Aristotle’s Metaphysics: Understanding Substance and Essence
Metaphysics: Understanding Substance
Aristotle’s *Metaphysics*
Aristotle’s Metaphysics is a collection of treatises or “courses,” likely developed over the last two periods of his thought. He called it “first philosophy.” The name “metaphysics” is due to Andronicus of Rhodes. All these treatises are about metaphysics, or first philosophy. Since then, it has been understood as “that which is beyond the physical,” that is, the reality that is demonstrable experimentally.
“All men by nature desire to know.” This optimistic phrase begins Aristotle’s Metaphysics. There are varying degrees of knowledge, considering that science is desirable for itself and not for its results. This desirable science is the science of the first principles or first causes. Its principle is defined in admiration. Aristotle defines metaphysics as “the science of being qua being.” It can also serve as “the science of first principles, considering the fact in their assembly.” Philosophy was born of the desire to understand. In Aristotle’s Metaphysics, wisdom is excellence in universal knowledge of the highest degree. Sciences have particular objects. Metaphysics focuses on “first philosophy” because it is universal. Being is analogous (that is, it has many meanings). In conclusion, being has many ways of manifesting, all through substance. The first philosophy, or science that studies being, is presented in Aristotle as knowledge about substance. There is a basic category called substance (ousia), which is the essence of everything, which exists by itself and is not predicated of anything else.
Critique of Plato and Socrates
Aristotle criticizes Plato and Socrates for the theory of Ideas, holding fast that to be the truly real, the being or substance, it could not be an Idea. For Aristotle, the separateness of essences is unacceptable, and all his criticism of Plato focuses on this point:
- To try to explain this world, Plato creates another world, the Ideas, doubling the difficulty.
- The World of Ideas cannot explain anything about the world of things because, being separated from the ideas of things, they are not exactly their essences. If they were the essence of things, they would be in them.
- Nor do the ideas explain the origin and evolution of things. In fact, Plato is forced to resort to the figure of the demiurge.
- Aristotle also criticizes the mathematization of the theory of Ideas.
For Aristotle, only individual concrete substances are real. Against Plato, the world regains its full reality. Aristotle notes that after the changes in appearance that affect almost all objects, something remains unaltered. The material substrate is not affected by the changes; it is the substance. It is the real support on which all other changing qualities rest. These changing qualities are accidents (color, hardness of a material, form). But Aristotle extends the designation of substance and distinguishes between:
- Primary substance: the concrete individual.
- Secondary substances: the species to which the individuals belong (male) and the gender to which these species belong (animal).
Secondary substance is the essence of the species and gender. There is only something real about them, not about individuals. Science concerns the universal (science has a universal design). That is why Aristotle considers secondary substances as substances in a secondary sense. Primary substance is the actual individual (Socrates); the others are made in the species (man, secondary substance) which was predicated of the first. This means that, for Aristotle, the world is real, and plurality and becoming are real (in opposition to Parmenides and Plato: there are many individuals of the same species and they are subject to permanent changes).
Hylomorphism: Matter and Form
Ultimately, substance in Aristotle introduces the concept of becoming or development: The substance is what it becomes, what develops. To explain this fact, he holds that substance is a compound (synolon) of matter (hyle) and form (morphe). This is the theory of hylomorphism. The form is the essence of everything; it is the secondary substance and exists only in eternal matter. What becomes, what is engendered, is the individual concrete, the compound of matter and form. Aristotle prioritizes form over matter because it is the essence of everything, of all species.
Potency and Act
In parallel to the distinction between matter and form to explain the composition of beings, Aristotle distinguishes between potency and act to justify change, opposing the idea of Parmenides (that change is impossible because it is equivalent to the transition from non-being to being). According to Aristotle, we must distinguish between what “is this being,” the act, and what “can become even though it is not yet,” the potency. Movement is possible because beings have within them the capacity for transformation. Movement is the transition from being in potency to being in act. The act prevails over the potency since there is only potency when there is an act that determines it: you can have countless potentialities, but only those that are actualized are real. Potency and act, form and matter are parallel structures: the potential is a matter of form, and the form is the actualization of matter.