Separate Form?

“Lambda 3 goes on to show that form cannot be separate” (Aubry, Dieu san la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 5, p. 168, my translation throughout).

I have always been rather baffled by interpretations of book Lambda that claimed to find evidence there that Aristotle finally revives the notion of separate form he so thoroughly refutes elsewhere.

“The first object of Lambda 3 is to examine the well-foundedness of the Platonic arguments in favor of the separation of form — or its pretension to the status of ousia [“substance”]. The permanence of form in generation can be invoked in support of such a thesis” (ibid).

“[F]orm, even if it well fits the Platonic criterion of ousia that is permanence, does not meet the specifically Aristotelian criteria. Here the appeal will be to that of tode ti, of being a ‘this'” (ibid).

“[T]he text opens with a new formula of change, which, contrary to the previous ones, takes into account its cause” (ibid).

As Sachs renders the full passage that she cites in part, “For with everything, something changes, by the action of something, and into something: that by the action of which it changes is the first thing that sets it in motion, that which changes is the material, and that into which it changes is the form. For it comes into being either by art or by nature, or else by fortune or chance. And next after this is the fact that each independent thing comes into being from something that has the same name (for this is true both of natural independent things and of the rest). Now art is a source that is something else, but nature is a source that is in the thing itself (since a human being begets a human being), while the rest of the causes are deprivations of these” (Metaphysics, p. 233).

Aubry notes that this language appears to be a bit of a regression, since matter has already been superseded by potentiality in Lambda chapter 2. But she explains that chapters 2 and 3 constitute a pair concerned respectively with matter and form, and chapter 2 did not yet address form.

She points out that Aristotle goes on to mention three kinds of substance, among which form is conspicuously not included. “What are enumerated are matter, which is only in appearance a tode ti; phusis [nature], which is at the same time a tode ti and a hexis [acquired disposition]; and finally, the composite, or individual realities, the kath ekasta like Socrates and Callias. Where we might expect the term form, we instead find that of phusis, which will be qualified again as hexis. For phusis is precisely a form realized in a matter, stabilized as hexis at the end of a process. Such an enumeration already signals that form as such cannot be counted as ousia, and cannot be separate, in the sense that it does not exist apart from the composite” (p. 169).

“In Zeta 8, it was already the intervention of the criterion of tode ti that allowed it to be established that form does not exist apart from (para) the composite, and thus to reject as superfluous the hypothesis of the Platonic Forms, since, at least in the case of natural beings, it is indeed an individual — and a concrete composite — that engenders another. But besides Zeta 8, it is necessary to refer equally to Eta 1…. Eta 1 makes intervene, in addition to the criterion of tode ti, the criterion of khoriston, which, as we have underlined, is equally present in Lambda 1. The examination established that matter is only a tode ti in-potentiality, dunamei; while form is only [a tode ti] insofar as it is to logo khoriston [separate according to the formula, or in speech]; and only the composite is khoriston haplos [separate simply]” (pp. 169-170).

“Like the criterion of khoriston and even dissociated from it, the criterion of individuality indeed leads to only counting the composite of matter and form as ousia” (p. 170).

“[I]n the case of art, there can be form without matter, but the form thus considered is nothing but tekhne [art] itself, that is to say in fact the form such as it is conceived and envisioned by the artisan. In the case of phusis, the principle of synonymy, the permanence of one same form transmitted from one individual to another, is sufficient to explain how we are led, as Plato did, to assert that there exist distinct forms of natural substances. But we can conclude from this neither that they are separate, nor that their character is that of tode ti and of ousia.”

“This would presuppose that the forms exist apart from and independent of composites, and in particular that they are capable of pre-existing as well as perhaps surviving them. But in truth, the existence of the formal cause is simultaneous with that of the composite. Certainly health is distinct from the healthy, and sphericity from the bronze sphere, but health and sphericity do not have full existence, that is to say do not exist as ousia except as instantiated in the cured patient, the completed sphere” (ibid).

“At the end of the whole formed by Lambda 2 and 3, we are indeed in possession of a positive result: matter, conceived kata dunamei, can be extended from the corruptible sensibles to the eternal sensibles; but also a negative result: form cannot be separate. Each of these results already contains elements of a response to the guiding questions posed in Lambda 1: whether or not it is possible to unify the principles of substance; and the nature of the separate. One term is still missing: that of energeia, in which will reside the definitive response to these two questions” (p. 171).

In discussing Lambda 2, she emphasized the substitution of potentiality for matter. Here in passing she suggests that alternatively, we could consider that matter has been redefined along with potentiality. But which alternative we endorse is really just a question of the optimal use of words. The old understanding of both matter and potentiality has been left behind.

Next in this series: Explanation by Constituents?

Substance, Essence, Form

Here I will partially translate and briefly comment on Gwenaëlle Aubry’s analysis of the argument of book Zeta of Aristotle’s Metaphysics in chapter 3 of her Dieu sans la puissance. I think it is important to carefully capture a fair amount of the technical detail, especially because she is in part arguing against the most widely accepted traditional interpretation of a key point in the interpretation of Aristotle, which has to do with Aristotle’s ultimate attitude toward form.

(For the sake of the general reader, I have elided her precise citations, which use the standard Becker numbers for lines in the Greek text. English for much of book Zeta is reproduced in my own initial commentary on it. I have also omitted numerous accent marks that are sometimes used in romanization of Greek words.)

Aubry notes that whereas Aristotle uses the same word ousia for both primary and secondary substance in the senses of the Categories (a “this” and a universal, respectively), medieval Latin translations used substantia for primary substance and essentia for secondary substance. One important question raised in the discussion has to do with whether there are any cases where the “substance” and the “essence” of a thing are the same.

At the beginning of Zeta chapter 3, ousia is defined in terms very close to those of the Categories, as something that is not said of an underlying thing, but rather is the underlying thing of which other things are said.

“Matter being that which remains, it seems to be a substrate in the physical sense of the term…. But it also seems to satisfy the logical signification of the criterion of hypokeimenon [underlying thing]” (2nd ed., p. 77).

“But it is precisely the adequation of matter to the criterion of hypokeimenon, in its double acceptance logical and physical, that manifests the insufficiency of this criterion — and by that also the necessity of completing the analysis of the Categories” (ibid). She quotes Aristotle: “But this is impossible, for also to be separate and a this seem to belong to an independent thing most of all” (Sachs tr., p. 120). “No more than it suffices to respond to the question ‘what is ousia‘ that it is the substrate, does it suffice to respond… that ousia is matter” (Aubry, p. 77).

“This new criterion, that of khoriston kai tode ti [separate and a ‘this’], nonetheless conserves a trait of ousia as defined in the Categories: the capacity for independent existence. The initial analysis of Zeta thus has the effect at the same time of accentuating this trait, and of distinguishing the notion of a capacity for independent existence, or that of subsistence, from those of substrate and subject” (ibid).

“[T]here where one would expect to see the examination of form as a candidate developed, it is an analysis of to ti en einai [the what it was to have been] that is deployed, with respect to both the essence and the object of a definition (Zeta [chapters] 4-6). Of form, eidos, there is no question before Zeta 6″ (p. 78).

“This approach is qualified as logikos [logical]…. The logical approach to ousia will be governed by two questions: first, is there no essence but that of substance (Zeta 4-5)? Then, in what cases is essence identical to substance (Zeta 6)?” (ibid).

“One begins from the logical definition of essence as that which is said in accord with itself (kath auto). In the Posterior Analytics, the first sense of ‘in accord with itself’ names precisely what is mentioned in the definition of a given being and constitutes its ousia” (ibid).

“One goes on to conclude that there is an essence for everything for which one can give an account in a definition…. One does not affirm, nonetheless, that to ti en einai is the ousia, but only that it pertains to it first. According to the steps characteristic of Zeta, one goes on to establish not an exclusivity, but an order of priority: thus, essence belongs first and absolutely, protos kai haplos, to ousia. To the other categories, it belongs only secondarily…, in a certain way…, not absolutely” (pp. 78-79).

“Thus associating essence and definition, one remains in a Platonic logic…, even if Zeta 5 establishes that definition can give account not only of simple substances, but also of composite substances insofar as they are composite, on the condition that the composition is not accidental” (p. 79).

“The question thus arises to know whether there exist substances identical to their essence: for these are the sort of beings that the Platonists call ‘Ideas’…. Formulating this point, Aristotle clearly designates to ti en einai [what it was to have been], or the essence, as principle of intelligibility, and ousia as principle of being: if they were separated the one from the other, he writes, there would be no knowledge of the one, and the other would not exist” (ibid).

If being and intelligibility were not inseparable, there would be no knowledge of the one, and the other would not exist. But they don’t exactly coincide, either. Something similar could be said about being and value.

“Otherwise said, the guiding question is to know in what measure substance is identical to its essence, or to measure the division between a being and its principle of intelligibility: it is not again to know whether the essence can itself be considered a substance, that is to say capable of a separate existence” (ibid, emphasis in original).

(This relation of substance to essence bears some structural resemblance to the relation between existence and essence discussed by Aquinas. The criteria currently under discussion for ousia or “substance” (“separateness”, and being a “this”) indeed seem to have something to do with common notions of existence. But the ousia or substance is said to be the independent thing, whereas existence is commonly treated as an abstract property that can be said of things. And for Aquinas, God gives existence to an essence. But Aristotle starts by recognizing independent things that implicitly already exist.)

“But it is necessary, before arriving there, to establish the equivalence between essence and form, or between to ti en einai and the eidos. This is what the following chapters (Zeta 7-12), where the term eidos reappears, are concerned with” (p. 80).

The earlier “logical” approach is succeeded by a more physical approach in Zeta 7-9. “Form is the physical equivalent of essence…. Form is the essence that is found really instantiated in particular indviduals” (ibid).

“One indeed finds in form two traits characteristic of ousia, and more precisely of ousia as Plato had defined it” (ibid).

“Form can indeed pretend to the title of primary ousia. But (and this is essential), the text of Zeta itself distinguishes between ousia prote [primary substance] and ousia malista [what is substance most of all]. In the Categories, on the other hand, these terms are associated…. But while the denomination ousia prote is applied in Zeta to the form, that of ousia malista is applied to the composite, sunolon: that which is ousia malista is a human, a plant — not the ungenerated principle of generation that is form, but the concrete thing that is generated, mixed of form and matter” (p. 81).

“Ousia prote must be distinguished as much from ousia malista as from ousia said simply, or haplos, which is not the form [as such] but the immanent [instantiation of] form, associated with the matter together with which it constitutes the composite. This distinction is explicitly formulated in the preceding lines, in relation to the problem of definition: the definition does not include the matter” (ibid, emphasis in original).

“Form and ousia prote are nothing else than essence [to ti en einai, what it was to have been a thing]” (p. 82).

“If ousia prote is not the same in Zeta and in the Categories, it is because prote [primary] does not have the same sense in the two texts” (ibid). She has already noted that Zeta 1 explicitly recalls that “primary” or “first” is said in more than one way.

On the other hand, “The ousia malista of Zeta does correspond to the ousia prote of the Categories: it designates the individual.”

“From this, the form is clearly distinguished: the form signifies toionde, ‘of what species’; it is not a tode kai horismenon, an individual being subject to definition, but it produces and generates a being of that species in the individual…. No more than the matter does it correspond to the criterion of tode ti [being a ‘this’]” (ibid).

“The eidos is not fully ousia; it is only primary ousia, its anteriority being at once epistemological, as the logical analysis showed, and chronological, as the physical analysis showed. The form is only ousia in a Platonic sense, as the object of a definition, principle of intelligibility and of permanence, in short insofar as it is nothing other than essence comprising identity at the level of a species, and transmitted, by art or by generation, from one individual to another” (pp. 82-83).

“There is indeed a tension between ousia prote and ousia malista…. If the analysis of Zeta 7 manifests this, it indicates also, and already, the means to resolve it, in introducing, in the context of the study of generation, the notions of dunamis [potentiality] and entelecheia [entelechy]. Their substitution, in Eta, for those of matter and form, authorizes the reconciliation of the candidates, the criteria, and does so for both series of ousia, prote and malista: and it is at the end of Theta that the initial reflection of Zeta on this anteriority finds its culmination, since act is there said to be anterior both to to logo and te ousia, both from the point of view of the formula and from that of substance…. It will thus be possible to think the ousiai proterai not, in the manner of Plato, as forms-essences abusively separated from the matter they determine and the individual they define, but as acts having both an autonomous subsistence and a full intelligibility” (p. 83).

“Nonetheless, if we have on the one hand confirmed the identity between form, essence, and the object of definition and, on the other hand, qualified that between these three terms and ousia, we have up to now left aside another term fundamental to the Platonic equation: the universal” (p. 84).

“The universal meets neither the criterion of [full] determination, since it is common to many things, nor the criterion of being a substrate, since it is always affirmed of a subject…. Thus the universal cannot be called ousia in the qualified and reduced sense that essence is” (ibid).

“Once the pretention of the universal to the title of ousia has been eliminated, it remains to examine the question of its equivalence to form and essence. This is more complex, since form and essence are indeed a certain type of universal, a determinate one. But the fundamental point does not lie in this: the break with Platonism does not come, as maintained by the traditional reading, by way of the distinction between universal and form, and the affirmation that only the form would be ousia; it lies above all in the affirmation according to which form or essence itself is not fully ousia, the idea indeed according to which it does not suffice to be ousia kata ton logon [ousia according to what is said] to be ousia malista [ousia most of all]” (pp. 84-85, emphasis in original).

Aristotle in general does greatly emphasize the importance of what is said. Plato goes further, in making definition the very criterion of ousia. But for Aristotle, concrete things are not reducible to their definitions alone, and it is the concrete things that come first.

“The Platonic solution having been eliminated, we are brought back to the problem from which it was born (and which Beta calls the most difficult of all: how to think the relation between the individual and its principle of intelligibility” (p. 85).

“This problem is related to another…, how to think eternal and intelligible substances” (p. 86).

“Zeta 17 introduces a new point of departure… the point of view of principles and causes…. [I]n investigating the cause, it is first of all to ti en einai [what it was to have been a thing] that is researched” (ibid).

“But what is found there brought to light is not the nature of separate substance, as we might have hoped, but on the contrary the correlation of form and matter in the context of the composite substance” (ibid).

“These lines are generally read as the conclusion of Zeta, and as an ultimate affirmation of the identity between form and ousia. But it seems that they mark much more the insufficiency of this result” (ibid).

“Considered in its etiological, and not only logical, function, and taken as end, the form, in effect, is act. For the notion of act, insofar as it is substituted for that of form, but by way of completion, permits the reconciliation of the different criteria of ousia, as well as resolving the tension between ousia prote and ousia malista” (p. 87, emphasis in original).

“Act is ousia, absolutely, and in the full sense, from the logical and epistemological points of view as well as the ontological and etiological. If act allows ousia to be thought according to the double criterion of separation and intelligibility, it also allows the intelligible and separate substances to be thought, as Lambda will show. As for the notion of dunamis, its correlate, it serves to allow the reintegration of the candidate that Zeta has discarded: matter.”

“The notions of dunamis and energeia have something remarkable about them that allows a maximal extension of the notion of ousia to be given, without falling into equivocation, but on the contrary resolving the conflict between substance and essence, as well as that between simple and composite substances” (ibid).

Next in this series: Entelechy and Hylomorphism

Abstract and Concrete

In contrast to later traditional “metaphysics”, Aristotle recommended we start with the concrete, but then aim to dialectically rise to higher understanding, which is still of the concrete. In any inquiry, we should begin with the things closer to us, but as Wittgenstein said in a different context, we should ultimately aim to kick away the ladder upon which we climbed.

What Aristotle would have us eventually kick away is by no means the concrete itself, but only our preliminary understanding of it as a subject of immediate, simple reference. Beginnings are tentative, not certain. We reach more solid, richer understanding through development.

Aristotle’s discussion of “primary” substance in Categories has often been turned into a claim that individuals are ontologically more primary than form. This is to misunderstand what Categories is talking about. Aristotle explicitly says Categories will be about “things said without combination” [emphasis added], i.e., about what is expressed by kinds of apparently atomic sayings that are used in larger sayings.

The initial definition of substance in the strict or “primary” sense — which he will eventually kick away in the Metaphysics — is of a thing (said) “which is neither said of something underlying nor in something underlying”. (Aristotle often deliberately leaves it open whether he is talking about a referencing word or a referenced thing — or says one and implies the other — because in both cases, the primary concern is the inferential meaning of the reference.)

This initial definition is a negative one that suffices to distinguish substance from the other categories. By implication, it refers to something that is said simply of something, in the way that a proper name is. As examples, he gives (namings of) an individual human, or an individual horse.

“Socrates” would be said simply of Socrates, and would thus “be” — or refer to — a primary substance in this sense. The naming of Socrates is an apparently simple reference to what we might call an object. As Brandom has noted, this picks out a distinctive semantic and inferential role that applies only to references to singular things.

Aristotle then says that more universal namings or named things like “human” and “horse” are also “substances” — i.e., can also refer to singular objects — in a secondary sense, as in “that horse”. Then substance in general is further distinguished, by saying it is something A such that when something else B is said of it, both the naming and the “what-it-is” of B are said of the primary or secondary substance A. (See also Form; Things in Themselves; Definition.)

If a horse as such “is” a mammal of a certain description, then that horse must be a mammal of that description. If a mammal as such “is” warm-blooded, then that horse “is” warm-blooded.

These are neither factual nor ontological claims, but consequences of a rule of interpretation telling us what it means to say these kinds of things. Whether or not something is a substance in this sense is surely a key distinction, for it determines the validity or invalidity of a large class of inferences.

Based on the classification of A as an object reference and B as something said of A, we can make valid inferences about A from B.

When something else C is said of the non-substance B, by contrast, we still have a “naming” of B, but the “what-it-is” or substantive meaning of C does not apply to B itself, but only modifies it, because B is not an object reference. Applying the substantive meaning of C to B — i.e., making inferences about B from the meaning of C — would be invalid in this case.

Just because, say, warm-blooded as such “is” a quality, there is no valid inference that mammals “are” qualities, or that that horse “is” a quality. The concern here is with validity of a certain kind of inference and interpretation, not ontology (or epistemology, either).

In the Metaphysics, the initial referential notion of substance as something underlying is explicitly superseded through a far more elaborate development of “what it was to have been” a thing that emphasizes form, and ultimately actuality and potentiality. The appearance of what might be mistaken for a sort of referential foundationalism is removed. (See also Aristotelian Dialectic.)

I also think he wanted to suggest that practically, a kind of preliminary grasp of some actuality has to come first in understanding. Actuality is always concrete and particular, and said to be more primary. But potentiality too plays an irreducible role, in underwriting the relative persistence of something as the “same” something through change, which motivated the earlier talk about something underlying. The persistence of relatively stable identities of things depends on their counterfactual potentiality, which can only be apprehended in an inferential way. (See also Aristotelian Demonstration.)

It does make sense to say that things like actuality and substance inhere more in the individual than in the species, but that is due to the meanings of actuality and substance, not to an ontological status.