The Aporematic Approach to Primary Being in Metaphysics Z

Abstract

Philosophy begins in wonder, or astonishment. We start out by wondering about problems that are ‘there,’ ready at hand for us as human beings (ta procheira). The natural response is flight from ignorance. Ignorance is simply the privation of knowledge, or understanding, and we have knowledge most of all when we understand first causes and principles. Hence it is part of our nature as human beings to desire to know the causes and principles of things.The first causes and principles are the most knowable, and the other (knowable) things are known through these causes. Our knowledge is systematic, and we are systematic understanders. Some things we understand through themselves. The rest we understand by systematically relating it to what is known through itself. Since by nature we desire to know, and since we do succeed in knowing, it follows that we are by nature systematic understanders.