Abstract

And at the other extreme and in a somewhat different sense, a realistic metaphysician in, say, the Aristotelian tradition would be equally insistent that he must be able to consider and talk about beings or things or entities just as such, about being qua being, in other words. And he too would mean to employ such terms in a way that would be all-inclusive and all-embracing. For he would say that there is literally nothing--unless it be just nothing--which could not be said to be in some sense or other, or to be something or other. That is to say, outside being there is nothing. And this, as everyone knows, is simply the basis for Aristotle's celebrated denial that being can be a genus.