[1031b]
[1]
there
will be other substances and entities and Ideas besides the ones which
they describe; and prior to them, if essence is substance. And if they
are separate from each other, there will be no knowledge of the Ideas,
and the essences will not exist(by "being separate" I mean if neither the
essence of good is present in the Ideal Good, nor "being good" in the
essence of good); for it is when we know the essence of it that we
have knowledge of a thing. And it is the same with other essences as
with the essence of good; so that if the essence of good is not good,
neither will the essence of being "be," nor the essence of one be
one.Either all
essences exist alike, or none of them; and so if not even the essence
of being "is," neither will any other essence exist. Again that to
which "essentially good" does not apply cannot be good. Hence "the
good" must be one with the essence of good, "the beautiful" with the
essence of beauty, and so with all terms which are not dependent upon
something else, but self-subsistent and primary.1For it is enough if this is so, even if they
are not Forms; or perhaps rather even if they are. (At the same time
it is clear also that if the Ideas are such as some hold, the
substrate will not be substance; for the Ideas must be substances, but
not involving a substrate, because if they did involve one they would
exist in virtue of its participation in them.)2That each individual thing is
one and the same with its essence, and not merely accidentally
so,
[20]
is apparent, not
only from the foregoing considerations, but because to have knowledge
of the individual is to have knowledge of its essence; so that by
setting out examples it is evident that both must be
identical.But as
for the accidental term, e.g. "cultured" or "white," since it has two
meanings, it is not true to say that the term itself is the same as
its essence; for both the accidental term and that of which it is an
accident are "white," so that in one sense the essence and the term
itself are the same, and in another they are not, because the essence
is not the same as "the man" or "the white man," but it is the same as
the affection.The absurdity <of separating a
thing from its essence> will be apparent also if one supplies a
name for each essence; for then there will be another essence besides
the original one, e.g. the essence of "horse" will have a further
essence. Yet why should not some things be identified with their
essence from the outset,3
if essence is substance? Indeed not only are the thing and its essence
one, but their formula is the same,
1 The example of the Ideas as per se terms is used by Aristotle to show incidentally the fallacy of the Ideal theory: there can be no self-subsistent entity apart from the essence.
2 This criticism is irrelevant to the point under discussion. It simply points out that the Ideal theory conflicts with received opinion (cf. Aristot. Met. 7.3.1).
3 i.e. to avoid the infinite series implied in the last sentence.
Aristotle. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vols.17, 18, translated by Hugh Tredennick. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1933, 1989.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.