Abstract

I propose to demonstrate that Aristotle's God makes Science of Being feasible as Theology. God is a concrete universal representing both the primary instance of Being, and a universal ideal applicable in formula to an beings. God fulfills the dialectical demands of focal analysis set out in Metaphysics Gamma 2 inter alia. Being and Unity, in abstracto, Actuality and Potentiality, along with the elements of Substance, fail as primary beings because each is universal merely by analogy ---i.e. none embodies the universal in concreto. Aristotle's Science requires a real basis of permanence for all that is. My essay emphasizes just how radical his theological move is. The move explicitly overturns his disavowal of universal science in Sophistici Elenchi 170a20--3, Ethica Eudemia 1217b25--35, De Interpretatione 16b22ff.; it discounts the pedagogical immediacy of actuality, unity, and substance as metaphysical subjects of study; and it decisively ends dialectical analysis of the many senses of 'Being' begun in Metaphysics Gamma