[1004a]
[1]
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—
[20]
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.
1 It is uncertain to what treatise Aristotle refers; in any case it is not extant.
Aristotle. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vols.17, 18, translated by Hugh Tredennick. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1933, 1989.
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