The Ousiology

Abstract

In the Corpus Aristotelicum we repeatedly find the phrase “to on legetai pollachos”: “‘being’ is said in many ways.” For Aristotle the diverse meanings of fundamental philosophical concepts is not merely a burdensome consequence of imprecise use of language to be avoided whenever possible. Instead, it bespeaks the diversity of the things themselves. Moreover, an essential part of Aristotle’s philosophy consists in attending to and explicating this diversity, and for him the manifold meanings of “on” undoubtedly are the most important. Recent scholarship has been particularly attentive to this essential problem.¹ In the preface we cited the beginning of the second chapter of Book Gamma and briefly discussed how he takes the manifold “on” as his point of departure and elucidates by two examples the particular way in which its manifold meanings are related to “one, certain physis”:

…in the same way that everything which is said to be healthy is related to health either in that it preserves health or in that it produces health or in that it is a symptom of health or in that it is capable of it. And that which is medical is related to the medical art (either it is called medical because it knows the medical art or because it is the work of the medical art)…²