Abstract
Z.17 starts with substance as a principle and cause. This principle and cause is form, and it is a matter-form composite’s cause of being. Form also isn’t an element of such a composite. All of this allows individual composites to be basic constituents. Although they depend for their being on the cause of their being, substantial forms, substantial forms depend for their being on being instantiated by individual composites. Either of these dependencies could determine which things are basic constituents. But Z.13–16 opts for the latter. Individual composites also aren’t compounds that depend for their being on their components. If they were, form would be an element of them. Thus, substantial forms constitute substantial being, and individual composites are the basic constituents that have this being.
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Notes
- 1.
Z.13 also began with the idea that substance is a principle and a cause. But there, the idea was used to introduce a Platonic theory that took universals to be basic constituents. As we shall see, in Z.17, it is used to reveal what substantial being is in the sensible world.
- 2.
- 3.
See also Z.17 1041a15–16, which says that asking why the moon is eclipsed presupposes that the moon is eclipsed.
- 4.
Burnyeat et al. (1979, 151) raise a problem for Aristotle’s rejecting ‘Why is (an) A (an) A?’ as the question whose answer reveals the cause Aristotle is looking for. Aristotle’s reference to an eclipse of the moon at 1041a15–16 suggests that this rejection is based on the requirement that what is to be explained be accepted as a fact before one can ask for its reason. But his taking ‘because a thing is itself’ as an answer to ‘Why is (an) A (an) A?’ suggests that Aristotle rejects this question because its answer is uninformative. Which of these is Aristotle’s reason for rejecting this kind of question? This problem disappears if, for example, answering ‘A man is himself’ to ‘Why is a man a man?’ is like the answer ‘A man is what he is’, which simply acknowledges that a man is without explaining why he is what he is, and so is uninformative when it comes to the reason why he is a man.
- 5.
At 1041a28, in a remark that is bracketed because it has been thought to be spurious, it is said that this cause is essence if one were to speak logikos . Taking this to be part of the text makes explicit something that is in the Posterior Analytics account of scientific explanation—that the kind of cause looked for here is a thing’s essence. But even if one omits this remark, one can see from what Aristotle says later in Z.17, that the cause he takes substance to be is an essence. At 1041a32 he refers to this cause as the cause of being, and at 1041b27 he says that the substance of each thing is the primary cause of its being, when De Anima II.4 415b12–13 says that a thing’s essence is the cause of its being.
- 6.
Again, this subject would seem to come from the accounts of a man and a house that don’t formulate their essences—a human soul in flesh and blood and a structure in bricks and stone that protects its occupants from the elements.
- 7.
See also 1041b27–28, where when summarizing the conclusion of this part of Z.17, Aristotle says that the cause he has been after is the substance of each thing and the primary cause of its being.
- 8.
I am grateful to Marc Cohen for calling my attention to this passage.
- 9.
This argument is similar to the argument in Chap. 15 that I took to lie behind the Z.13 Platonic view. But it is not the same argument since it doesn’t follow from it that the genus of a substantial form is that form’s substance and essence.
References
Bolton, Robert (1996), “Science and the Science of Substance in Aristotle’s Metaphysics,” in Lewis, Frank A. and Bolton, Robert (1996) editors, Form, Matter, and Mixture in Aristotle (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers), 231–298.
Burnyeat, Myles (2001), A Map of ‘Metaphysics’ Zeta (Pittsburgh: Mathesis Publications).
Burnyeat, Myles, et al. (1979), Notes on Book Zeta of Aristotle’s ‘Metaphysics’ (Oxford: Sub-faculty of Philosophy).
Charles, David (1994), “Matter and Form: Unity, Persistence, and Identity,” in Scaltsas, T., Charles, D., and Gill, M. L. (1994) editors, Unity, Identity and Explanation in Aristotle’s ‘Metaphysics’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 75–105.
Lewis, Frank A. (1996), “Aristotle on the Unity of Substance,” in Lewis, Frank A. and Bolton, Robert (1996) editors, Form, Matter, and Mixture in Aristotle (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers), 39–81.
Lewis, Frank A. (2013), How Aristotle gets by in ‘Metaphysics’ Zeta (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
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Dahl, N.O. (2019). Z.17, A Fresh Start. In: Substance in Aristotle's Metaphysics Zeta. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22161-4_17
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