![]() His answer is striking and philosophically rich: to be one is, above all, to be the primary measure of a given genus, which leads him to examine what makes something a measure and what it is to measure something. None of this precludes, though, a general account of what makes something the one for any given kind.Īristotle develops this general account in book Iota of the Metaphysics. Rather, as he says, "the one in colours, at any rate, is a colour, e.g. Similarly, one and the same one cannot inhabit substance, quantity, quality, etc. ![]() What makes this an opportune moment and Socrates a good man cannot be one and the same Good. ![]() ![]() The case parallels that of the good, which (as he argues in Nicomachean Ethics 1.6) exists in every category despite there being no unique, category-transcendent good-maker. Does being one thing amount to anything over and above just being? Is there a principle of oneness, something essentially one that accounts for everything else's being one? Aristotle's sensible answer to the latter, at least, is "no," pace Platonists and Pythagoreans. ![]()
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