[1061a]
[1]
and
each is used in this way because it has a reference, one to the
science of medicine, and another to health, and another to something
else; but each refers always to the same concept. A diagnosis and a
scalpel are both called medical, because the one proceeds from medical
science and the other is useful to it.The same is true of "healthy"; one thing is so
called because it is indicative, and another because it is productive,
of health; and the same applies to all other cases. Now it is in this
same way that everything which exists is said to be ;
each thing is said to be because it is a modification or permanent or
temporary state or motion or some other such affection of Being qua Being.And since everything that is can be referred
to some one common concept, each of the contrarieties too can be
referred to the primary differentiae and contrarieties of
Being—whether the primary differentiae of Being are
plurality and unity, or similarity and dissimilarity, or something
else; for we may take them as already discussed.1 It makes no difference whether that which
is is referred to Being or Unity; for even if they
are not the same but different, they are in any case convertible,
since that which is one also in a sense is , and that
which is is one. Now since the study of
contraries pertains to one and the same science,
[20]
and each contrary is so called in
virtue of privation (although indeed one might wonder in what sense
they can be called contraries in virtue of privation when they admit
of a middle term—e.g. "unjust" and "just"), in all such
cases we must regard the privation as being not of the whole
definition but of the ultimate species. E.g., if the just man is "one
who is obedient to the laws in virtue of some volitional state," the
unjust man will not be entirely deprived of the whole definition, but
will be "one who is in some respect deficient in obedience to the
laws"; and it is in this respect that the privation of justice will
apply to him (and the same holds good in all other cases).And just as the mathematician
makes a study of abstractions (for in his investigations he first
abstracts everything that is sensible, such as weight and lightness,
hardness and its contrary, and also heat and cold and all other
sensible contrarieties, leaving only quantity and
continuity—sometimes in one, sometimes in two and sometimes
in three dimensions—and their affections qua quantitative and continuous, and does not study them
with respect to any other thing; and in some cases investigates the
relative positions of things and the properties of these,
1 Cf. Aristot. Met. 4.2.9 n.
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