ARISTOTLE AND

THE PROBLEM
OF METAPHYSICS
by Pierre Aubengue

The^ following colide wasfirstgiTon as a lecture before the Kant Society

at the Tecfamcal Ushrendty of Borlin on June 5« 1959. Since thm Rrofessor
Aubenque has doTslopedtibetihwiespresented and published them in a
book* Le probldme de Tetre chez Aristote. Esscd sur la probl6matique oris-
tot^lidenne. [Paris: Presses UmTorsitaires de France. 1962]

'7t seems to me that none are more
ignormt of Aristotetkm doctrine than
those we cdU Aristotelians.'' (Leibniz)
IN HIS LECTURES ON THE HISTORY
of philosophy Hegel said: "If philosophy
were serious business, nothing would be
more worthy of it than lectures on Aris-
totle."^ This Statement indicates that in
Hegel's day there was no longer the
custom of lecturing on Aristotle and
that Hegel saw in this a sign of the dis-
repute for the philosophy of his time.*
And yet when we examine the whole
history of post-Aristotdian philosophy,
Aristotle appears as the philosopher
about whom the most lectures were
given and the most commentaries writ-
ten. No philosopher has occasioned both
so deep a silence and such an abund-
ance of words. But the abimdance of
words is also in its way a silence. Only
because Aristotle himself did not say
enough is so much said about him, of
him, or even in his stead. The abund-
ance of commentaries is the direct re-
sult of the silence of Aristotle himself.
And so, deluged with commentaries
which are necessary because of the
dearth of text, we have forgotten to
listen to the silence of Aristotle him-
self. The Renaissance philosopher. Pic
della Mirandola, sums up this situation
briefly and well when he says: ^'Sine
Thoma mutus esset Aristotles^ without
Thomas Aristotle would be mute."
It is therefore not the purpose of
this exposition to add another commen-

75
tary to the many in existence, nor to
propose something new about Aristotle,
but rather to forget what is new about
Aristotle, what is systematic, finished,
satisfactory and to try to hear the si-
lent word of Aristotle himself in the con-
fused original.
APOBIA
In a famous and often repeated ex-
pression, at the beginning of book V n
of the Metaphysics, Aristotle says that
the chief question of metaphysics is
"one which was raised of old and is
rmsed now and always, and is always
the subject of perplexity, namely, what
being is."
Plato, in the Sophist 244a, had used
the same word (aporein) to express the
ever-recurring perplexity of man, as he
seeks the meaning of being. "We be-
lieved for some time Pfeto says, "to
hear known what we really mean when
we used the expression . . . but now we
have run into difficulties."
What therefore is aporia? Aristotle
is the first philosopher who theorized
on his own perplexity and left us an in-
struction on the subject. Aporia suggests
poros, a ford, way, passage. We are in
aporia when no way is open to us, or
when we hesitate before several ways.
But how should one understand this
not-being-on-the-way? It can have a
twofold significance:
1. We do not know the correct way;
2. There is in reality no way.
In the first case our quandary is an ac-
cident whose fault lies in the ineptitude
of our understanding. In more abstract
terms: the answer to our question lies
somewhere in a world of essences, an
idea-heaven as, for instance, the solu-
tion to a mathematical problem; but the
way to the answer, the nature of the
proof, we have not yet discovered. This
kind of aporia arises, for instance, in
• PHILOSOPHY TODAY •
the Platonic myth of the cave when the
captive reaches the light and is blinded
by the clarity of the ideas.^ The ideas
are there before his eyes, and the way
to them is dear in itself, but he can-
not follow it on accoimt of a passing
weakness in his soul.
But this is not the meaning of the
Aristotelian aporia. Aristotle does not
apply the term aporia in the strict sense
to a question such as the unresolved
mathematical problem of the squaring
of the drcle. With him aporia is not a
consequence of our ignorance, but lies
in the thing itself. "The difficulty of
our thinking points to a *knot' in the
object." (n, 1, 995a 30). When our dif¬
ficulty is a genuine aporia, it corres-
ponds to a difficulty in the thing itself.
In Book n Aristotle says: "Perhaps,
too, as difficulties are of two kinds, the
cause of the present difficulty is not in
the facts but in us." (H 1, 993b 8). In
another place he says that the first are
pros hymas or kath' hymas, the second
katWauto. It is with the latter that me-
taphysics begins.
How can one resolve these apcyriae'!
For the first type the answer is obvious:
they are removed little by little through
progress in knowledge, as shadows van-
ish before the rising light. In the second
case no knowledge, not even future
knowledge, can free us from the task of
endless inquiry. We might simply re-
gard the question as insoluble and agree
that mankind should undertake only
what it can accomplish, only "think hu-
man things," as Aristotle says.* But in
metaphysical problems we cannot take
in such an attitude of resignation. We
are "forced," Aristotle says, by the
thing itself to philosophize,* and not led
to it by a spontaneous disposition of our
souls. Since philosophizing has arisen
out of need, it does not depend upon us
to stop or to go on: we must go on, even
when nothing is to be found. The differ- unsteady step Aristotle named diapo-
ence between the question of squaring rein. LHaporia is not a solution of aporia;
the circle and the question of being is it means that we immerse ourselves in
that the answer to the first is written the quandary so that we may come to a
somewhere, in a book or in heaven, clear understanding of it. Socrates used
while the answer to the second is no- this method. He placed other men in a
where given and can only be the goal of quandary because he himself lived in the
an endless forward movement. It is not quandary, and he thought that it is not
a mere rhetoriral phrase that Aristotle worthwhile to live a anexestastos bios,
uses when he calls metaphysics ''zetou- an unquestioned and imexamined life.*
mene episteme/' sought-after science. We have a name for this method since
And it is not surprising that Leib- Socrates: it is called dialectic. Aristotle
niz twenty centuries later wrote: "Meta- uses the same word to indicate the end-
phj^ics, which Aristotle referred to as less to and fro of the questioning man.
zetoumene, still belongs to those sciences In spite of all the systanatization that
that are to be sought."' was to come, the structure of the Meta-
physics is not a scientific or apodictic,
Aporia in the strict sense of the but rather a dialectic one in the Socra-
word means, thertfore, that there is no tic and Aristotelian smse of the word.
way. But the paradox of aporia lies in Dialectic is not, as in the modem use
the fact that we sense that there is no or misuse of the term, a process which
way and yet must search endlessly for leads through obstacles to its aid by
this indecipherable way. Is not this ap- necessity, but an open structure con-
parently hopeless search an absurdity? stantly kept open which is the structure
But in fact, the lack of a way is experi- of a dialogue without conclusion, like
enced by man not as a lack but as a the so-called minor Socratic dialt^es
choice of all kinds of ways and solutions. of Plato or the tragedy of which the
Because he is aporos, man is pantopo- Aristotelian teaching of aq)oria seems
ros:"^ the want of a way appears to us to be the theoretical equivalent.
in the guise of a plurality of ways, none
of which leads to the goal, however. In spite of the systematic character
Aporia is therefore neither a definitive of the whole commentary tradition and
roadblock nor a well-lighted pathway, as a reaction against it the modem in-
but the fanning out of many ways. terpreters of Aristotle have pointed out
this dialectical character of Aristotelian
Hence aporia summons us not to metaphysics over and over again. Since
linear progress, but to a continuous the epoch-making book of Wemer Jae-
movement back and forth from one way ger (1923) it has become commonplace
which proves wrong to another. This to observe that the works of Aristotle,
 especiafly the Metaphysics, contain so-
called contradictions. But this methodic
investigation of the contradictions of
Aristotle is based upon the supposition
that a good philosopher cannot contra-
dict himself, at least not in the same
moment. Hence the self-contradictory
assertions of Aristotle are looked upon
not as simultaneous but as successive,
following the historical devdopment of
Aristotle's thought. Such a thesis, is in
accord with common sense and is not to
be dismissed entirely. It has opened the
door to real progress in the philology
of Aristotelian material. But in the spe-
cial case of metaphysics such a metho-
dological supposition cannot be justified,
fundamentally because Aristotle him-
self expressed his view of the dialectical
structure of his metaphysics by the gen-
eral title aporia. Wemer Jaeger and his
followers are of the opinion that the
metaphysics of Aristotle has remained
incomplete, that if Aristotle had lived a
few years longer, he would have recog¬
nized the clumsy contradictions in suc-
cessive drafts, would have consolidated
his thinking and completed his meta-
physics. Aristotle himself once thought
this possible. In a passage in his early
writings, which Cicero has preserved
for us, he expressed his wonder at the
rapid progress of the sciences and phi-
losophy in general and his hope that "it
would soon be completely finished,"
Tyreoi tempore plane dbsolutam fore.^
But in the Metaphysics this confidence
in the speedy completion of philosophy
has disappeared since Aristotle says ex-
pressly that the basic question of meta-
physics remains forever aporetic. Aris-
totle may have died too young; but it is
an historically debatable question and
at best a philosophically useless task to
try to determine what he would have
said if he had lived longer. For perhaps
it is not Aristotle but philosophy itself
• PHILOSOPHY TODAY •
>70
that is always too young for its own
problems. Perhaps philosophy is not at
all a project moving to completion, but
always writing to be planned, not a be-
ginning which demands a sequel and an
end, but a beginning that is always be-
ginning, or as Aristotle says, ever
sought and ever in a quandary {aporour
menon). The prdiminary question to
every interpretation of Aristotelian me-
taphysics is this: where is the real si-
lence in Aristotle's incomplete investi-
gation of what is? Is it in Aristotle or
in being?
T H E TWO QUESTIONS
A good bit of evidence could be
given of the perplexity in Aristotelian
metaphysics. In the first place what
the western tradition knows under the
title Metaphysics had no name with
Aristotle. Metaphysics is the science
without name.^^ Can we suppose again
that Aristotle simply had no time to
give a title to his writings later referred
to as Metaphysicsf The problem is more
intricate. For Aristotle proposes a title:
First Philosophy. The question is there-
fore not why the publishers named Me-
taphysUcs what Aristotle had left name-
less, but why did they not accept the
title which Aristotle himself proposed?
And answer could be that the idea of
a First Philosophy which Aristotle
sketches in the first pages of the Metor
physics, the idea of a science of first
causes and first principles, a science of
the highest and primary being, the di-
vine, was an idea which Aristotle doubt-
lessly sought, but did not realize in the
writings he left behind. The science we
are looking for is not to be found in
Aristotle. What we find is not a science
in the Aristotdian sense but a quest
for science. Science, the Second Analy-
tics teaches, proceeds syllogistically;
but there is no syllogistic order in Aris-
totle's Metaphysics. On the contrary,
dialectic is the true process of investi-
gation in general; it is "probing" and
"critical."" For this reason metaphysics
is dialecticdl. The publishers appear
therefore to have noticed that the pro-
posed title. First Philosophy, did not
fit, for two reasons: the writings be-
fore than were not scientific as pfeito-
sophia basically should be, and the in-
quiry devdoped in them was not the
firs* in the order of knowledge but pre-
supposed other sdences and investiga-
tions, espedally physics.
The reversing of scientific order was
not an acddent but the consequence of
the imsc^ntific and zetetic character of
metaphysics: "What is last in the order
of analysis seems to be first in the order
of becoming."^^ In itself, kath'duto, me-
taphysics comes before physics, but for
us, pros hymas, it comes after. Such a
division is, of course, found in any sci-
ence. But in most cases the order is
turned aroimd when the inquiry is over;
namely when the principles of the sci-
ence are reached. From this moment on
the science can develop deductively. But
in the case of metaphysics this inversion,
this sudden coincidence of the orders
pros hymas and kath' auto, never takes
place, precisely because the preparatory
inquiry never comes to an end. The
question arises, then: why is this the
case with that science which should be
the first, the science which should be
the prerequisite of all other scientific
knowledge? Just why and how did this
first sdence turn into a post-physical
study? The editors and commentators
have given this difficulty a title. But a
solution they have not given and prob-
ably could not give.
We know that tradition has em-
phasized a different definition of Aris-
totelian "metaphysics," one which Aris-
totle m fact proposed in the beginning
ARISTOTLE AND THE PROBLEM OF METAPHYSICS
of Book TV. From this new standpoint
the "sought-after science" is no longer
defined as the first among subordinated
sciences, but as the universal among the
particular sciences, those which con-
sider a special genos, a circumscribed
area of being. In the first case the ob-
ject of metaphysics was a separate
being, one set apart from every parti-
cular being (chcniston) j in other words,
God. This does not mean that the first
science is not a spedal one; it is surely
a separate and highly spedal science.
This science which is regarded as the
highest of all should occupy itself par-
ticularly with the divine. This "particu-
larly" made it something spedal. By
contrast, the sdence which is defined
at the b^inning of Book n i deals not
with a certain genus of being but with
being as such, inasfar as it is a being
at all. W. Jaeger has brought out quite
dearly this discrepancy in the defini-
tion of the object of Aristotdian meta-
physics. But it can hardly be r^^arded
as an entirely fortuitous diange of opin-
ion in Aristotle's intdlectual devdop-
ment, as though the one definition, the
first in Jaeger's opinion, were earlier
than the second. One could determine
historically, and it should be philosophi-
cally ascertained, that both trains of
thought are simultaneous with Aristotle
and really remain simultaneous in the
development of the metaphysics. There
remain two ways to the object of meta-
physics, which do not fall together un-
der the same head as if the on e on and
the on choriston were a single existent,
as the systematizing commentators
would afterwards teach.*'
It is now time to outline more ex-
actly both of these wajrs of metaphysi-
cal investigation. W. Jaeger calls them
the theological and the ontologicdl. But
this last designation is not Aristotelian,
and neither goes back to the beginning.
• • •
79,
Metaphysics divides itself into two ques-
tions of which neither is less original
than the other. In their original form
they could best be called the question of
the beginning and the question of unity.
The discussion here wiU not try to find
the ground common to them which
gives unity to Aristotelian metaphysics
and which neverthdess remains hidden
from us. It will only bring up the first
question, the question concerning the
beginning as an example of Aristotelian
aporetic, and introduce the second ques-
tion concerning imity in its relation to
the first.
T H E BEGINNING
Expressed in Greek the question
concerning the beginning is the question
about the arche. Arche is not a begin-
ning in the sense of something super-
seded by what follows, but the begin-
ning in all the strength of the word as
a continually renewed onset which
never ceases to enliven and dominate as
it goes on. It is no accident that the
Greek word, arche, signifies both begin-
ning and mastery. Arche in the strict
sense of the word means the start that
prevails and rules.
The question about the beginning
develops from the observation of a uni-
versal phenomenon, which concerns not
only our sublunary world but also the
celestial, and thus determines the spe-
cial kind of being of every worldly
thing that is, namely the phenomenon
of motion. What is therefore the start
of motion? The question does not mean:
when did motion begin in the world, as
though it were a question of time, but
rather, what is really the continuing
basis of being in motion?
But why does motion call forth the
question of its cause? That which is
movable — this Plato had already
shown — cannot be the cause of itself:
• PHILOSOPHY TODAY •
fin
it is not self-supporting. That it is not
self-supporting means that it does not
exist from itself; that being of this kind
would vanish if a cause, which must it-
self be self-supporting, did not exist.
For Aristotle such a non-self supporting
thing is that which is movable. This
thesis has indeed a physical signifi-
cance: it indicates that a certain move-
ment ceases immediately if the move-
able is no longer actually moved. We
know now, ever since we know the law
of inertia, that this thesis is physically
false. But it still has a valid range. It
signifies that not only every particular
movement within the movable world,
but the movability of the world in its
entirety needs a cause, which can only
be a mover which is itself unmoved.
This first unmoved mover, which is the
governing start of movement, is God,
or, better said, the divine. We have al-
ready mentioned that metaphysics as
the first philosophy should deal with the
divine. It appears now that we have
made great progress in determining the
object of metaphysics, when we are able
to designate and describe the divine as
the first unmoved mover.
But when we speak of God as the
unmoved mover, what do we really
know about the essence of the divine,
about its basis? Nothing. It tells us, of
course, of the relation of God to the
world and in particular to us; or, better,
we know our relation to God, the rela-
tion of a being who inhabits a movable
world (and who possesses the ability
to reproduce this movement with this
thought, since thought is also motion)
to the cause of this motion, in which
he dwells and lives. We therefore know
God as the cause of motion; we think
of him in the framework of our mobile
experience. We do not know him in him-
self. In Aristotelian phraseology: we
know him not hath' auto, but pros
hymas. We do not know the beginning
of his beginningness, we have no origin-
al vision of him, a vision that would co-
incide with the source at its very origin.
As men we have no initial knowledge of
the beginning.
Now we can understand what we
had observed at the beginning, namely
the fact that the first philosophy is not
actually the first but the second, it
comes after physics. Human knowledge
of the beginning is not starting knowl-
edge, that is, not knowledge which pro-
ceeds from the beginning, but an inves-
tigation which always tries to return
to the start throu^ all sorts of inter-
mediates. Man is a being who is always
removed from the beginning, precisely
because he is in motion.
Aristotle elaborates on this difficul-
ty very articulately in the first pages
of the Second Analytics. There is ques-
tion here of the beginning of knowledge.
The first sentence of the book reads:
"All teaching and all learning presup-
poses previous knowledge." (76a 1).
This sentence animates the whole of
Aristotle's teaching on the syllogism.
No demonstration is possible if it does
not presuppose the truth of its own
premises. Indeed these premises can
have been proved in advance. But what
of the original premises of the original
syllogism? The fundamental inadequacy
of all human demonstration lies in the
fact that man always proceeds from one
truth of his own process. A proof is
something that has always already
started. If this is the case, there is no
possible proof of the start itself. If
genuine knowledge is apodictical, and
therefore proceeds syllogisticaDy, it
must be recognized that knowledge is
grounded in ignorance. The Sophists
had already sensed this aporia and
stated it expressly when they pointed
out that learning is impossible: one can
ARISTOTLE AND THE PROBLEM OP METAPHYSICS
learn either what one already knows or
what one does not yet know; but what
one already knows one does not need
to learn; and what one does not yet
know, one cannot learn, since one does
not know what is to be learned. It was
no accident that Aristotle at the begin-
ning of his Second Analytics recalled
this aporia which had ah^ady become
classic and which Plato, in Aristotle's
view, had not taken seriously enough
in his Meno.^^
Aristotle scans to have found a so-
lution to this problem. The aporia shows
that a mediate knowledge of the ori-
ginal, that is, of the immediate, is im-
possible. Yet the fact remains that the
immediate is known immediately, name-
ly in a contemplative act. In fact Aris-
totle says so: ''But it ranains that there
is an intuition of principles."" But it is
to be noted that Aristotle presents
this vision of principles as an unavoid-
able challenge ("the fact ranains")
rather than a real experience of them.
This is not the place to discuss the dif-
ficult question whether Aristotle con-
siders a vision of principles to be pos-
sible or not. Several statements of his
show that he questions the human pos-
sibility of this vision. It is the task of
dialectis (not of vision) to grasp first
principles. And in fact in Book TV of
the Metaphysics when he undertakes to
establish the principle of all principles,
the principle of contradiction, he does
not reach for some kind of vision but
turns to a dialectical vindication which
establishes the principle of contradic-
tion indirectly by refuting its opponents.
This lack of an intuitive basis for
the highest science puts a question mark
on the possibility of a first philosophy,
of a science which is not an incomplete
knowledge laboriously approaching the
principles, but one which would be at
home in these principles and could use
• • •
81
 them as a starting point of its deduc-
tions. At the beginning of metaphysics,
after describing the idea of such a sci-
ence, Aristotle expressed doubt of its
possibility: "One could rightly consider
the attainment of (first) philosophy to
be beyond human power; for in many
things human nature is in bondage, and
perhaps, according to the saying of Si-
monides, only God could possess this
prerogative." Several lines further he
continues: "First philosophy is divine
into a two-fold sense; for that science
which God woidd have most of all is di-
vine, and so is the science of the di-
vine."*' First philosophy and theology
are divine, that is, superhuman in the
twofold sense that they speak of God
and belong to God. God is the only the-
ologian. Pascal, though imawares, thinks
as a Greek, even as Aristotle, when he
writes of the Christian God: "only God
speaks well of God" — indeed, speaks
of God at all. Put more abstractly: God
alone is the first philosopher; human
philosophy is always a second philoso-
phy, not original, but laboriously trying
to return to the beginnings. From the
beginning man is a creature in exile.
He dwells in that which is, but the being
of what is always eludes his word. He
always speaks of what is, and still does
not speak the being of what is. His
speaking is a predicative saying which
says something (ibout something, but
the something itself, the essences, the
substance, he can never put into words.
The human word is an unending at-
tempt to overcome the unconquerable
silence of the beginning.
UNITY
This silence before the beginning,
the silence that speaks, gives rise to
another question, that of imity, closely
associated with the first. So much is
said of things that are because being
remains unspoken. The impassability
• PHILOSOPHY TODAY •
09
of the beginning is revealed in the
multiplicity of the paths that come from
it and the paths which go toward it and
this multiplicity is expressed in the
equivocation of himian expression. Since
the unifying dominance of the begin-
ning is never put to word, though pre-
supposed, human speech is always mul-
tiple: that which is, is said in
many ways. This oft-repeated phrase,
the leitmotiv of Aristotelian metaphys-
ics, is the direct consequence of the
aporia of the start. Since the unity of
that which is cannot be contemplated
in its origin, it can be communicated
only little by little in roundabout ways.
This roimdabout mediating way is
speech. Speech does not lead us to
unity; it only points to it. The word ^^on''
which is the most important, since it
serves as the copula in predication, in
kategorein, is not a univocally spoken
word but a pros en legomenon, that is,
a word which through the very multi-
plicitly of its meaning always points to-
word the desired imity. From the very
fact that these meanings are called
categories we see that the famous
Aristotelian teaching on categories,
which was later to be misinterpret-
ed into the medieval doctrine of an-
alogy, is in fact, not so much a
univocal solution of the question of uni¬
ty as an answer which keeps asking
many things.
PBODUCTIVE F A I L U B E
If the present description raises the
objection that it is too negative, that it
does not take sufficiently into account
what metaphysics has accomplished in
a positive way, the answer is that the
positive in Aristotle lies not so much in
his announced aims as in the failure to
achieve these aims. He wanted to create
a first philosophy, and he gave us me-
taphysics. He wanted to be a theologian,
and he never got beyond the proof that
theology is beyond human powers. He
desired concurrence with the start, and
to go out from the beginning, but he
never finished the preliminary attempt
to approach the start. He wanted to
grasp the unity of that which makes to
be whatever is, and the search for this
unity replaces the intuitive posession of
unity, which is impossible. It could be
shown that many wdl-known doctrines
of Aristotle, as for example the teach-
ing on categories, arose from the fail-
ure of the purpose he really had in mind.
He wanted to prove that that which is
is one, and he discovered that it has a
number of meanings which cannot be
reduced to the imity of a genus. Kant
inadvertantly alluded to this creative
failure of Aristotle when at the begin-
ning of his transcendental analjrtics he
expresses the opinion that the Aristo-
telian division of the categories should
have been "systematic," but was in fact
"rhapsodic." Are we going to lament
this fact? His failure m any case pre-
sents several questions, one of which
is a question of method and the other
of principle.
1. Is it the task of the commenta-
tor to cr^te that system which the phi-
losopher himself was not able to create?
2. Is this failure the failure of the
philosophy called Aristotelian or of phi-
losophy in general? What is rhapsodic,
the thinking of Aristotle, or the overall
relationship of man to that which is?
If the answer to the first question
seems obvious to us today, accustomed
to the rigor of historical and philologi-
cal method, the second is not so clear,
since it is not a philological but a phi-
losophical one. If we want to make
ARISTOTLE AND THE PROBLEM OP METAPHYSICS
a true appraisal of the aporetic state of
Aristotelian philosophy, the question a¬
rises whether the shipwreck of a phi-
losophy in the case of a great philoso-
phy is not a part of philosophy itself.
More philosophical perhaps than what
Aristotle wanted to accomplish was
what he actually did accomplish in spite
of himself. With him not doing is still
doing, and silence is a word that goes
far. The impossibility of intuition be-
comes the reality of dialectic. The im-
possibility of immobility becomes the
reality of mobility. The impossibility of
theology becomes the reality of ontol-
ogy. With Aristotle the "sought-after
science" becomes the science of seeking.
The incompleted metaphysics becomes
the metaphysics of the incompleteness of
the world and of man which calls man
to creative word and action. We can
have a true estimate of the positive con-
tent of Aristotelian metaphysics only if
we no longer expect something which is
not to be found in it, namely a system.
For again the impossibility of the sys-
tem is the reality of research, the zete-
sis. Perhaps in this reversing which is
at work in the metaphysics of Aristotle
we recognize the paradox which arises
again and again and which dwells in
every philosopher; since he sought and
yet did not find what he was seeking, in
his very search he finds something he
was not looking for. This is not a modem
thought but the nebulous wisdom of an
ancient saying which Aristotle himself
had read, a sajdng of Heraclitus (fr.
18 Diels):
"If he does not hope, then he will
not find the unhopied for which is
inexplorable and impassable."
(aporon)
• • •
83
 REFERENCES
1. Hegel's Werke, Berlin, 1932-40, Vol. 14, p. 314.
2. Ibid., p. 299.
3. Republic VII, SlScd, 516a, 518b. Compare
Aristotle Met. I, 1, 993b; Theophrastus, Met
9b, 11.
4. Nichom. Ethics X 7, 1177b 32. In this place
Aristotle is contesting the ancient scruple;
compare Epicharm, 13 B 20 Diels. But in
other places he pays more heed to the warn-
ing: compare Met. I 2, 982b 9, 986b 31.
5. Met I, 3 984a 18. Compare 984b 9, 986b 31.
6. De etnendatione primae philosophiae et no-
tione substantiae, beginning.
7. Sophocles, Antigone V, 360.
8. Menon 80c, 8 bis Apology 33a.
9. Fragment 53 Rose. Cicero, Tuscalenes, 3, 28,
69. I. Duering notwithstanding (Eranos, 1954,
p. 164), we see no cogent reason for doubting
the authenticity of this testimony. It does
seem more probable, however, to ascribe this
text to de Philosophia rather than to the
protreptikos as the first editors did.
10. The oldest use of the title metata physica
which we know is found in Nicholas of
Damascus in the second half of the first
century A.D. But this does not mean that
the title is not older or that it has no
philosophical meaning. H. Reiner in "Die
Entstehung und urspruengliche Bedeutung des
Namens Metaphysik," Zeitschr, f , philos.
Forsch,, 1954, pp. 210-227, has shown, contrary
to the traditional opinion of philologists, that
the tneta refers to something more than a
mere external library cataloguing, and was
thought of in a philosophical light by the
first inventors of the title. Whether this title
arose already in the drcle of Aristotle's im-
mediate disciples, as H . Reiner thinks, seems
questionable to us, but that can be left open
here. Of philosophical importance are the two
facts that it did not come from Aristotle, and
that its content and the very circumstances
of its selection have philosophical significance.
11. Met IV 2, 1004b 25 (Compare Top. VIII 5,
155a 25; 11, 161a 25). Top. I 2, 101b 3.
12. Nicom. EtK III 5, 112b 23.
13. This identification of being as being with the
divine which became traditional in the Mid-
dle Ages canfindsupport in a single passage,
Met XI 8, 1064a 29. The singularity of this
passage seems to complement the stylistic
argtunent to cast doubt on the authenticity
of XI 1-8. Se the recent article by A. Man-
sion, "Philosophic premiere, philsosphie se-
conde, et m^taphysique chez Aristotle," Revue
philos. de Louvain, LVI, 1958, pp. 209-221, as
well as the older P. Natorp, "Ueber Aristo-
teles' Metaphysik K, 1-8, 1075a 26, "Arch. f .
Gesch. d. Philos., I, 1888, pp. 178-193.
14. Second Anal I 1, 71a 29; First Anal II 21.
67a 21. See Meno 80e. Plato of course re-
solved this difficulty with the doctrine of
anamnesis, recall. But Aristotle rejected this
as "nonsense." How, he asks, can a man
know something without actual possession of
the start of this knowledge? {Second Anal.
II 19, 99b 27. Compare Met I, 9, 992 b 29ff).
15. Nich. Eth. VI 6, 1141a 7. Compare Second
Anal II 19, 100b 13.
16. Topics I 2, 101a 36, b 4.
17. Met I 2, 982b 29. 983a 7. See note 4.

Wm Source: ZEITSCHRIFT FUR PHILOSOPHISCHE FORSCHUNG. Band

XV, Heft 3, pp. 321-33. "Aristoteles und das Problem der Metaphysik."
Presentation'. Gary Madison, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

PIERRE AUBENQUE is professor of Philosophy at the University of

Besangon in France. His most recent works, both appearing this
year, are La Prudence chez Aristote and Le Problime de
Tetre chez Aristote (Presses Universitcdres de France). Pro-
fessor Aubenque contributed a study to the Second Aristotle
Symposium ("La notion aristot^licienne d'aporie" in Aristote
et les probl&mes de m^thode. Louvain 1961) and a study of
Merleau-Ponty's Aventures de la didectique to Volume II of
Recherches de Philosophie (Desclee 1956).

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