Aristotle's Metaphysics Z 17 on Forms, Causes, Definition, and the Programme of H

FABIAN MIE

Santiago de Chile

Workshop; Problemas Aristotélicos. Jornada de Discusión; 2014

Universidad Diego Portales

If my suggestion is correct, again, we can have the expectation that a good amount of the argument of H will be dealing with the problem of definition of a material substance. And if this is so, a central topic in the discussion of H should concern the question of the relation?necessary or accidental?between form and matter in definition. Besides that, H would fulfil our expectation if it clarifies definitely the right way of making a definition of material compounds, assuming that matter must be included in the definition of a material form. Another related topic we are entitled to find discussed in H should be whether defining a material form without matter is a complete definition, or even a correct one, under the assumption that a material form includes matter in some non accidental sense. So book H should be largely dealing with matter as determined by form, and, more specific, with matter taken as a part of a material substance. It seems to me that the above loosely enumerated topics are examined, in fact, in H 2-3. And it also seems to me that the requirements for matter to be a non accidental part of a material substance could not be fulfilled by an absolutely indefinite matter, like that of Z 3. Sure enough, in this earlier chapter of Z Aristotle claimed that an indefinite material substratum cannot match with what we commonly assume about substance, namely that substance is something definite and separate (Z 3, 1029a28). My preferred programmatic and somewhat linear view on Z led me to organize my work as follows. In the following three paragraphs I will try to give a broad interpretation on Z 7 and Z 10, trying to display the announced antecedents of the main thesis about form as cause, and also about matter and definition as advanced in Z 17 and worked out later in H. My main purpose in the following two paragraphs will be to offer some picture on Z 7 and Z 10-12 in order to show that the hylomorphic framework and the analysis of generation gave rise to the problems concerning, firstly, causation of form, secondly, the unity of material compounds, and thirdly, the right construction of definitions of material forms. These are the issues which dominate the book H out of the thesis on causation advanced in Z 17. So I take Z 17 as a door hinge between the central books on substance; the hinge being actually the causal rol of form granted by essence.