limited amount of comparability: perhaps a mildly sharp pen hurts less to touch than
a seriously sharp wine hurts to taste. Is this comparability with respect to sharpness
or with respect to painfulness?^22 Ifpainfulnessis a common aspect to various ways of
being sharp, it might be both: there might be a limited kind of comparability between
the sharpness of things in virtue of the comparability of their painfulness.
Regardless, what makesbeinganalogous rather than merely disjunctive is that
there is an intrinsic and necessary unity to the modes of being themselves. The same
is true of parthood. Whenthiskind of unity is present, it is not obvious that there
cannot be comparability. Perhaps part of Shields’s motivation here is the thought that
being is very thin—it admits no hidden complexities and has no aspects.^23 But the
various modes must have“something in common”in order for them to be analogic-
ally related. Otherwisebeingwould merely be a disjunction of these modes, rather
than something that is unified via analogy. Perhaps things can be compared qua
beings despite enjoying distinct modes of being in virtue of the common aspects of
their respective modes. In my system, it is clear how this could work: one thing is
more of a being than another because its most real mode of being is more real than
the other’s most real mode of being. Because modes of being can be directly
compared with respect to how much being they themselves enjoy, an indirect
comparison between entities that enjoy those modes is also possible.
Let us turn to premise 2 of Shields’s argument. To show that Aristotle accepts
premise 2, Shields citesMetaphysicsXIV.1, 1088a22–5, 29–34 (Aristotle 1984b:
1719), in which Aristotle appears to claim that relations have less being than all
other beings, or at least all other beings that fall under a category. The specific quote
under contention is“the relative is least of all things.”^24
A bit of caution is in order. Although I alluded to this passage in section 5.5 and
claimed that friends of this slogan should consider whether relations are plausibly
thought as beings by courtesy, this is not obviously the correct model for under-
standing Aristotle’s metaphysics.Relationis a category, and hence by my lights is a
fundamental mode of being; Aristotle, recall, treats privations importantly differently
than things that fall under the categories, and this suggests that it is a different kind
of ontological superiority that Aristotle has in mind via this slogan rather than
the kind that I am callingdegree of being. Perhaps Aristotle has what I have called
order of beingin mind. A relation typically inheres in—exists in—more things than a
monadic property. So relations have a worse order of being than those things in the
(^22) Compare with what Shields (1999: 262–3) says aboutchoiceworthiness. Ward’s (2008: 126–8)
discussion of what Aristotle took to be necessary conditions for commensurability is relevant. 23
In van Inwagen’s (2001a: 4–5) sense,“being”isthin.See Berto (2013: 31–3) for discussion and
Vallicella (2002, 2004, 2014) for a defense of a 24 thickconception of being.
MetaphysicsXIV.1, 1088a23 (Aristotle 1984b: 1719). Ward (2008: 128) disputes Shields’s reading of
this passage. She takes Aristotle to be saying of relations that“they possess least the kind of being that
substances possess.”This reading of Aristotle strikes me as less plausible than Shields’s reading, since
relations have a different mode of being than substances and hence do not possessanyof the kind of being
that substances enjoy.