what is Aristotle's, and, by the same token, to achieve a clear
awareness of what has been the contribution of the middle ages to the
development of Western philosophy.
The present book, which was the author's Doctorate thesis at the
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, is an important
contribution to the study of that vast and complex problem. It deals
solely with Aristotle, for the simple reason that, when the Philosopher
conceived his doctrine, he could not foresee what it would become later
on in the minds of Christian theologians. It does not even deal with the
whole philosophy of Aristotle. But in selecting for his subject the
doctrine of being in the Aristotelian metaphysics, Father Owens has
certainly chosen a vantage point from which the various parts of the
doctrine can be seen in their correct perspective. To the full extent
to which they are valid, his conclusions are directly relevant to all that
Aristotle has said.
It may seem idle to say that the problem at stake in this book belongs
to the history of philosophy, but it is not. To rediscover the thought of
Aristotle in its purity is assuredly the work of an historian, using all the
resources of modern historical methods, from philology proper to the
widest possible critical discussion of the works already devoted to the
same subject; but the history of philosophy also requires an historian with
the mind of a philosopher, because, in such a case, the very object of
history is philosophy, that is, a certain set of philosophical notions to be
understood by us in the very same sense which they once had in the
mind of a certain philosopher. This is no easy task, but one is sure to
miss the point completely if, while availing himself of all the possible
sources of historical information, he forgets that the method of methods
in the history of philosophy is philosophical reflexion.
This is what Father Owens has clearly seen. Anyone who reads his
book will realize how far he is from despising philology. Wholly
conversant with the work of W. Jaeger, he knows full well that there is
more than one legitimate and fruitful approach to such problems.
The principle laid down by Jaeger, that the content of Aristotle's
doctrine should be examined in close union with its form of expression,
is indisputably correct. In fact, this excellent piece of advice has been
constantly followed by the author of this book. But the notion of
literary form is not a simple one. In a philosophical work, even the
literary form of expression should be interpreted in function of the
philosophical needs which it is supposed to answer. The greatest merit
PREFACE IX
of Father Owens probably lies in his acute awareness of this point. He
has found in it the idea of a new methodological approach to the text of
Aristotle and his work owes to this method the better part of its
originality.
The reader will find the idea described in the pages which deal with
"The Methodical Sequence of the Treatises" (pp. 83-92). The question
there is not to know what has been the chronological sequence of the
writings of Aristotle, but, rather, to know in what order he himself
wanted us to read them. This is, so to speak, a problem of philosophical
pedagogy. It is also an excellent example of a philosophical way to ask
an historical question in view, precisely, of obtaining an historical
answer. For a given philosopher, the order of his thoughts is not neces-
sarily the same as the chronological order of his writings. There may
be instances in which these two orders coincide, but an historian has no
right to presuppose that they do. Their coincidence can never be
postulated as a principle; where historical research authorizes us to
affirm it, it can be affirmed only in a particular case, and as a conclusion.
To establish what Father Owens calls the methodical order of the
treatises then becomes a necessity because it indicates "the proper
Aristotelian method of following a problem through the Books of the
Metaphysics." This order is not necessarily the order of invention, nor
is it necessarily the order of redaction. It represents what seems to have
been, in the mind of Aristotle himself, the philosophical order to be
followed in the teaching of his own doctrine.
Such a method does not imply the rejection of a chronological study of
the Metaphysics. It does not even imply that, following the conclusions
of Ed. Zeller, we should consider the whole of Aristotle's Metaphysics as
having been written by him at the time of his maturity. But it certainly
presupposes that, whatever their date of redaction, the "methodical
arrangement" of the treatises should be looked upon as the work of
Aristotle's more mature period. The doctrinal homogeneity of the
whole, which necessarily followed from Zeller's position, remains
possible, and since Aristotle himself was the author of this arrangement,
its doctrinal homogeneity can even be considered as a priori probable;
but, from the point of view of the method followed in this book, it
remains a conclusion to be demonstrated.
An historian who undertakes to listen to Aristotle and docilely to
report what he hears, cannot fail to throw new lights upon the authentic
meaning of the doctrine. His work, precisely as an historian, then
becomes one with an intense and continuous effort of metaphysical
reflexion. The conclusion of Father Owens is that "the ontological
conception of the science is nowhere to be found in the Metaphysics."
