ABSTRACT
IN the second chapter of the fourth book of the Metaphysics Aristotle considers the subject matter of metaphysical enquiry. In the previous chapter he has identified that subject matter with being qua being, and he continues in the second chapter by pointing out that the term “being” is used in various senses, but with reference to one central idea and not as merely a common epithet. He illustrates what he has in mind by the mention of the way in which the term “healthy” is used. If I understand aright what he says on that subject, he argues that health of body is what may be termed the nuclear or root-realisation of health. So we say that a course of injections acts to restore in a body that is capable of being restored to health, the health of which it is capable, and is itself called healthy as efficient cause of health. Again, a habit of daily exercise is healthy as acting to preserve the form of health realised in the body. A complexion is healthy as a manifestation of the health of the subject whose good health is shown by his or her complexion. Yet injections, habits of daily exercise, complexion, health-giving, health-preserving, health-revealing though they are, may all of them be present with the fundamental bodily health to which they are somehow relative, absent. We may call such a presence a counterfeit; yet we cannot deny that what we have to do with when we meet the healthy looks of a patient in a relatively advanced state of tuberculosis is properly and not improperly called healthy.
