Narrating Being

In the Metaphysics , Aristotle says that the metaphysical and epistemological errors of previous philosophers can be traced to their focus on the sensible world: “because they saw that that all this world of nature is in movement and that about that which changes no true statement can be made, they said that of course, regarding that which everywhere in every respect is changing, nothing could be truly affirmed.” In the end, Cratylus abandoned speech altogether: he “finally did not think it right to say anything but only moved his finger, and criticized Heraclitus for saying that it is impossible to step twice into the same river; for he thought one could not do it even once.”

To make true statements, Aristotle argues, we must be able to make assertions about some changeless, essential, necessary substratum behind the sensible appearances. But to draw that conclusion, he has to assume that statements of truth themselves take a changeless, essentializing form. Why, however, can’t statements of truth take a narrative form, capturing truth about the changing world by describing processes ?

And to complicate things further: Even Aristotle’s fixed statements of truth are processes. His sentences took time to write and they take time to read; they are fixed in books, but those books make no difference to anyone until someone takes it up to read. (And this is not even to introduce the fact that textual meaning changes with time.) So linguistic processes describe the processes of nature and society.