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About twenty five years ago, it was reported that ?H6 is a text which is frequently caught in the crossfire of competing interpretations of Aristotle?s explanation of substantial unity.? After this diagnosis, the report adds the following prescription: ?It thus seems important to establish how this chapter works just in itself.? Both the diagnosis and the prescription were right at that time and remain still valid today. We can share the ideal goal of resolving scholarly disagreements about this chapter, ?namely whether the object whose unity is primarily at issue in H6 is the form man or the composite man?. However, in view of its complex dialectical argument and its possible references to other chapters of the central books one may doubt that the interpreter is really able to make sense of Aristotle?s solution to the problem of unity if one relies on H6 only. So I would propose to link H6 particularly to Z12, since, I submit, H6?s solution heavily relies on Z12?s model for explaining the unity of form and definition. This is reflected in H6?s structure, since the chapter raises the same difficulty for two different issues, namely, forms, in the first half (1045a7-25), and form-matter compounds, in the second (1045a25-b23).Now, the language of the chapter already tells us something about its program and argumentative strategy. In particular, the wording used in 1045a22 makes it clear that Aristotle attempts to solve the difficulty about unity (ἀποδοῦναι καὶ λῦσαι τὴν ἀπορίαν, 1045a22) by overcoming some (Platonic) obstacles. This same ?euporematic? stance is conveyed in an emphatic manner by suggesting that, by means of a different take of forms and their parts, we can do away with the difficulty about the cause of unity (οὐκέτι ἀπορία δόξειεν ἂν εἶναι τὸ ζητούμενον, 1045a24-25). The same wording is repeated in 1045a29 and the same moral is implicit at the end of the chapter in 1045b16-22, although this time about material compounds: if we address the problem of complex items in a different way, ?the question will no longer seem a difficulty?. However, this is not to say that, for Aristotle, these difficulties can be easily removed; they are, rather, serious philosophical challenges whose solution requires a careful elaboration of a detailed alternative theory involving the modal refinements (potentiality and actuality) of the hylomorphic concepts (form and matter) used in H6an elaboration which probably goes far beyond the limits of this same chapter. Much of the interpretation of the possible solutions to these challenges rely on how we take the ?same difficulty? raised, as it seems, for different issues, in 1045a24-25. Accordingly, the dominant scholarly approachwhich raises the alternative as to whether the object whose unity is primarily at issue is either the form or the compound, should be reformulated so as to take H6 covering both forms and hylomorphic or material compounds. Actually, dividing the chapter in two halves and advancing this ecumenical view about the objects whose unity is discussed within it, in the specific way I will do here, do already commit me to go beyond H6 to better understand its own solution. This is so because, as suggested, in H6 Aristotle heavily relies on a general model of unity carried out mainly in Z12 for forms. This reliance of H6 on Z12 may mitigate the uncomfortable feelings with which the reader may be left when one checks the brief presentation of the solution to the problem of unity in a scant number of lines in H6. However, as matter of fact, where should we find Aristotle?s solution in H6 is one of the controversies about this chapter. I will suggest that it is in 1045a23-25 for the unity of forms, and in 1045a29-33 for the unity of hylomorphic compounds, which is complemented in the summary at 1045b17-22. Although establishing how the argument of the chapter works in itself has to do more with an exegetical task, it is particularly true for H6 that the interpretation of its philosophical theory is strongly conditioned upon the exegesis. This fact impacts on the defenders of what may be labeled the traditional and the anti-traditional readings of H6. It is therefore particularly advisable in this case to ground the interpretation on the clearest possible exegesis of the dialectic with which Aristotle carries out his argument here.The solution to the problem of unity I will grant both to Z12 and to H6 is by means of a single model, which is elaborated for forms and definitions in Z12 and then applied by analogy to hylomorphic compounds in H6. If I am right, in H6 Aristotle recalls that modelconveyed now in the vocabulary, proper to the book H, of form and matter in their modal versionsbriefly at 1045a23-25. Setting aside further issues about the place of Z12 within the composition of book Z, one my take for granted that this chapterin which Aristotle addresses the problem of the unity of forms as the object of divisional definitionmust be located within the broader framework given by the leading chapter, Z4, in which Aristotle discusses at an avowedly general or abstract level (λογικῶς) whether the essence (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) is substance (1029a1-13). It is uncontroversial that, with the exception of Z7-9, which have a high likelihood of having been introduced into this place only laterand again setting aside which could be the importance of the distinction between form, matter, and compounds, made in Z7-9, with regard to the argument of the entire book, the characteristic concepts and issues that belong to hylomorphism do not rank in in Z4-6, Z10-11, and Z12 as high in importance as they will do later in Z17. The only point I would like to stress now is that if there is a solution to the problem of unity of the object of definition in Z12, this is by means of a model that basically departs from taking the components as independent beings. In the case of forms and their definitions, these components are genus and differentiae. Now, Aristotle?s model in Z12 is developed in strict contrast to some Platonic understanding of the items involved in forms and definitions.

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