38 On Being
On Being as its subject, although it may signify in some way something different from that subject, either in the nominative or in one of the oblique cases or affirmatively or negatively. Thus, some passions are called positive and others negative.
It should be clear from the foregoing how one can be a passion of being and really distinct from that general notion being whose passion it is while signifying the same thing as being; for as the definition expressing the meaning of the name indicates, it signifies in a manner different from being. It holds universally that a subject and its passion are really different things, although they supposit for the same thing and although predicating one of the other yields a necessary proposition.
38: On Being Having dealt with terms of second intention and second imposition we shall turn our attention to those terms of first intention that are called the categories. But first we shall consider some expressions that are common to all things, both signs and things that are not signs. 'Being' and 'one' are terms of this sort.
It should first be noted that the term 'being' has two senses. In one sense the term is used to correspond to one concept that is common to all things and is predicable in quid of everything in the way in which a transcendental is capable of being predicated in quid.
One can prove that there is one common concept predicable of everything in the following way: if there is no one such common concept, then there are different concepts for different things. Let us suppose that there are two such concepts, A and B. Following out this supposition, I can show that some concept more general than A and B is predicable of an object, C. Just as we can form the verbal propositions 'C is B', 'C is A', and 'C is something, we can form three corresponding mental propositions. Two of these are dubious and one is certain; for someone can doubt which of the first two is true, while knowing that the third is true. If this is granted, I argue as follows: two of the propositions are dubious and one is certain. The three propositions all have the same subject; therefore, they have different predicates.
Were it not so, one and the same Proposition would be both certain and dubious; for in the present case the first two are dubious. But if they have different predicates, the predicate in 'C is something' is not the predicate in either 'C is B' or 'C is A'. It is, we can conclude, a different predicate.
But it is clear that the relevant predicate is neither less general nor convertible with cither A or B. It must therefore be more general. But this is what we set out to prove—that some concept of the mind, different from those that are logically subordinated to it, is common to everything. That must be granted. Just as one word is capable of being truly predicated of everything, there is some one concept of the mind that can be truly predicated of every object or of every pronoun referring to an object.
But while there is one concept common to everything, the term 'being' is equivocal because it is not predicated of the items logically subordinated to it according to just one concept; several different concepts correspond to the term as I have indicated in my commentary on Porphyry.!
Further, it should be noted that, as the Philosopher says in the fifth book of the Metaphysics, "Being is said both essentially and accidentally."?
In drawing this distinction the Philosopher should not be understood to mean that some things are beings per se and others, beings per accidens. What he is doing on the contrary is pointing to the different ways in which one thing can be predicated of another through the mediation of 'to be'. This is clear from the examples he uses. As he notes, we say that the musical is per accidens just, that the musical is per accidens a man, and that the musical is per accidens a builder. It should be clear from these examples that he is only distinguishing the different ways of predicating one thing of another, viz., per accidens and per se. It is clear that there are not two kinds of being, the per se and the per accidens. Everything is either a substance or an accident, but both substances and accidents are beings per se. This point holds even though we have per se and per accidens predication.
Similarly, being is divided into being in potency and being in act. This should not be understood to mean that there are two kinds of beings, those which do not exist in nature but could and those which actually exist in nature. By dividing being into potency ard act in the fifth book of the Metaphysics, Aristotle means to show that the term 'being' is predicated of some things by means of de inesse propositions and not by means of propositions equivalent to propositions of possibility.? Thus 'Socrates is a being' and 'Whiteness is a being'. Of other things, Aristotle wants to say, 'being' is predicated only by means of a proposition of possibility or by a proposition equivalent to such. Thus 'The Anti-Christ can be' and 'The Anti-Christ is a being in potency'. He wants to say that being like knowledge and sleep, can
1 Expositio, Chapter II, 39-99.