Aristotle famously holds that there is no such thing as a single genus of being, or of what is (τὸ ὄν). This paper aims to offer a comprehensive account of his arguments in defence of this stance. I begin by examining a renowned passage of Metaphysics B3, where Aristotle argues that being is not a genus based on the somewhat controversial assumption that a genus cannot be predicated of its own differentiae. Part of my aim is to show that this assumption is adequately supported by certain predica…
Read moreAristotle famously holds that there is no such thing as a single genus of being, or of what is (τὸ ὄν). This paper aims to offer a comprehensive account of his arguments in defence of this stance. I begin by examining a renowned passage of Metaphysics B3, where Aristotle argues that being is not a genus based on the somewhat controversial assumption that a genus cannot be predicated of its own differentiae. Part of my aim is to show that this assumption is adequately supported by certain predicational principles which Aristotle lays out in Topics IV.2 and VI.6. I then aim to draw attention to two lesser-known arguments, to be found in Topics IV.6 and VI.3. I will mainly focus on the latter passage. Aristotle here insists that a genus must distinguish its members from members of other genera: since it is predicated of absolutely everything, being cannot distinguish the items of which it is predicated from anything else; as such, it fails to qualify as a genus. Having considered the most serious challenges which this argument may face, I will show that these can be overcome by invoking certain principles of predication deriving from Topics IV.1.
