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Aristotle - Metaphysics
Atec Февраль 16 2008 19:57:08
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If, then, no universal can be a substance, as has been said our
discussion of substance and being, and if being itself cannot be a
substance in the sense of a one apart from the many (for it is
common to the many), but is only a predicate, clearly unity also
cannot be a substance; for being and unity are the most universal of
all predicates. Therefore, on the one hand, genera are not certain
entities and substances separable from other things; and on the
other hand the one cannot be a genus, for the same reasons for which
being and substance cannot be genera.
Further, the position must be similar in all the kinds of unity.
Now 'unity' has just as many meanings as 'being'; so that since in the
sphere of qualities the one is something definite-some particular kind
of thing-and similarly in the sphere of quantities, clearly we must in
every category ask what the one is, as we must ask what the existent
is, since it is not enough to say that its nature is just to be one or
existent. But in colours the one is a colour, e.g. white, and then the
other colours are observed to be produced out of this and black, and
black is the privation of white, as darkness of light. Therefore if
all existent things were colours, existent things would have been a
number, indeed, but of what? Clearly of colours; and the 'one' would
have been a particular 'one', i.e. white. And similarly if all
existing things were tunes, they would have been a number, but a
number of quarter-tones, and their essence would not have been number;
and the one would have been something whose substance was not to be
one but to be the quarter-tone
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