 Fârâbî by contrast maintains, following Aristotle in Metaphysics IV,2, that unity is coextensive with being, and that both “one” and “being” are truly and properly said of many things. Indeed, Fârâbî claims, not just that these many things are each truly being and truly one, but that they are essentially so, i.e., that they are not being and one [mawjûd, wâḥid] through an existence or unity [wujûd, waḥda] which is accidental to them or extrinsic to their quiddity, as something is white through an accident of whiteness. There are senses of being, notably being as the true, in which existence is accidental, but in the primary sense of being, and the sense of primary interest to the metaphysician, the things’s existence is its quiddity or part of its quiddity; and so too, Fârâbî claims, for the unity corresponding to the sense of “one” of primary interest to the metaphysician, which is convertible with this sense of “being”. In order for Fârâbî to deflect Kindî’s arguments against the claim that there are many things that are each truly and essentially one, it is crucial for him not only to distinguish different senses of “one”, but also to distinguish different ways that senses of “one” can be related to senses of “many”. Fârâbî distinguishes between a many that is the subject of a one, a many that is opposite to a one, and a many that arises from a one. When Fârâbî says that some sense of “many” is the opposite of some sense of “one”, he apparently means that these kinds of unity and multiplicity are contraries or that one of them is the privation of the other. When he talks about a many that arises from a one, he seems to mean what Aristotle calls a many that is “measured by” a one, i.e., a many composed out of ones of this type, so that the one or unit can be used to count the many. (Aristotle says in Metaphysics X that in this kind of one-many relationship the unity and the multiplicity are correlatives, as the measure and the measured, whereas when one and many are related as indivisible and divisible, unity as indivisibility is a privation of multiplicity as divisibility. Or perhaps he really means that, although from the point of view of our language and our concepts divisibility is the more basic and indivisibility is its privation, in reality indivisibility is basic and divisibility is its privation. In Aristotle’s terminology, possession and privation are one kind of opposites, contraries are another, contradictories are another, and correlatives are yet another. But Fârâbî apparently does not count correlatives here as opposites.)