Being is contrasted to attributes...

Being is contrasted to attributes, because the being of a thing is distinct from the multiple features that are predicated of that thing. Of course it is essential to created things like humans that they have their predicated features, because something cannot be a human without being alive, rational, and so on. But being is not just another of these predicates, essential or accidental. Rather, it is prior to the predicates. What sort of priority is this?

An answer is suggested by a remark of al-Kindi's: (C) FP 113.11-13 [RJ 27.17-19]: Corruption is only the changing of the predicate, not of the first bearer of predication. As for the first bearer of predication, which is being ( ays ), it does not change, because for something corrupted, its corruption has nothing to do with the "making be" ( ta'yis ) of its being ( aysiyyatihi ).

This passage is not particularly clear, but it does explicitly make the point that ays , "being," is the "first bearer of predication" ( al-hamil al-awwal ). The meaning of this assertion becomes clearer against the background of texts (A) and (B). Being is prior to the predicates of a thing, for example "living" and "rational" in the case of a human, because it is the subject of predication . If this is right, then "being" is treated as analogous to Aristotelian matter.

The analogy is suggested by both passages (A) and (C).24 Passage (A) is reminiscent of Aristotle's discussion in the Metaphysics where, on one traditional interpretation, he describes matter as the ultimate subject of predication that underlies all the features of a thing.25 Also like Aristotelian matter, being subsists through change, as becomes clear in passage (C) when al-Kindi says that being "does not change." The point is an intelligible one: even in the case of substantial corruption (such as death in the case of a human), there is not an absolute destruction of being but merely of the way the thing is.

This is why the corpse that remains when the human is no longer alive is yet something that exists . Finally, like Aristotelian matter, mere being must be simple, where "simple" again means without predicates. For, as the ultimate subject of predication, being itself cannot be further analyzed into a complex of subject and predicates.

The analogy does break down insofar as matter is associated with potentiality, whereas being (according to the Arabic Plotinus, as we saw above) is more aptly associated with actuality.