Aristotle's notion of matter has been seen either as unintelligible, it being some mysterious potential entity that is nothing in its own right, or as simply the notion of an everyday object. The latter is the common assumption in contemporary approaches to hylomorphism, but as has been pointed out, especially by scholars with a background in ancient philosophy, if we conceive of matter as an object itself we cannot account for the unity of hylomorphic substances. Thus, they assume that a (...) hylomorphic substance is an essential unity and matter not a constituent at all. This solution to the problem of unity, however, brings us back to the mysterious notion of matter. For these reasons, I will revisit Aristotle's conception of matter in this paper. I will argue that an understanding of form as a cause of being requires that matter be an independent constituent of the individual substance. However, I agree that the conception of matter as an individual object with an essence makes it impossible to solve the problem of unity. We therefore need to take seriously Aristotle's assertion that matter is nothing in its own right and not an individual. By denying that matter is an individual, Aristotle does not introduce a mysterious entity, nor does he deny that it can be identified independently of the whole; instead, matter for Aristotle is an irreducible plurality, and this explains why it is not an individual and has no essence. I will conclude with some observations on how this gives rise to two competing versions of hylomorphic constitution. (shrink)

Aristotle’s most fundamental distinction between changes and other activities is not that ofMetaphysicsΘ.6, between end-exclusive and end-inclusive activities, but one implicit inPhysics3.1’s definition of change, between the activity of something incomplete and the activity of something complete. Notably, only the latter distinction can account for Aristotle’s view, inPhysics3.3, that ‘agency’—effecting change in something, e.g. teaching—does not qualify strictly as a change. This distinction informsDe Anima2.5 and imparts unity to Aristotle’s extended treatment of change inPhysics3.1-3.

In this paper, I argue that Aristotle was already aware in his earlier texts of the fundamental distinction between motion and activity and of the criterion which structures this contrast. Moreover, I will present textual evidence which suggests that Aristotle’s original concept of ἐνέργεια applies primarily to activities which contain their ends in themselves, and not to motions, which are different from their ends.

Myles Burnyeat has argued that in De Anima II.5 Aristotle marks out a refined kind of alteration which is to be distinguished from ordinary alteration, change of quality as defined in Physics III.1-3. Aristotle's aim, he says, is to make it clear that perception is an alteration of this refined sort and not an ordinary alteration. Thus, it both supports his own interpretation of Aristotle's view of perception, and refutes the Sorabji interpretation according to which perception is a composite of (...) form and matter where the matter is a material alteration in the body. I argue that Burnyeat's interpretation of II.5 should be rejected for a number of reasons, and offer a new interpretation of the distinctions drawn in the chapter, and the relations between them. I conclude that the chapter provides no evidence against the Sorabji view or for Burnyeat's view. Aristotle's assertion that perception is a refined kind of alteration means that it is the kind of alteration that preserves and is good for the subject of that alteration. There is no inconsistency in the thought that perception is a refined alteration of this sort while it, or its matter, is an ordinary alteration. (shrink)

This paper offers an interpretation of Aristotle’s concepts of dynamis and energeia (commonly translated as potentiality and actuality), and of the thematic progression of Metaphysics IX. I first raise the question of where motion fits in Aristotle’s categories and argue that the locus of motion in the system of categories are the categories of doing and suffering, in which case dynamis and energeia in respect of motion can also be understood as the dynamis and energeia of doing and suffering. Next, (...) I argue that the analogy that Aristotle draws in IX.6 is an analogy between the dynamis and energeia of doing and suffering and the dynamis and energeia of substance. Finally, I try to show that it is this analogy between the kinetic and non-kinetic variants of dynamis and energeia—and not the distinction between end-inclusive and end-exclusive activities—that provides the key to understanding the structure of Metaphysics IX. (shrink)

This paper examines Aristotle's discussion of the priority of actuality to potentiality in geometry at Metaphysics Θ9, 1051a21–33. Many scholars have assumed what I call the "geometrical construction" interpretation, according to which his point here concerns the relation between an inquirer's thinking and a geometrical figure. In contrast, I defend what I call the "geometrical analysis" interpretation, according to which it concerns the asymmetrical relation between geometrical propositions in which one is proved by means of the other. His argument as (...) so construed is ultimately based on the asymmetrical relation between the corresponding geometrical facts. Then I explore this ontological priority in geometry by drawing attention to a parallel passage, Posterior Analytics II.11, 94a24–35, where Aristotle explains the relation between the same geometrical propositions in connection to material causation. (shrink)

A novel rereading of the relationship between ethics and ontology in Aristotle.

In this essay I argue that the central problem of Aristotle’s Metaphysics H (VIII) 6 is the unity of forms and that he solves this problem in just the way he solves the problem of the unity of composites – by hylomorphism. I also discuss the matter– form relationship in H 6, arguing that they have a correlative nature as the matter of the form and the form of the matter.

This essay aims to analyze the structure of Aristotle's Metaphysics Θ by explicating various senses of the term δύναµις at issue in the treatise. It is argued that Aristotle's central innovation, the sense of δύναµις most useful to his project in the treatise, is the kind of capacity characteristic of the pre-existent matter for substance. It is neither potentiality as a mode of being, as recent studies maintain, nor capacity for `complete' activity. It is argued further that, in starting with (...) the κύριος sense of δύναµις as capacity for change, Aristotle begins with the most familiar and acknowledged kind of capacity, in order to move to the less familiar but ultimately more useful notion of capacity for substance, and to bring these two kinds together through an analogical relation. (shrink)

The belief that Aristotle opposes potency (dunamis) to actuality (energeia or entelecheia) has gone untested. This essay defines and distinguishes forms of the Opposition Hypothesis—the Actualization, Privation, and Modal—examining the texts and arguments adduced to support them. Using Aristotle’s own account of opposition, the texts appear instead to show that potency and actuality are compatible, while arguments for their opposition produce intractable problems. Notably, Aristotle’s refutation of the Megarian Identity Hypothesis applies with equal or greater force to the Opposition Hypothesis. (...) For Aristotle, then, potency and actuality are compatible. (shrink)

Metaphysics Θ treats potentiality (δύναμις) and actuality (ἐνέργεια), and many scholars think that Aristotle broaches these topics once he has answered his main questions in Ζ and Η. In Ζ he asked, what is primary being? After arguing in Ζ.1 that substance (οὐσία) is primary being—a being existentially, logically, and epistemologically prior to quantities and qualities and other categorial beings—he devotes the rest of the book to οὐσία itself, investigating what it is, to decide what entities count as primary substances. (...) I differ from the leading interpretative consensus that ΖΗ adequately answer the questions about primary substance, and contend instead that Metaphysics Θ continues the same investigation as ΖΗ and, using δύναμις and ἐνέργεια as tools, arrives at a striking new conception of hylomorphism, different from that in ΖΗ, which enables Aristotle to defend the substantial primacy of living organisms consisting of matter and form. (shrink)

Aristotle's conception of being is dynamic. He believes that a thing is most itself when engaged in its proper activities, governed by its nature. This paper explores this idea by focusing on Metaphysics , a text that continues the investigation of substantial being initiated inMetaphysics Z. Q.1 claims that there are two potentiality-actuality distinctions, one concerned with potentiality in the strict sense, which is involved in change, the other concerned with potentiality in another sense, which he says is more useful (...) for the present project. His present project is the investigation of substantial being, and the relevant potentiality is the potentiality for activity, the full manifestation of what a thing is. I explore Aristotle's two potentiality-actuality distinctions AND argue that the second distinction is modeled on the first, with one crucial modification. Whereas a change is brought about by something other than the object or by the object itself considered as other (as when a doctor cures himself), an activity is brought about byte object itself considered as itself. This single modification yields an important difference: whereas a change leads to a state other than the one an object was previously in, an activity maintains or develops what an object already is. (shrink)

The Stoic theory of movement has never been the object of a deep investigation despite the considerable number of sources in Neoplatonist commentators. This paper explores for the first time the Stoic notion of ἐνέργεια, which plays a fundamental role in the Stoic conception of movement and generally in the characterization of interaction between bodies. I will show that the Stoics identified movement and activity, so that everything that is active is necessarily moved. This implies that the Stoics merely characterized (...) ἐνέργεια in a dynamic or kinetic sense, namely by connecting it with movement. In order to prove the coherence of this philosophical position to the Stoic doctrine, I will display the compatibility of Neoplatonists’ reports with other sources. Accordingly, I will claim that the Stoics conceived this peculiar sense of ἐνέργεια in reaction to Aristotle, who clearly distinguished between ἐνέργεια and κίνησις in his physical theory. (shrink)

Aristotle's inquiry into the definitional question “what is substance?” in the central books of the Metaphysics is constrained by the unity requirement. Roughly, a particular hylomorphic compound substance, such as this human, ought to be a unified whole and not just a heap of material parts and form. A similar claim applies to the substance‐kind, human, which Metaphysics ΖΗΘ characterises as a hylomorphic compound taken universally. I raise the following question about this picture of unity: Is a compound's unity basic (...) or is it derived from the form's unity? Reading closely Metaphysics Z.12 and H.6, I argue that the form is explanatorily basic for the compound's unity. (shrink)

On the one hand, Aristotle claims that the matter of a material thing is not part of its form. On the other hand, he suggests that the proper account of a natural thing must include a specification of the kind of matter in which it is realized. There are three possible strategies for dealing with this apparent tension. First, there may be two kinds of definition, so that the definition of the form of a thing does not include any specification (...) of its matter, whereas the definition of a compound does. Second, the definition of a substance may not include a specification of its matter at all, but still reveal in what kinds of matter its form can be realized. Third, there may be a special kind of matter, functional matter, which belongs to the form of certain things. I will show that the functional matter of a thing does not belong to its form (in a strict sense of “form”), but that an adequate account of natural substances and their functions must nonetheless involve a reference to their functional matter. This means that the function of a natural thing is not the same as its form and that its adequate account as a natural thing is not a definition (in a strict sense of “form” and “definition”). (shrink)

In this engaging book, Kosman offers a vigorous extended defence of a distinctive and highly ambitious claim, namely, that Aristotle’s account of potentiality/ability and actuality/activity in book Theta of the Metaphysics is an integral and central part of Aristotle’s account of what being is, which means that, for Kosman, Aristotle defends the thesis that being is, precisely, activity. In addition to the distinctive character of this claim, there are two notable suppositions behind it, which, likewise, Kosman defends. First, the Metaphysics (...) is addressed to a single, overall question, namely ‘What is it for something to be?’, a question that Aristotle introduces in book Gamma, takes on in books Zeta and Eta, gives a distinctive answer to in Theta and takes to its point of culmination in Lambda. This question, as Kosman spells out instructively and at length, is tackled by Aristotle through a distinction between primary being, or substance , and other beings .. (shrink)

It is much debated whether Aristotle’s conception of happiness includes all valuable goods or only intellectual activity of a certain kind . Our analysis of movement and activity yields a number of distinguishing features to which the eulogy for contemplation in EN X, 6-8 is referring. Moreover, good practice has the same ontological features as producing, certainly not a candidate for happiness. Man has many powers that can be actualised in their limit of perfection, but only one is an activity (...) and that is contemplation. So an analysis of the ontological basis of Aristotelian ethics leads to the conclusion that happiness must be understood along the lines of exclusivism. (shrink)

The Holocaust throws the study of the history of philosophy into crisis. Critiques of Western thinking leveled by such thinkers as Adorno, Levinas and, more recently, postmodern theorists have suggested that Western philosophy is inherently totalizing and that it must be read differently or altogether abandoned after Auschwitz. This article intentionally rereads Aristotle and Hegel through the shattered lens of the Holocaust. Its refracted focus is the question of ontological identity. By investigating the manner in which the totalizing dimensions of (...) Aristotle’s thinking are both eclipsed and implicitly endorsed by Hegel’s appropriation of Aristotle’s conception of God, and further by following the surplus of Hegel’s (mis)interpretation back into the heart of Aristotle’s ontology where we find a more open conception of ontological identity, we come to recognize not only the dangers endemic to certain strands of traditional philosophical thinking, but also the resources this tradition itself brings to bear on the attempt to think ontological identity after Auschwitz. (shrink)

Este artículo intenta comparar dos interpretaciones diferentes de la relación entre una capacidad y su correspondiente actualidad en Física III. El autor se concentra en la legitimidad de una distinción entre “capacidad de ser” y “capacidades de devenir”. Esta distinción se aplica a la interpretación de la definición de movimiento de Aristóteles. Mittelmann discute la circularidad que parece resultar de un recurso a “capacidades dinámicas”; luego se propone mostrar que el modo alternativo de construir la posición de Aristóteles por referencia (...) a la actualización incompleta de “capacidades de ser” produce algunas consecuencias contra-intuitivas. El trabajo termina por señalar que ambas estrategias llevan a una alternativa: o la definición aristotélica de movimiento debe aceptarse sin objeciones o debe ser rectificada en el sentido sugerido por W. D. Ross, pero a riesgo de hacer la definición circular. (shrink)