Journal of the History of Philosophy

on a certain interpretation Aristotle’s Metaphysics contains two incompatible conceptions of metaphysics or, as he calls it, first philosophy. At two points in the treatise he identifies first philosophy with theology (E.1, 1026a19; K.7, 1064b3). Along with this identification comes a certain view about the nature and number of theoretical sciences. We are told in E.1 that there are three: natural philosophy, mathematics, and theology. Natural philosophy deals with nonseparate,¹ mutable substance, whereas the objects of mathematics are nonseparate but immutable. It is left to theology to study substance that is both separate and immutable (and therefore eternal). Hence it is prior to the other two theoretical sciences and more worthy of honor. But for Aristotle first philosophy is not merely a compartmentalized science concerned with a single genus or kind of substance; he means it to be a universal science of “being qua being.” Indeed, it is the status of first philosophy as the primary theoretical science that is supposed to provide for its universal scope. As he says in E.1, it is universal “in this way, because it is first” (1026a30–31). Large and well-known difficulties loom in the way of this tantalizing idea.

First, it is not clear how theology’s position of primacy is the cause of its universal scope; if anything, divine substance seems to be a special item within a more general ontology. Nor, if we look elsewhere in the Metaphysics, is it obvious that Aristotle does consider theology to be a general science of being. When he argues for the legitimacy of a science of being in book Γ he makes no mention of theology. Nor does he do so in books Z-Θ, his most detailed treatment of sensible substance; from these central books theology seems a peripheral part of a general understanding of being. Moreover, Metaphysics Λ, which contains Aristotle’s single extant treatment of divine substance, reinforces [End Page 1] a view of theology as one special area of metaphysics. His rarified conception of the highest God—incessantly thinking himself, and causing the motion of the first heaven through no volition of his own—certainly discourages the idea that theology proper should be identified with the universal inquiry into being.

These sorts of objections have been dealt with in various ways in the past. W. Jaeger famously proposed an elaborate developmental account, according to which Aristotle’s original metaphysics, represented by book Λ.6–10, was entirely theological; the immanentist view of the middle books of the Metaphysics then developed as Aristotle weened himself from his early, Platonic, nurture.² Accordingly, the discrepancies between the program of E.1 and the actual procedure of Z-Θ are to be explained by the survival of Aristotle’s earlier views alongside his later ones.³ To resolve the apparent conflict between the two conceptions of first philosophy, one need only relegate the appropriate texts to the “original” Metaphysics and recognize a development to the maturely Aristotelian position. Jaeger went so far as to maintain that “book Λ represents a stage that was still purely Platonic and did not recognize the doctrine of sensible substance as an integral part of first philosophy” (221). Of course, such an approach implies a devaluation of theology in Aristotle’s maturest stage of thought. Nowadays, few scholars would accept Jaeger’s view of Aristotle’s development. Nevertheless, the theology of Λ continues to suffer relative neglect because of its perceived lack of philosophical connection to the arguments of the middle books of the Metaphysics. In this respect many contemporary scholars have a view of the relation of Λ to the rest of the Metaphysics which parallels Jaeger’s.

G. E. L. Owen answered Jaeger’s developmental account with a ground-breaking discussion of how Aristotle employed a particular kind of predication, which he termed “focal meaning,” to argue for a science of being; Owen’s argument entailed, in part, that Aristotle’s earlier views were, if anything, more hostile to Plato’s metaphysics than his later ones.⁴ At about the same [End Page 2] time G. Patzig employed the notion of focal meaning—though not the term...