Abstract

In this engaging book, Kosman offers a vigorous extended defence of a distinctive and highly ambitious claim, namely, that Aristotle’s account of potentiality/ability and actuality/activity in book Theta of the Metaphysics is an integral and central part of Aristotle’s account of what being is, which means that, for Kosman, Aristotle defends the thesis that being is, precisely, activity. In addition to the distinctive character of this claim, there are two notable suppositions behind it, which, likewise, Kosman defends. First, the Metaphysics is addressed to a single, overall question, namely ‘What is it for something to be?’, a question that Aristotle introduces in book Gamma, takes on in books Zeta and Eta, gives a distinctive answer to in Theta and takes to its point of culmination in Lambda. This question, as Kosman spells out instructively and at length, is tackled by Aristotle through a distinction between primary being, or substance , and other beings ..