Abstract

WHEN IN BOOK 3 of Aristotle's Metaphysics we come upon the phrase that supplies my title, epizëtoumenën epistëmen, it does not yet have a haunting tone. Clearly Aristotle is engaged in an exceptionally long windup, but those who imagine that the methodology of the Posterior Analytics can be exemplified only in Euclidean discourse, and who thus have trouble with all the treatises, will already have thrown up their hands. Indeed, after the prolonged aporetic discussions of book 3 comes the firm statement at the opening of book 4: There is a science of being as being and of that which pertains to it per se.