Abstract
Myles Burnyeat’s famous book, A Map of Metaphysics Zeta, begins with the following reminder: because of its high philosophical stakes and extreme textual complexity, Aristotle’s “Metaphysics Zeta has been aptly described as the Mount Everest of ancient philosophy” (2001, p. 1). Zeta’s stakes are indeed philosophically high, for the book “deals with central issues of metaphysics, which Aristotle calls ‘first philosophy’,” and appears to have one single and yet crucial “ontological purpose.” As for its textual complexity, Zeta is so hard that “many are deterred by its difficulty. For others the difficulty is a challenge they cannot resist.” Hence the need for a map. A map, Burnyeat says, “designed to help all parties to find their way;” conceived “for travelers to use in their own explorations of the text” (p. 3).
I have always been fascinated by maps and cartography. A map tells you where you have been, where you are, and where you are going. In a sense, it is three tenses in one.
Peter Greenaway
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Notes
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This point will be further discussed in Chap. 10 of this volume.
- 2.
Trizio (2017) is the only study I know of that has called attention to this rather important early text.
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Scholars have sometimes called this aspect of Aristotle’s metaphysics—revolving around the priority of the substance—“ousiology.” Though Husserl does not use the term, his “being in the sense of reality,” as “ultimately referring to things,” namely to “substances” as bearers of manifold qualities and features, corresponds exactly to such definition. Crubellier and Pellegrin (2002, pp. 327–8), for instance, confirm that, in the Metaphysics, one can find four characterizations of “first philosophy”: as archeology (books A and B), as ontology (book Γ), as ousiology (books Z and H) and as theology (book Λ.) This is the pattern followed by Husserl as well.
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And Husserl explicitly credits Plato with having “discovered the a priori” and the “world of the ideas” (see Hua Mat IX, pp. 28–65). On the topic, see Chap. 10 of this volume.
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References
II – Other Works
Burnyeat, M. (2001). A Map of Metaphysics Zeta. Mathesis Publications.
Crubellier, M., & Pellegrin, P. (2002). Aristote. Le philosophe et les savoirs. Seuil.
Trizio, E. (2017). Husserl’s Early Concept of Metaphysics as the Ultimate Science of Reality. Phainomenon, 26, 37–68.
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Majolino, C. (2023). Mapping Ontology and Its Boundaries. In: The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 124. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34150-2_5
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