I'm reading a book on the history of philosophy and the author makes use of the word real-reality-really in such a way that is a bit confusing for me. For example:
Aristotle's knowledge theory searches the instruments that allow the knowledge of particular things, because they are the only and true reality.
Only the particular really exists.
Are reality and existence interchangeable? Did Aristotle have a conception of reality different from existence, or is the use of reality somehow anachronic in these passages?
As I understand it, the particular would have a material cause, and in the sense pointed above, "God" would exist but not be real.
I know that this author has marxist influence and I thought that perhaps there is an overlapping of the concepts of reality and materiality. One thing that came to my mind is that real could actually be meaning natural, but I don't have a clear definition of what would natural mean to Aristotle (possibly something like material existence).