Note 110 — Chapter XXIX · SOPHISTES — POLITIKUS.
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Plato here aspires to deliver one definition of Ens, applying to all cases. The contrast between him and Aristotle is shown in the more cautious procedure of the latter, who entirely renounces the possibility of giving any one definition fitting all cases. Aristotle declares Ens to be an equivocal word (ὁμώνυμον), and discriminates several different significations which it bears: all these significations having nevertheless an analogical affinity, more or less remote, with each other. See Aristot. Metaphys. Δ. 1017, a. 7, seq.; vi. 1028, a. 10.
It is declared by Aristotle to be the question first and most disputed in Philosophia Prima, Quid est Ens? καὶ δὴ καὶ τὸ πάλαι τε καὶ νῦν καὶ ἀεὶ ζητούμενον καὶ ἀεὶ ἀπορούμενον, τοῦτο ἐστι, τίς ἡ οὐσία (p. 1028, b. 2). Compare, B. 1001, a. 6, 31.
This subject is well treated by Brentano, in his Dissertation Ueber die Bedeutung des Seienden im Aristoteles. See pp. 49-50 seq., of that work.
Aristotle observes truly, that these most general terms are the most convenient hiding-places for equivocal meaning (Anal. Post. ii. 97, b. 29).
The analogical varieties of Ens or Essence are graduated, according to Aristotle: Complete, Proper, typical, οὐσία, stands at the head: there are then other varieties more or less approaching to this proper type: some of them which μικρὸν ἢ οὐθὲν ἔχει τοῦ ὄντος. (Metaphys. vi. 1029, b. 9.)