Aristotle’s Metaphysics: Matter, Form, and Change
Aristotle’s Hylomorphic Theory
The first substance is the individual. It is constituted by essence or species. Aristotle asserts that this world is real and that plurality and change are real, opposing the views of philosophers like Parmenides and Plato. Aristotle introduces the concept of substance becoming or development. The first substance is what becomes, develops, and undergoes a growth process. To explain this, Aristotle argues that substance is composed of matter (hyle) and form (morphe).
The form is the essence of the thing, the second substance or species, and is eternal. However, it cannot exist without matter. Therefore, everything that becomes must also have matter.
Proximate matter might be brass or wood, for example. But Aristotle also speaks of prime matter (prote hyle), something indeterminate, formless, without quality or size, and incapable of independent existence.
Thus, what becomes or is generated (the individual particular) is the compound of matter and form. Form is eternal, but only exists instantiated within the compound of both matter and form.
Aristotle gives clear priority to the form. Indeed, the form is simultaneously: The essence of each thing and its nature. Only the form is definable and knowable. It is common to all members of a species, giving it a supra-individual character. In contrast, prime matter is unknowable in itself, but it is the principle that individuates the form/species.
Hierarchy and Categories of Being
For Aristotle, there are various ways of ‘being,’ all referring to a primary way of being: substance (ousia). Furthermore, substance is not monolithic; there are many substances. All other ways of being are accidents of substance. These include:
- Quantity
- Quality
- Relation
- Place
- Time
- Position
- State (or Condition/Possession)
- Action
- Passion (or Affection)
Substance and its accidents constitute the supreme genera of being. Aristotle called these the categories, unified by their common reference to substance.
Change (Kinesis): Potency and Act
The concepts of potency (dynamis) and act (energeia/entelecheia) are crucial to understanding the change or development of substance. Parmenides had argued for the immobility of being. Plato attempted to overcome this by admitting the reality of a form of non-being (otherness). Aristotle introduces another real form of non-being: potency. This explains the change in substance: in every being, there is ‘what it already is’ (act) and its ‘capacity to become’ (potency).
Potency is of two types: active (the capacity to produce change, residing in the agent) and passive (the capacity to be changed or receive the action, residing in the patient).
To designate act, Aristotle uses two terms: energeia and entelecheia. Energeia is often translated as ‘activity’ or ‘actuality.’ Entelecheia signifies the state of completion or perfection of something that was potential.
Potency, Act, and Form are interconnected concepts. Matter corresponds to potency. Form is what actualizes the matter, bringing the potential being to its perfected state or actuality.
Identifying form more closely with act and the dynamic aspect of being, Aristotle again proclaims its absolute priority over matter. This priority of form leads Aristotle to posit that the ultimate explanation of the universe involves the existence of pure form(s), completely free of matter, existing eternally in actuality (e.g., the Unmoved Mover).