Another difference is that...

Another difference is that, though both of these definitions make the point that substance cannot change, we know that a substance can in fact corrupt (e.g., when a man dies). So substance will not be unchanging in the strongest sense; rather, the point must be that substance remains unchanged in itself through accidental change.

The being of passage (C), on the other hand, remains unaltered even through "corruption" ( fasad ), which I take to refer even (perhaps especially) to substantial corruption.42 With these contrasts in mind, we can see that the superficial similarity between substance and (simple) being is due to the fact that the two are analogous. The being appropriate to substance is complex; it involves reference to what is essential to the substance.

Thus, as we have just seen, substance is even said to "subsist through its essence." This complex, essential, or substantial being is then the subject of accidental predication. Being in the sense employed in passage (C), on the other hand, is simple; it is the subject of all predication, and thus can be called the "first bearer of predication." Al-Kindi obscures the difference between the two by referring to both simple being and substance as anniyya or ays .

But the equivocation does not lead to any incoherency in al-Kindi's thought, for the two conceptions operate at different levels. Simple being, or "being alone," underlies all, and perhaps especially essential,43 predicates. Complex being, or substance, results when an essence is predicated of simple being, and it underlies accidents. The complex notion of being accurately, if roughly, represents the sort of being expounded in Aristotle's Metaphysics .

Aristotle stresses that to be is to be a certain sort or kind of thing, and says that of the many ways "being" is said, the primary sense is that associated with a substance of a specific kind. 44 As we saw, the [End Page 309] simple notion of being also derives partly from Aristotle, whose Posterior Analytics distinguishes between what a thing is and that it is.

But the fact that al-Kindi's treatment of simple being is ontological, as well as epistemic, seems more at home in a Neoplatonic framework. For example, as suggested above, the account is Neoplatonic insofar as it portrays createdness as a sort of participation in being, and insofar as it recognizes a principle that is absolute Being. Previous…