## 1. The Subject Matter of Aristotle's Metaphysics



Aristotle himself described his subject matter in a variety of ways:
as 'first philosophy', or 'the study of being qua
being', or 'wisdom', or 'theology'. A
comment on these descriptions will help to clarify Aristotle's
topic.



In *Metaphysics* A.1, Aristotle says that "everyone
takes what is called 'wisdom' (*sophia*) to be
concerned with the primary causes (*aitia*) and the
starting-points (or principles, *archai*)"
(981b28), and it is these causes and principles that he
proposes to study in this work. It is his customary practice to begin
an inquiry by reviewing the opinions previously held by others, and
that is what he does here, as Book A continues with a history of
the thought of his predecessors about causes and principles.



These causes and principles are clearly the subject matter of what he
calls 'first philosophy'. But this does not mean the
branch of philosophy that should be studied first. Rather, it concerns
issues that are in some sense the most fundamental or at the highest
level of generality. Aristotle distinguished between things that are
"better known to us" and things that are "better
known in
 themselves,"[1]
 and maintained that we should begin our study of a given topic with
things better known to us and arrive ultimately at an understanding of
things better known in themselves. The principles studied by
'first philosophy' may seem very general and abstract, but
they are, according to Aristotle, better known in themselves, however
remote they may seem from the world of ordinary experience. Still,
since they are to be studied only by one who has already studied
nature (which is the subject matter of the *Physics*), they are
quite appropriately described as coming "after the
*Physics*."



Aristotle's description 'the study of being qua
being' is frequently and easily misunderstood, for it seems to
suggest that there is a single (albeit special) subject
matter--being qua being--that is under investigation. But
Aristotle's description does not involve two things--(1) a
study and (2) a subject matter (being qua being)--for he did not
think that there is any such subject matter as 'being qua
being'. Rather, his description involves three things: (1) a
study, (2) a subject matter (being), and (3) a manner in which the
subject matter is studied (qua being).



Aristotle's Greek word that has been Latinized as
'qua' means roughly 'in so far as' or
'under the aspect'. A study of *x* qua *y*,
then, is a study of *x* that concerns itself solely with the
*y* aspect of *x*. So Aristotle's study does not
concern some recondite subject matter known as 'being qua
being'. Rather it is a study of being, or better, of
beings--of things that can be said to be--that studies them
in a particular way: as beings, in so far as they are beings.



Of course, first philosophy is not the only field of inquiry to study
beings. Natural science and mathematics also study beings, but in
different ways, under different aspects. The natural scientist studies
them as things that are subject to the laws of nature, as things that
move and undergo change. That is, the natural scientist studies things
qua movable (i.e., in so far as they are subject to change). The
mathematician studies things qua countable and measurable. The
metaphysician, on the other hand, studies them in a more general and
abstract way--qua beings. So first philosophy studies the causes
and principles of beings qua beings. In G.2, Aristotle adds that
for this reason it studies the causes and principles of substances
(*ousiai*). We will explain this connection in Section 3
below.



In Book E, Aristotle adds another description to the study of
the causes and principles of beings qua beings. Whereas natural
science studies objects that are material and subject to change, and
mathematics studies objects that although not subject to change are
nevertheless not separate from (i.e., independent of) matter, there is
still room for a science that studies things (if indeed there are any)
that are eternal, not subject to change, and independent of matter.
Such a science, he says, is theology, and this is the
"first" and "highest" science.
Aristotle's identification of theology, so conceived, with the
study of being qua being has proved challenging to his interpreters.
We discuss this identification in
 Section 14
 below.



Finally, we may note that in Book B, Aristotle delineates his
subject matter in a different way, by listing the problems or
perplexities (*aporiai*) he hopes to deal with. Characteristic
of these perplexities, he says, is that they tie our thinking up in
knots. They include the following, among others: Are sensible
substances the only ones that exist, or are there others besides them?
Is it kinds or individuals that are the elements and principles of
things? And if it is kinds, which ones: the most generic or the most
specific? Is there a cause apart from matter? Is there anything apart
from material compounds? Are the principles limited, either in number
or in kind? Are the principles of perishable things themselves
perishable? Are the principles universal or particular, and do they
exist potentially or actually? Are mathematical objects (numbers,
lines, figures, points) substances? If they are, are they separate
from or do they always belong to sensible things? And ("the
hardest and most perplexing of all," Aristotle says) are unity
and being the substance of things, or are they attributes of some
other subject? In the remainder of Book B, Aristotle presents
arguments on both sides of each of these issues, and in subsequent
books he takes up many of them again. But it is not always clear
precisely how he resolves them, and it is possible that Aristotle did
not think that the *Metaphysics* contains definitive solutions
to all of these perplexities.


## 2. The Categories



To understand the problems and project of Aristotle's
*Metaphysics*, it is best to begin with one of his earlier
works, the *Categories*. Although placed by long tradition
among his logical works (see the discussion in the entry on
 Aristotle's logic),
 due to its analysis of the terms that make up the propositions out of
which deductive inferences are constructed, the *Categories*
begins with a strikingly general and exhaustive account of the things
there are (*ta onta*)--beings. According to this account,
beings can be divided into ten distinct categories. (Although
Aristotle never says so, it is tempting to suppose that these
categories are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive of the things
there are.) They include substance, quality, quantity, and relation,
among others. Of these categories of beings, it is the first,
substance (*ousia*), to which Aristotle gives a privileged
position.



Substances are unique in being independent things; the items in the
other categories all depend somehow on substances. That is, qualities
are the qualities of substances; quantities are the amounts and sizes
that substances come in; relations are the way substances stand to one
another. These various non-substances all owe their existence to
substances--each of them, as Aristotle puts it, exists only
'in' a subject. That is, each non-substance "is in
something, not as a part, and cannot exist separately from what it is
in" (*Cat*. 1a25). Indeed, it becomes clear
that substances are the subjects that these ontologically dependent
non-substances are 'in'.



Each member of a non-substance category thus stands in this inherence
relation (as it is frequently called) to some substance or
other--color is always found in bodies, knowledge in the soul.
Neither whiteness nor a piece of grammatical knowledge, for example,
is capable of existing on its own. Each requires for its existence
that there be some substance in which it inheres.



In addition to this fundamental inherence relation across categories,
Aristotle also points out another fundamental relation that obtains
between items within a single category. He describes this as the
relation of "being said of a subject," and his examples
make clear that it is the relation of a more general to a less general
thing within a single category. Thus, man is 'said of' a
particular man, and animal is 'said of' man, and
therefore, as Aristotle points out, animal is 'said of'
the particular man also. The 'said of' relation, that is
to say, is transitive (cf. 1b10). So the genus (e.g.,
animal) is 'said of' the species (e.g., man) and both
genus and species are 'said of' the particular. The same
holds in non-substance categories. In the category of quality, for
example, the genus (color) is 'said of' the species
(white) and both genus and species are 'said of' the
particular white. There has been considerable scholarly dispute about
these particulars in nonsubstance categories. For more detail, see the
supplementary document:



> 
> Nonsubstantial Particulars
> 



The language of this contrast ('in' a subject vs.
'said of' a subject) is peculiar to the
*Categories*, but the idea seems to recur in other works as the
distinction between accidental vs. essential predication. Similarly,
in works other than the *Categories*, Aristotle uses the label
'universals' (*ta katholou*) for the things that
are "said of many;" things that are not universal he calls
'particulars' (*ta kath' hekasta*). Although
he does not use these labels in the *Categories*, it is not
misleading to say that the doctrine of the *Categories* is that
each category contains a hierarchy of universals and particulars, with
each universal being 'said of' the lower-level universals
and particulars that fall beneath it. Each category thus has the
structure of an upside-down
 tree.[2]
 At the top (or trunk) of the tree are the most generic items in that
 category[3]
 (e.g., in the case of the category of substance, the genus plant and
the genus animal); branching below them are universals at the next
highest level, and branching below these are found lower levels of
universals, and so on, down to the lowest level universals (e.g., such
*infimae species* as man and horse); at the lowest
level--the leaves of the tree--are found the individual
substances, e.g., this man, that horse, etc.



The individuals in the category of substance play a special role in
this scheme. Aristotle calls them "primary substances"
(*protai ousiai*) for without them, as he says, nothing
else would exist. Indeed, Aristotle offers an argument
(2a35-2b7) to establish the primary
substances as the fundamental entities in this ontology. Everything
that is not a primary substance, he points out, stands in one of the
two relations (inhering 'in', or being 'said
of') to primary substances. A genus, such as animal, is
'said of' the species below it and, since they are
'said of' primary substances, so is the genus (recall the
transitivity of the 'said of' relation). Thus, everything
in the category of substance that is not itself a primary substance
is, ultimately, 'said of' primary substances. And if there
were no primary substances, there would be no "secondary"
substances (species and genera), either. For these secondary
substances are just the ways in which the primary substances are
fundamentally classified within the category of substance. As for the
members of non-substance categories, they too depend for their
existence on primary substances. A universal in a non-substance
category, e.g., color, in the category of quality, is 'in'
body, Aristotle tells us, and therefore in individual bodies. For
color could not be 'in' body, in general, unless it were
'in' at least some particular bodies. Similarly,
particulars in non-substance categories (although there is not general
agreement among scholars about what such particulars might be) cannot
exist on their own. E.g., a determinate shade of color, or a
particular and non-shareable bit of that shade, is not capable of
existing on its own--if it were not 'in' at least
some primary substance, it would not exist. So primary substances are
the basic entities--the basic "things that there
are"--in the world of the *Categories*.


## 3. The Role of Substance in the Study of Being Qua Being



The *Categories* leads us to expect that the study of being in
general (being qua being) will crucially involve the study of
substance, and when we turn to the *Metaphysics* we are not
disappointed. First, in *Metaphysics* G Aristotle argues
in a new way for the ontological priority of substance; and then, in
Books Z, E, and Th, he wrestles with the problem of what
it is to be a substance. We will begin with G's account of
the central place of substance in the study of being qua being.



As we noted above, metaphysics (or, first philosophy) is the science
which studies being qua being. In this respect it is unlike the
specialized or departmental sciences, which study only part of being
(only some of the things that exist) or study beings only in a
specialized way (e.g., only in so far as they are changeable, rather
than in so far as they are beings).



But 'being', as Aristotle tells us in G.2, is
"said in many ways". That is, the verb 'to be'
(*einai*) has different senses, as do its cognates
'being' (*on*) and 'entities'
(*onta*). So the universal science of being qua being appears
to founder on an equivocation: how can there be a single science of
being when the very term 'being' is ambiguous?



Consider an analogy. There are dining tables, and there are tide
tables. A dining table is a table in the sense of a smooth flat slab
fixed on legs; a tide table is a table in the sense of a systematic
arrangement of data in rows and columns. But there is not a single
sense of 'table' which applies to both the piece of
furniture at which I am writing these words and to the small booklet
that lies upon it. Hence it would be foolish to expect that there is a
single science of tables, in general, that would include among its
objects both dining tables and tide tables. Tables, that is to say, do
not constitute a single kind with a single definition, so no single
science, or field of knowledge, can encompass precisely those things
that are correctly called 'tables'.



If the term 'being' were ambiguous in the way that
'table' is, Aristotle's science of being qua being
would be as impossible as a science of tables qua tables. But,
Aristotle argues in G.2, 'being' is not ambiguous in
this way. 'Being', he tells us, is 'said in many
ways' but it is not merely (what he calls)
'homonymous', i.e., sheerly ambiguous. Rather, the various
senses of 'being' have what he calls a '*pros
hen*' ambiguity--they are all related to a single
central sense. (The Greek phrase '*pros hen*' means
"in relation to one.")



Aristotle explains his point by means of some examples that he takes
to be analogous to 'being'. Consider the terms
'healthy' and 'medical'. Neither of these has
a single definition that applies uniformly to all cases: not every
healthy (or medical) thing is healthy (medical) in the same sense of
'healthy' ('medical'). There is a range of
things that can be called 'healthy': people, diets,
exercise, complexions, etc. Not all of these are healthy in the same
sense. Exercise is healthy in the sense of being productive of health;
a clear complexion is healthy in the sense of being symptomatic of
health; a person is healthy in the sense of having good health.



But notice that these various senses have something in common: a
reference to one central thing, health, which is actually possessed by
only some of the things that are spoken of as 'healthy',
namely, healthy organisms, and these are said to be healthy in the
primary sense of the term. Other things are considered healthy only in
so far as they are appropriately related to things that are healthy in
this primary sense.



The situation is the same, Aristotle claims, with the term
'being'. It, too, has a primary sense as well as related
senses in which it applies to other things because they are
appropriately related to things that are called 'beings'
in the primary sense. The beings in the primary sense are substances;
the beings in other senses are the qualities, quantities, etc., that
belong to substances. An animal, e.g., a horse, is a being, and so is
a color, e.g, white, a being. But a horse is a being in the primary
sense--it is a substance--whereas the color white (a
quality) is a being only because it qualifies some substance. An
account of the being of anything that is, therefore, will ultimately
have to make some reference to substance. Hence, the science of being
qua being will involve an account of the central case of
beings--substances.


## 4. The Fundamental Principles: Axioms



Before embarking on this study of substance, however, Aristotle goes
on in Book G to argue that first philosophy, the most general of
the sciences, must also address the most fundamental
principles--the common axioms--that are used in all
reasoning. Thus, first philosophy must also concern itself with the
principle of non-contradiction (PNC): the principle that "the
same thing cannot at the same time belong and also not belong to the
same thing and in the same respect" (1005b19). This,
Aristotle says, is the most certain of all principles, and it is not
just a hypothesis. It cannot, however, be proved, since it is
employed, implicitly, in all proofs, no matter what the subject
matter. It is a first principle, and hence is not derived from
anything more basic.



What, then, can the science of first philosophy say about the PNC? It
cannot offer a proof of the PNC, since the PNC is presupposed by any
proof one might offer--any purported proof of the PNC would
therefore be circular. Aristotle thus does not attempt to prove the
PNC; in the subsequent chapters of G he argues, instead, that it
is impossible to disbelieve the PNC. Those who would claim to deny the
PNC cannot, if they have any beliefs at all, believe that it is false.
For one who has a belief must, if he is to express this belief to
himself or to others, say something--he must make an assertion.
He must, as Aristotle says, signify something. But the very act of
signifying something is possible only if the PNC is accepted. Without
accepting the PNC, one would have no reason to think that his words
have any signification at all--they could not mean one thing
rather than another. So anyone who makes any assertion has already
committed himself to the PNC. Aristotle thus does not argue that the
PNC is a necessary truth (that is, he does not try to prove the PNC);
rather, he argues that the PNC is indubitable. (For more on the PNC,
see the discussion in the entry on
 Aristotle's logic)


## 5. What is Substance?



In the seventeen chapters that make up Book Z of the
*Metaphysics*, Aristotle takes up the promised study of
substance. He begins by reiterating and refining some of what he said
in G: that 'being' is said in many ways, and that
the primary sense of 'being' is the sense in which
substances are beings. Here, however, he explicitly links the
secondary senses of 'being' to the non-substance
categories. The primacy of substance leads Aristotle to say that the
age-old question 'What is being?' "is just the
question 'What is substance?'"
(1028b4).



One might have thought that this question had already been answered in
the *Categories*. There we were given, as examples of primary
substances, an individual man or horse, and we learned that a primary
substance is "what is neither in a subject nor said of a
subject" (2a10). This would seem to provide us with
both examples of, and criteria for being, primary substances. But in
*Metaphysics* Z, Aristotle does not seem to take either
the examples or the criteria for granted.



In Z.2 he recounts the various answers that have been given to
the question of which things are substances--bodies (including
plants, animals, the parts of plants and animals, the elements, the
heavenly bodies), things more basic than bodies (surfaces, lines, and
points), imperceptible things (such as Platonic Forms and mathematical
objects)--and seems to regard them all as viable candidates at
this point. He does not seem to doubt that the clearest examples of
substances are perceptible ones, but leaves open the question whether
there are others as well.



Before answering this question about examples, however, he says that
we must first answer the question about criteria: what is it to be a
substance (*ten ousian proton ti estin*)? The
negative criterion ("neither in a subject nor said of a
subject") of the *Categories* tells us only which things
are substances. But even if we know *that* something is a
substance, we must still say what *makes* it a
substance--what the cause is of its being a substance. This is
the question to which Aristotle next turns. To answer it is to
identify, as Aristotle puts it, the substance *of* that
thing.


## 6. Substance, Matter, and Subject



Z.3 begins with a list of four possible candidates for being the
substance of something: essence, universal, genus, and subject.
Presumably, this means that if *x* is a substance, then the
substance of *x* might be either (i) the essence of *x*,
or (ii) some universal predicated of *x*, or (iii) a genus that
*x* belongs to, or (iv) a subject of which *x* is
predicated. The first three candidates are taken up in later chapters,
and Z.3 is devoted to an examination of the fourth candidate: the
idea that the substance of something is a subject of which it is
predicated.



A subject, Aristotle tells us, is "that of which the other
things are said, but which is itself not further said of any other
thing" (1028b36). This characterization of a subject
is reminiscent of the language of the *Categories*, which tells
us that a primary substance is not predicated of anything else,
whereas other things are predicated of it. Candidate (iv) thus seems
to reiterate the *Categories* criterion for being a substance.
But there are two reasons to be wary of drawing this conclusion.
First, whereas the subject criterion of the *Categories* told
us that substances were the ultimate subjects of predication, the
subject criterion envisaged here is supposed to tell us what the
substance *of* something is. So what it would tell us is that
if *x* is a substance, then the substance of
*x*--that which makes *x* a substance--is a
subject that *x* is predicated of. Second, as his next comment
makes clear, Aristotle has in mind something other than this
*Categories* idea. For the subject that he here envisages, he
says, is either matter or form or the compound of matter and form.
These are concepts from Aristotle's *Physics*, and none
of them figured in the ontology of the *Categories*. To
appreciate the issues Aristotle is raising here, we must briefly
compare his treatment of the notion of a subject in the
*Physics* with that in the *Categories*.



In the *Categories*, Aristotle was concerned with subjects of
predication: what are the things we talk about, and ascribe properties
to? In the *Physics*, his concern is with subjects of change:
what is it that bears (at different times) contrary predicates and
persists through a process of change? But there is an obvious
connection between these conceptions of a subject, since a subject of
change must have one predicate belonging to it at one time that does
not belong to it at another time. Subjects of change, that is, are
also subjects of predication. (The converse is not true: numbers are
subjects of predication--six is even, seven is prime--but
not of change.)



In the *Categories*, individual substances (a man, a horse)
were treated as fundamental subjects of predication. They were also
understood, indirectly, as subjects of change. ("A substance,
one and the same in number, can receive contraries. An individual man,
for example, being one and the same, becomes now pale and now dark,
now hot and now cold, now bad and now good"
4a17-20.) These are changes in which substances move,
or alter, or grow. What the *Categories* did not explore,
however, are changes in which substances are generated or destroyed.
But the theory of change Aristotle develops in the *Physics*
requires some other subject for changes such as these--a subject
of which substance is predicated--and it identifies matter as the
fundamental subject of change (192a31-32). Change is
seen in the *Physics* as a process in which matter either takes
on or loses form.



The concepts of matter and form, as we noted, are absent from the
*Categories*. Individual substances--this man or that
horse--apart from their accidental characteristics--the
qualities, etc., that inhere in them--are viewed in that work as
essentially simple, unanalyzable atoms. Although there is metaphysical
structure to the fact that, e.g., *this horse is white* (a
certain quality inheres in a certain substance), the fact that
*this is a horse* is a kind of brute fact, devoid of
metaphysical structure. This horse is a primary substance, and
*horse*, the species to which it belongs, is a secondary
substance. But there is no predicative complex corresponding to the
fact that this is a horse in the way that there is such a complex
corresponding to the fact that this horse is white.



But from the point of view of the *Physics*, substantial
individuals are seen as predicative complexes (cf. Matthen 1987b);
they are hylomorphic compounds--compounds of matter and
form--and the subject criterion looks rather different from the
hylomorphic perspective. *Metaphysics* Z.3 examines the
subject criterion from this perspective.



Matter, form, and the compound of matter and form may all be
considered subjects, Aristotle tells us, (1029a2-4),
but which of them is substance? The subject criterion by itself leads
to the answer that the substance of *x* is an entirely
indeterminate matter of which *x* is composed
(1029a10). For form is predicated of matter as subject, and
one can always analyze a hylomorphic compound into its predicates and
the subject of which they are predicated. And when all predicates have
been removed (in thought), the subject that remains is nothing at all
in its own right--an entity all of whose properties are
accidental to it (1029a12-27). The resulting subject
is matter from which all form has been expunged. (Traditional
scholarship calls this "prime matter," but Aristotle does
not here indicate whether he thinks there actually is such a thing.)
So the subject criterion leads to the answer that the substance of
*x* is the formless matter of which it is ultimately
composed.



But Aristotle rejects this answer as impossible (1029a28),
claiming that substance must be "separable"
(*choriston*) and "this something" (*tode
ti*, sometimes translated "some this"), and implying
that matter fails to meet this requirement. Precisely what the
requirement amounts to is a matter of considerable scholarly debate,
however. A plausible interpretation runs as follows. Separability has
to do with being able to exist independently (*x* is separable
from *y* if *x* is capable of existing independently of
*y*), and being a this something means being a determinate
individual. So a substance must be a determinate individual that is
capable of existing on its own. (One might even hold, although this is
controversial, that on Aristotle's account not every "this
something" is also "separable." A particular color
or shape might be considered a determinate individual that is not
capable of existing on its own--it is always the color of shape
of some substance or other.) But matter fails to be simultaneously
both *choriston* and *tode ti*. The matter of
which a substance is composed may exist independently of that
substance (think of the wood of which a desk is composed, which
existed before the desk was made and may survive the disassembly of
the desk), but it is not as such any definite individual--it is
just a quantity of a certain kind of matter. Of course, the matter may
be construed as constituting a definite individual substance (the wood
just *is*, one might say, the particular desk it composes), but
it is in that sense not separable from the form or shape that makes it
that substance (the wood cannot be that particular desk unless it is
*a* desk). So although matter is in a sense separable and in a
sense a this something, it cannot be both separable and a this
something. It thus does not qualify as the substance of the thing
whose matter it is.


## 7. Substance and Essence



Aristotle turns in Z.4 to a consideration of the next candidate
for substance: essence. ('Essence' is the standard English
translation of Aristotle's curious phrase *to ti en
einai*, literally "the what it was to be" for a thing.
This phrase so boggled his Roman translators that they coined the word
*essentia* to render the entire phrase, and it is from this
Latin word that ours derives. Aristotle also sometimes uses the
shorter phrase *to ti esti*, literally "the what it
is," for approximately the same idea.) In his
 logical works,
 Aristotle links the notion of essence to that of definition
(*horismos*)--"a definition is an account
(*logos*) that signifies an essence" (*Topics*
102a3)--and he links both of these notions to a
certain kind of *per se* predication (*kath'
hauto*, literally, "in respect of itself," or
"intrinsically")--"what belongs to a thing in
respect of itself belongs to it in its essence (*en toi ti
esti*)" for we refer to it "in the account that states
the essence" (*Posterior* *Analytics*,
73a34-5). He reiterates these ideas in Z.4:
"there will be an essence only of those things whose
*logos* is a definition" (1030a6), "the
essence of each thing is what it is said to be intrinsically"
(1029b14). It is important to remember that for Aristotle,
one defines things, not words. The definition of tiger does not tell
us the meaning of the word 'tiger'; it tells us what it is
to be a tiger, what a tiger is said to be intrinsically. Thus, the
definition of tiger states the essence--the "what it is to
be" of a tiger, what is predicated of the tiger *per
se*.



Aristotle's preliminary answer (Z.4) to the question
"What is substance?" is that substance is essence, but
there are important qualifications. For, as he points out,
"definition (*horismos*), like 'what-it-is'
(*ti esti*), is said in many ways too"
(1030a19). That is, items in all the categories are
definable, so items in all the categories have essences--just as
there is an essence of man, there is also an essence of white and an
essence of musical. But, because of the *pros hen* equivocity
of 'is', such essences are secondary--"in the
primary (*protos*) and unconditional way
(*haplos*) definition and the essence belong to
substances" (1030b4-6). Thus, Z.4 tells
us, it is only these primary essences that are substances. Aristotle
does not here work out the details of this "hierarchy of
essences" (Loux, 1991), but it is possible to reconstruct a
theory of such a hierarchy on the basis of subsequent developments in
Book Z.



In Z.6, Aristotle goes on to argue that if something is
"primary" and "spoken of in respect of itself
(*kath' hauto legomenon*)" it is one and the same
as its essence. The precise meaning of this claim, as well as the
nature and validity of the arguments offered in support of it, are
matters of scholarly controversy. But it does seem safe to say that
Aristotle thinks that an "accidental unity" such as a pale
man is not a *kath' hauto legomenon* (since pallor is an
accidental characteristic of a man) and so is not the same as its
essence. *Pale man*, that is to say, does not specify the
"what it is" of any primary being, and so cannot be an
essence of the primary kind. As Z.4 has already told us, essence,
in the primary sense, "will belong to things that are species of
a genus and to nothing else" (1030a11-12).
*Man* is a species, and so there is an essence of man; but
*pale man* is not a species and so, even if there is such a
thing as the essence of pale man, it is not, at any rate, a primary
essence.



At this point there appears to be a close connection between the
essence of a substance and its species (*eidos*), and this
might tempt one to suppose that Aristotle is identifying the substance
of a thing (since the substance of a thing is its essence) with its
species. (A consequence of this idea would be that Aristotle is
radically altering his conception of the importance of the species,
which in the *Categories* he called a secondary substance, that
is, a substance only in a secondary sense.) But such an identification
would be a mistake, for two reasons. First, Aristotle's point at
1030a11 is not that a species is an essence, but that an
essence of the primary kind corresponds to a species (e.g.,
*man*) and not to some more narrowly delineated kind (e.g.,
*pale man*). Second, the word '*eidos*',
which meant 'species' in the logical works, has acquired a
new meaning in a hylomorphic context, where it means
'form' (contrasted with 'matter') rather than
'species' (contrasted with 'genus'). In the
conceptual framework of *Metaphysics* Z, a universal such
as *man* or *horse*--which was called a species and
a secondary substance in the *Categories*--is construed as
"not substance but rather a compound of a sort, [consisting] of
this account and this matter taken universally" (Z.10,
1035b29-30). The *eidos* that is primary
substance in Book Z is not the species that an individual
substance belongs to but the form that is predicated of the matter of
which it is
 composed.[4]


## 8. Substances as Hylomorphic Compounds



The role of form in this hylomorphic context is the topic of
Z.7-9. (Although these chapters were almost certainly not
originally included in Book Z--there is no reference to
them, for example, in the summary of Z given in E.1, which
skips directly from Z.6 to Z.10--they provide a link
between substance and form and thus fill what would otherwise be a gap
in the argument.) Since individual substances are seen as hylomorphic
compounds, the role of matter and form in their generation must be
accounted for. Whether we are thinking of natural objects, such as
plants and animals, or artifacts, such as houses, the requirements for
generation are the same. We do not produce the matter (to suppose that
we do leads to an infinite regress) nor do we produce the form (what
could we make it out of?); rather, we put the form into the matter,
and produce the compound (Z.8, 1033a30-b9). Both
the matter and the form must pre-exist (Z.9, 1034b12).
But the source of motion in both cases--what Aristotle calls the
"moving cause" of the coming to be--is the form.



In production that results from craft (or art, *techne*),
"the form is in the soul " (1032b23) of the
craftsman. For example, "the craft [of building] is the form [of
the house]" (1034a24) and the craft, i.e., the form,
is in the understanding, and hence in the soul, of the builder. The
builder has in mind the plan or design for a house and he knows how to
build; he then "enmatters" that plan or design by putting
it into the materials out of which he builds the house. In natural
production, the form is found in the parent, where "the begetter
is of this same sort as the begotten (not that they are the same
thing, certainly, nor one in number, but one in form)--for
example, in the case of natural things. For human begets human"
(1033b29-31). But in either case, the form pre-exists
and is not produced (1033b18).



As for what is produced in such hylomorphic productions, it is
correctly described by the name of its form, not by that of its
matter. What is produced is a house or a man, not bricks or flesh. Of
course, what is made of gold may still be described in terms of its
material components, but we should call it not "gold" but
"golden" (1033a7). For if gold is the matter
out of which a statue is made, there was gold present at the start,
and so it was not gold that came into being. It was a statue that came
into being, and although the statue is golden--i.e., made of
gold--it cannot be identified with the gold of which it was
made.



The essence of such a hylomorphic compound is evidently its form, not
its matter. As Aristotle says "by form I mean the essence of
each thing and the primary substance" (1032b1), and
"by the substance without matter I mean the essence"
(1032b14). It is the form of a substance that makes it the
kind of thing that it is, and hence it is form that satisfies the
condition initially required for being the *substance of*
something. The substance of a thing is its form.



## 9. Substance and Definition



In Z.10 and 11, Aristotle returns to the consideration of essence
and definition left off in Z.6, but now within the hylomorphic
context developed in Z.7-9. The main question these
chapters consider is whether the definition of *x* ever
includes a reference to the matter of *x*. If some definitions
include a reference to matter, then the link between essence and form
would seem to be weakened.



Aristotle begins Z.10 by endorsing the following principle about
definitions and their parts: "a definition is an account, and
every account has parts, and as the account is to the thing, so the
part of the account is to the part of the thing"
(1034b20-22). That is, if *y* is a part of a
definable thing *x*, then the definition of *x* will
include as a part something *z* that corresponds to *y*.
Indeed, *z* must stand to *y* in the same relation that
the definition of *x* stands in to *x*; that is,
*z* is the definition of *y*. So, according to this
principle, the definition of a thing will include the definitions of
its parts.



In a way, this consequence of the principle seems very plausible,
given Aristotle's idea that it is universals that are definable
(Z.11, 1036a29). Consider as a definiendum a
universal, such as *man*, and its definiens, *rational*
*animal*. The parts of this definiens are the universals
*rational* and *animal*. If these parts are, in turn,
definable, then each should be replaced, in the definition of
*man*, with its own definition, and so on. In this way the
complete and adequate definition of a universal such as *man*
will contain no parts that are further definable. All proper, or
completely analyzed, definitions are ultimately composed of simple
terms that are not further definable.



But the implication of this idea for the definitions of hylomorphic
compounds is obvious: since matter appears to be a part of such a
compound, the definition of the compound will include, as a part, the
definitions of its material components. And this consequence seems
implausible to Aristotle. A circle, for example, seems to be composed
of two semicircles (for it obviously may be divided into two
semicircles), but the definition of *circle* cannot be composed
of the definitions of its two semicircular parts. For, as Aristotle
points out (1035b9), *semicircle* is defined in
terms of *circle*, and not the other way around. His point is
well taken, for if circles were defined in terms of semicircles, then
presumably semicircles would be defined in terms of the
quarter-circles of which they are composed, and so on, *ad
infinitum*. The resulting infinite regress would make it
impossible to define *circle* at all, for one would never reach
the ultimate "simple" parts of which such a definition
would be composed.



Aristotle flirts with the idea of distinguishing between different
senses in which one thing can be a part of another
(1034b33), but instead proposes a different solution: to
specify carefully the whole of which the matter is allegedly a part.
"And of the compound statue the bronze is a part, but of what is
said to be a statue as form it is not a part"
(1035a6). Similarly, "even if the line, when divided,
passes away into the halves, or the human into the bones, sinews, and
flesh, it is not the case that because of this they are composed of
these as being parts of the substance"
(1035a17-20). Rather, "what is divided into
these as into matter is not the substance but the compound"
(1035b20-1).



In restating his point "yet more perspicuously"
(1035b4), Aristotle notes parenthetically another important
aspect of his theory of substance. He reiterates the priority of form,
and its parts, to the matter into which a compound is divided, and
notes that "the soul of animals (for this is substance of the
animate) is the substance that is in accord with the account and is
the form and the essence" (1035b14-5). The idea
recurs in Z.11, where he announces that "it is clear too
that the soul is primary substance, whereas the body is matter"
(1037a5). It is further developed, in the
*Metaphysics*, in Z.17, as we will see below, and
especially in *De Anima*. For more detail on this topic, see
Section 3 of the entry on
 Aristotle's psychology.



Returning now to the problem raised by the apparent need to refer to
matter in the definition of a substance, we may note that the solution
Aristotle offered in Z.10 is only partially successful. His point
seems to be that whereas bronze may be a part of a particular statue,
neither that particular batch of bronze nor even bronze in general
enters into the essence of statue, since being made of bronze is no
part of what it is to be a statue. But that is only because statues,
although they must be made of some kind of matter, do not require any
particular kind of matter. But what about kinds of substances that do
require particular kinds of matter? Aristotle's distinction
between form and compound cannot be used in such cases to isolate
essence from matter. Thus there may after all be reasons for thinking
that reference to matter will have to intrude into at least some
definitions.



In Z.11, Aristotle addresses just such a case (although the
passage is difficult and there is disagreement over its
interpretation). "The form of the human is always found in flesh
and bones and parts of this sort," Aristotle writes
(1036b4). The point is not just that each particular man
must be made of matter, but that each one must be made of matter of a
particular kind--flesh and bones, etc. "Some things,"
he continues, "presumably are this in this"
(1036b23), i.e., a particular form in a particular kind of
matter, so that it is not possible to define them without reference to
their material parts (1036b28). Nevertheless, Aristotle
ends Z.11 as if he has defended the claim that definition is of
the form alone. Perhaps his point is that whenever it is essential to
a substance that it be made of a certain kind of matter (e.g., that
man be made of flesh and bones, and that one "could not make a
saw of wool or wood," E.4, 1044a28) this is in
some sense a formal or structural requirement. A kind of matter, after
all, can itself be analyzed hylomorphically--bronze, for example,
is a mixture of copper and tin according to a certain ratio or formula
(*logos*), which is in turn predicated of some more generic
underlying subject. The reference to matter in a definition will thus
always be to a certain kind of matter, and hence to a predicate,
rather than a subject. At any rate, if by 'matter' one has
in mind the ultimate subject alluded to in Z.3 (so-called
'prime matter'), there will be no reference to it in any
definition, "for it is indefinite"
(1037a27).




 Z.12 introduces a new problem about definitions--the
so-called "unity of definition." The problem is this:
definitions are complex (a definiens is always some combination of
terms), so what accounts for the definiendum being *one* thing,
rather than many (1037b10)? Suppose that man is defined as
*two-footed animal*; "why, then, is this one and not
many--animal *and* two-footed?"
(1037b13-14). Presumably, Aristotle has in mind his
discussion in Z.4 of such "accidental unities" as a
pale man. The difference cannot be that our language contains a single
word ('man') for a two-footed animal, but no single word
for a pale man, for Aristotle has already conceded
(1029b28) that we might very well have had a single term
(he suggests *himation*, literally 'cloak') for a
pale man, but that would still not make the formula 'pale
man' a definition nor *pale man* an essence
(1030a2).



Aristotle proposes a solution that applies to definitions reached by
the "method of division." According to this method (see
 Aristotle's logic),
 one begins with the broadest genus containing the species to be
defined, and divides the genus into two sub-genera by means of some
differentia. One then locates the definiendum in one of the
sub-genera, and proceeds to divide this by another differentia, and so
on, until one arrives at the definiendum species. This is a classic
definition by genus and differentia. Aristotle's proposal is
that "the division should take the differentia of the
differentia" (1038a9). For example, if one uses the
differentia *footed* to divide the genus *animal*, one
then uses a differentia such as *cloven-footed* for the next
division. If one divides in this way, Aristotle claims, "it is
evident that the ultimate (or completing, *teleutaia*)
differentia will be the substance of the thing and its
definition" (1038a19). For each "differentia of
a differentia" entails its predecessor (being cloven-footed
entails being footed), and so the long chain of differentiae can be
replaced simply by the ultimate differentia, since it entails all of
its predecessors. As Aristotle points out, it would be redundant to
include any of the differentiae in the chain other than the ultimate
one: "when we say footed two-footed animal ... we shall be
saying the same thing several times over"
(1038a22-24).



This proposal shows how a long string of differentiae in a definition
can be reduced to one, but it does not solve the problem of the unity
of definition. For we are still faced with the apparent fact that
genus + differentia constitutes a plurality even if the differentia is
the ultimate, or "completing," one. It is not surprising,
then, that Aristotle
 returns to the problem of unity
 later (E.6) and offers a different solution.


## 10. Substances and Universals



At this point, we seem to have a clear idea about the nature of
substantial form as Aristotle conceives of it. A substantial form is
the essence of a substance, and it corresponds to a species. Since it
is an essence, a substantial form is what is denoted by the definiens
of a definition. Since only universals are definable, substantial
forms are universals. That substantial forms are universals is
confirmed by Aristotle's comment, at the end of Z.8, that
"Socrates and Callias ... are distinct because of their
matter ... but the same in form"
(1034a6-8). For them to be the same in form is for
them to have the same form, i.e., for one and the same substantial
form to be predicated of two different clumps of matter. And being
"predicated of many" is what makes something a universal
(*De Interpretatione* 17a37).



But Z.13 throws our entire understanding into disarray. Aristotle
begins by returning to the candidates for the title of *ousia*
introduced in Z.3, and points out that having now discussed the
claims of the subject and the essence, it is time to consider the
third candidate, the universal. But the remainder of the chapter
consists of a barrage of arguments to the conclusion that universals
are not substances.



Z.13 therefore produces a fundamental tension in
Aristotle's metaphysics that has fragmented his interpreters.
Some maintain that Aristotle's theory is ultimately
inconsistent, on the grounds that it is committed to all three of the
following propositions:



> 
> 
> 
> |  |  |
> | --- | --- |
> | (i) | Substance is form. |
> | (ii) | Form is universal. |
> | (iii) | No universal is a substance. |
> 
> 
> 



Others have provided interpretations according to which Aristotle does
not maintain all of (i)-(iii), and there is a considerable
variety of such interpretations, too many to be canvassed here. But
there are two main, and opposed, lines of interpretation. According to
one, Aristotle's substantial forms are not universals after all,
but each belongs exclusively to the particular whose form it is, and
there are therefore as many substantial forms of a given kind as there
are particulars of that kind. According to the other,
Aristotle's arguments in Z.13 are not intended to show that
no universal is a substance, *tout court*, but some weaker
thesis that is compatible with there being only one substantial form
for all of the particulars belonging to the same species. Proponents
of particular forms (or essences) include Sellars 1957, Harter 1975,
Hartman 1977, Irwin 1988, and Witt 1989b. Opponents include Woods
1967, Owen 1978, Code 1986, Loux 1991, and Lewis 1991.



It would be foolish to attempt to resolve this issue within the
confines of the present entry, as it is perhaps the largest, and most
disputed, single interpretative issue concerning Aristotle's
*Metaphysics*. we will, instead, mention some of the main
considerations brought up on each side of this dispute, and give our
reasons for thinking that substantial forms are universals.



The idea that substantial forms are particulars is supported by
Aristotle's claims that a substance is "separable and this
something " (*choriston kai tode ti*, Z.3),
that there are no universals apart from their particulars (Z.13),
and that universals are not substances (Z.13). On the other side,
the idea that substantial forms are universals is supported by
Aristotle's claims that substances are, *par excellence*,
the definable entities (Z.4), that definition is of the universal
(Z.11), and that it is impossible to define particulars
(Z.15).



In our opinion, the indefinability of particulars makes it impossible
for substantial forms to be particulars. If there were a substantial
form that is unique to some sensible particular, say Callias, then the
definition corresponding to that form, or essence, would apply
uniquely to Callias--it would define him, which is precisely what
Aristotle says cannot be done. The question, then, is whether the
evidence against substantial forms being universals can be countered.
This is less clear, but the following considerations are relevant. (1)
Aristotle's claim that a substantial form is an individual
(*tode ti*) does not exclude its being a universal
(*katholou*). Universals are contrasted with particulars
(*kath' hekasta*), not individuals (although Aristotle
does sometimes ignore the distinction between *tode ti* and
*kath' hekaston*). What makes something a *tode
ti* is its being a fully determinate thing, not further
differentiable; what makes something a *kath' hekaston*
is its being a particular thing, unrepeatable, and not predicated of
anything else. There is thus the possibility of a universal *tode
ti*--a fully determinate universal not further divisible into
lower-level universals, but predicated of numerous particulars. (2)
The claim that there are no universals apart from particulars needs to
be understood in context. When Aristotle asserts (1038b33)
that "there is not some animal ... beyond the particular
ones (*ta tina*)" he is just as likely to be referring to
the particular *kinds* of animals as he is to particular
specimens. If so, his point may be that a generic kind, such as
animal, is ontologically dependent on its species, and hence on the
substantial forms that are the essences of those species. (3) The
arguments of Z.13 against the substantiality of universals are
presented as part of a give-and-take investigation of the perplexities
involved in the notion of substantial form. It is not clear,
therefore, whether the blanket claim "No universal is a
substance" is intended to be accepted without qualification.
Indeed, a closer examination of the arguments may show that
qualifications are required if the arguments are to be cogent. For
example, the argument at 1038b11-15 is based on the
premise that the substance of *x* is peculiar (*idion*)
to *x*. It then draws the conclusion that a universal cannot be
the substance of all of its instances (for it could not be
*idion* to all of them), and concludes that it must be the
substance "of none." But note that this conclusion does
not say that no universal can be a substance, but only that no
universal can be the substance of any of its instances (cf. Code
1978). Aristotle's point may be that since form is predicated of
matter, a substantial form is predicated of various clumps of matter.
But it is not the substance of those clumps of matter, for it is
predicated accidentally of them. The thing with which it is uniquely
correlated, and of which it is the substance, is not one of its
instances, but is the substantial form *itself*. This
conclusion should not be surprising in light of Aristotle's
claim in Z.6 that "each substance is one and the same as
its essence." A universal substantial form just is that
essence.


## 11. Substance as Cause of Being



In Z.17 Aristotle proposes a new point of departure in his effort
to say what sort of a thing substance is. The new idea is that a
substance is a "starting-point and cause" (*arche
kai aitia*, 1041a9) of being. Before looking at the
details of his account, we will need to make a brief detour into
Aristotle's theory of causes. The relevant texts are
*Physics* II.3, *Posterior* *Analytics* II.11,
and *Metaphysics* A.3 and D.2. See also the entry
on
 Aristotle's natural philosophy
 and Section 2 of the entry on
 Aristotle's psychology.



The word *aitia* ("cause" or, perhaps better,
"explanation"), Aristotle tells us, is "said in many
ways." In one sense, a cause is "that out of which a thing
comes to be, and which persists; e.g., bronze, silver, and the genus
of these are causes of a statue or a bowl" (*Physics*
194b24). A cause in this sense has been traditionally
called a *material* cause, although Aristotle himself did not
use this label. In a second sense, a cause is "the form ...
the account of the essence" (194b27), traditionally
called the *formal* cause. A third sense, traditionally called
the *efficient* cause, is "the primary source of change
or rest" (194b30). In this sense, Aristotle says, an
adviser is the cause of an action, a father is the cause of his child,
and in general the producer is the cause of the product. Fourth is
what is traditionally called the *final* cause, which Aristotle
characterizes as "the end (*telos*), that for which a
thing is done" (194b33). In this sense, he says,
health is the cause of walking, since we might explain a
person's walking by saying that he walks in order to be
healthy--health is what the walking is *for*. Note that,
as in this case, "things may be causes of one another--hard
work of fitness, and fitness of hard work--although not in the
same sense: fitness is what hard work is for, whereas hard work is
principle of motion" (195a10). So hard work is the
efficient cause of fitness, since one becomes fit by means of hard
work, while fitness is the final cause of hard work, since one works
hard in order to become fit.



Although Aristotle is careful to distinguish four different kinds of
cause (or four different senses of 'cause'), it is
important to note that he claims that one and the same thing can be a
cause in more than one sense. As he puts it, "form, mover, and
*telos* often coincide" (198a25). And in
*De Anima* he is perfectly explicit that the soul, which is the
form or essence of a living thing, "is a cause in three of the
ways we have distinguished" (415b10)--efficient,
formal, and final.



Let us return to Aristotle's discussion in Z.17. The job of
a cause or principle of being, he notes, is to explain why one thing
belongs to another (1041a11); that is, it is to explain
some predicational fact. What needs to be explained, for example, is
why *this is a man*, or *that is a house*. But what kind
of a question is this? The only thing that can be a man is a man; the
only thing that can be a house is a house. So we would appear to be
asking why a man is a man, or why a house is a house, and these seem
to be foolish questions that all have the same answer: because each
thing is itself (1041a17-20). The questions must
therefore be rephrased by taking advantage of the possibility of a
hylomorphic analysis. We must ask, e.g., "why are
these--for example, brick and stones--a house?"
(1041a26). The answer Aristotle proposes is that the cause
of being of a substance (e.g., of a house) is the form or essence that
is predicated of the matter (e.g., of the bricks and stones) that
constitute that substance. The essence is not always just a formal
cause; in some cases, Aristotle says, it is also a final cause (he
gives the examples of a house and a bed), and in some cases an
efficient cause (1041a29-30). But in any case
"what is being looked for is the cause in virtue of which the
matter is something--and this is the substance"
(1041b6-9) and "the primary cause of its
being" (1041b27).



Notice that the explanandum in these cases ("why is this a
man?" or "why is that a house?") involves a species
predication ("Callias is a man," "Fallingwater is a
house"). But the answer Aristotle proposes invokes a hylomorphic
analysis of these questions, in which form is predicated of matter. So
Callias is a man because the form or essence of man is present in the
flesh and bones that constitute the body of Callias; Fallingwater is a
house because the form of house is present in the materials of which
Fallingwater is made. In general, a species predication is explained
in terms of an underlying form predication, whose subject is not the
particular compound but its matter. Form predications are thus more
basic than their corresponding species predications. A substantial
form, as a primary definable, is its own substance, for it is
essentially predicated of itself alone. But the substantial form of a
material compound, because it is predicated (accidentally) of the
matter of the compound, is the cause of the compound's being the
kind of thing that it is. The form is therefore, in a derivative way,
the substance of the compound, as well.


## 12. Actuality and Potentiality



In *Metaphysics* Z, Aristotle introduces the distinction
between matter and form synchronically, applying it to an individual
substance at a particular time. The matter of a substance is the stuff
it is composed of; the form is the way that stuff is put together so
that the whole it constitutes can perform its characteristic
functions. But soon he begins to apply the distinction diachronically,
across time. This connects the matter/form distinction to another key
Aristotelian distinction, that between potentiality (*dunamis*)
and actuality (*entelecheia*) or activity (*energeia*).
This distinction is the main topic of Book Th.



Aristotle distinguishes between two different senses of the term
*dunamis*. In the strictest sense, a *dunamis* is the
*power* that a thing has to produce a change. A thing has a
*dunamis* in this sense when it has within it "a
starting-point of change in another thing or in itself insofar as it
is other" (Th.1, 1046a12; cf. D.12). The
exercise of such a power is a *kinesis*--a movement
or process. So, for example, the housebuilder's craft is a power
whose exercise is the process of housebuilding. But there is a second
sense of *dunamis*--and it is the one in which Aristotle
is mainly interested--that might be better translated as
'potentiality'. For, as Aristotle tells us, in this sense
*dunamis* is related not to movement (*kinesis*)
but to activity (*energeia*)(Th.6, 1048a25). A
*dunamis* in this sense is not a thing's power to produce
a change but rather its capacity to be in a different and more
completed state. Aristotle thinks that potentiality so understood is
indefinable (1048a37), claiming that the general idea can
be grasped from a consideration of cases. Activity is to potentiality,
Aristotle tells us, as "what is awake is in relation to what is
asleep, and what is seeing is in relation to what has its eyes closed
but has sight, and what has been shaped out of the matter is in
relation to the matter" (1048b1-3).



This last illustration is particularly illuminating. Consider, for
example, a piece of wood, which can be carved or shaped into a table
or into a bowl. In Aristotle's terminology, the wood has (at
least) two different potentialities, since it is potentially a table
and also potentially a bowl. The matter (in this case, wood) is linked
with potentialty; the substance (in this case, the table or the bowl)
is linked with actuality. The as yet uncarved wood is only potentially
a table, and so it might seem that once it is carved the wood is
actually a table. Perhaps this is what Aristotle means, but it is
possible that he does not wish to consider the wood to be a table. His
idea might be that not only can a piece of raw wood in the
carpenter's workshop be considered a potential table (since it
can be transformed into one), but the wood composing the completed
table is also, in a sense, a potential table. The idea here is that it
is not the wood qua wood that is actually a table, but the wood qua
table. Considered as matter, it remains only potentially the thing
that it is the matter of. (A contemporary philosopher might make this
point by refusing to identify the wood with the table, saying instead
that the wood only constitutes the table and is not identical to the
table it constitutes.)



Since Aristotle gives form priority over matter, we would expect him
similarly to give actuality priority over potentiality. And that is
exactly what we find (Th.8, 1049b4-5). Aristotle
distinguishes between priority in *logos* (account or
definition), in time, and in substance. (1) Actuality is prior in
*logos* since we must cite the actuality when we give an
account of its corresponding potentiality. Thus, 'visible'
means 'capable of *being seen*';
'buildable' means 'capable of *being
built*'(1049b14-16). (2) As regards
temporal priority, by contrast, potentiality may well seem to be prior
to actuality, since the wood precedes the table that is built from it,
and the acorn precedes the oak that it grows into. Nevertheless,
Aristotle finds that even temporally there is a sense in which
actuality is prior to potentiality: "the active that is the same
in form, though not in number [with a potentially existing thing], is
prior [to it]" (1049b18-19). A particular acorn
is, of course, temporally prior to the particular oak tree that it
grows into, but it is preceded in time by the actual oak tree that
produced it, with which it is identical in species. The seed
(potential substance) must have been preceded by an adult (actual
substance). So in this sense actuality is prior even in time.



(3) Aristotle argues for the priority in substance of actuality over
potentiality in two ways. (a) The first argument makes use of his
notion of final causality. Things that come to be move toward an end
(*telos*)--the boy becomes a man, the acorn becomes an
oak--and "the activity is the end, and it is for the sake
of this that the capacity [or potentiality] is acquired. For animals
do not see in order that they may have sight, rather they have sight
in order that they may see ... matter is potentially something
because it may come in the form of it--at any rate, when it is
actively something, then it *is* in the form of it"
(1050a9-17). Form or actuality is the end toward
which natural processes are directed. Actuality is therefore a cause
in more than one sense of a thing's realizing its potential. As
we noted in Section 11, one and the same thing may be the final,
formal, and efficient cause of another. Suppose an acorn realizes its
potential to become an oak tree. The efficient cause here is the
actual oak tree that produced the acorn; the formal cause is the
*logos* defining that actuality; the final cause is the
*telos* toward which the acorn develops--an actual
(mature) oak tree.



(b) Aristotle also offers (1050b6-1051a2)
an "even stricter" argument for his claim that actuality
is prior in substance to potentiality. A potentiality is for either of
a pair of opposites; so anything that is capable of being is also
capable of not being. What is capable of not being might possibly not
be, and what might possibly not be is perishable. Hence anything with
the mere potentiality to be is perishable. What is eternal is
imperishable, and so nothing that is eternal can exist only
potentially--what is eternal must be fully actual. But the
eternal is prior in substance to the perishable. For the eternal can
exist without the perishable, but not conversely, and that is what
priority in substance amounts to (cf. D.11, 1019a2).
So what is actual is prior in substance to what is potential.


## 13. Unity Reconsidered



In E.6, Aristotle returns to the problem of the unity of
definition
 (discussed above in Section 9)
 and offers a new solution based on the concepts of potentiality and
actuality. He begins by pointing out (recalling the language of
Z.17) that the things whose unity he is trying to explain are
those "that have several parts and where the totality of them is
not like a heap, but the whole is something beyond the parts"
(1045a8-10). His task is to explain the unity of such
complexes.



The problem is insoluble, he says, unless one realizes that
"there is on the one hand matter and on the other shape (or
form, *morphe*), and the one is potentially and the other
actively." Once one realizes this, "then what we are
inquiring into will no longer seem to be a puzzle"
(1045a20-25). He offers the following example
(1045a26-35). Suppose *round bronze* were the
definition of 'cloak'. If someone were to ask "what
makes a cloak one thing, a unity?" the answer would be obvious.
For bronze is the matter, and roundness is the form. The bronze is
potentially round, and round is what the bronze actually is when it
has received this form. The cause of the unity of the cloak (in this
sense of 'cloak') is just the cause of bronze being made
round. Since the cloak is something that was produced, or brought into
being, there is no cause of its unity other than the agent who put the
form into the matter. Bronze (the matter) is a potential sphere, and
the cloak is an actual sphere. But *round bronze* is equally
the essence of both the actual sphere and the potential one. The
bronze and the roundness are not two separate things. The bronze is
potentially a sphere, and when it is made round it constitutes an
actual one--a single sphere of bronze.



It is easy to see how this hylomorphic analysis explains the unity of
a substantial material particular, since neither the matter nor the
form of such a particular is by itself a single material individual,
and it is only when they are taken together that they constitute such
an individual. But the question Aristotle is trying to answer is this:
"why on earth is something one when the account of it is what we
call a defnition?" (Z.12, 1037b11). Since proper
definables are universals, it remains to be seen how the proposed
solution applies to them. After all, universals are not material
objects, and so it is not clear how they can be viewed as hylomorphic
compounds. But Aristotle has at his disposal a concept that can fill
this bill perfectly, viz., the concept of intelligible matter
(*hule noete*). (The main purpose of
intelligible matter is to provide something quasi-material for pure
geometrical objects that are not realized in bronze or stone, for
example, to be made of.) So we surmise that it is for this reason that
Aristotle goes on (1045a33) to introduce matter into the
current context. If this is so, we may conclude that the material
component in the definition of a species is intelligible matter.
Elsewhere, he explicitly describes genus as matter: "the genus
is the matter of what it is said to be the genus of" (I.8,
1058a23). So a species too, although it is not itself a material
object, can be considered a hylomorphic compound. Its matter is its
genus, which is only potentially the species defined; its differentia
is the form that actualizes the matter. The genus does not actually
exist independently of its species any more than bronze exists apart
from all form. The genus *animal*, for example, is just that
which is potentially some specific kind of animal or other. Aristotle
concludes (1045b17-21) that "the ultimate
matter and the form (*morphe*) are one and the same, the
one potentially, the other actively ... and what potentially is
and what actively is are in a way one."



This solution, of course, applies only to hylomorphic compounds. But
that is all it needs to do, according to Aristotle. For he ends the
chapter by claiming that the problem of unity does not arise for other
kinds of compounds that are not material: "Things that have no
matter ... are all unconditionally just what is a one"
(1045b23).


## 14. Theology



The science of being qua being is a science of form. But it is also
theology, the science of god. The question now is, how can it be both?
And to it Aristotle gives a succinct answer:



> 
> If there is some immovable substance, this [that is, theological
> philosophy] will be prior and will be primary philosophy, and it will
> be universal in this way, namely, because it is primary. And it will
> belong to it to get a theoretical grasp on being qua being, both what
> it is and the things that belong to it insofar as it is being. (E.1,
> 1026a29-32)
> 



So the primacy of theology, which is based on the fact that it deals
with substance that is eternal, immovable, and separable, is
supposedly what justifies us in treating it as the universal science
of being qua being.



A reminder, first, of what this primacy is. As we saw in Sections 2-3
above, only beings in the category of substance are separable, so that
they alone enjoy a sort of ontological priority that is both
existential and explanatory. Thus walking and being healthy are
characterized as "incapable of being separated," on the
grounds that there is some particular substantial underlying subject
of which they are predicated (Z.1, 1028a20-31).
Often, indeed, separability is associated with being such a subject:
"The underlying subject is prior, which is why the substance is
prior" (D.11, 1019a5-6); "If we do
not posit substances to be separated, and in the way in which
particular things are said to be separated, we will do away with the
sort of substance we wish to maintain" (M.10,
1086b16-19). Similarly, not being separable is
associated with being predicated of such a subject: "All other
things are either said of primary substances as subjects or in them as
subjects. Therefore, if there were no primary substances, there could
not be anything else" (*Cat*. 2b3-6).
The starting-points and causes of all beings, then, must be
substances. But for all that has been shown so far, the universe could
still be made up of lots of separate substances having little
ontologically to do with each other.



Here it may serve to return to Z.3, which opens by calling attention
to something said (*legomenon*) about substance, namely
that:



> 
> Something is said to be (*legetai*) substance, if not in more
> ways, at any rate most of all in four. For the essence, the universal,
> and the genus seem to be the substance of each thing, and fourth of
> these, the underlying subject. (1028b33-36)
> 



Since "the primary underlying subject seems most of all to be
substance" (1029a1-2), because what is said or
predicated of it depends on it, the investigation begins with this
subject, quickly isolating three candidates: the matter, the compound
of matter and form, and the form itself (1029a2-3),
which is identical to essence (1032b1-2). Almost as
quickly (1029a7-32), the first two candidates are at
least provisionally excluded. A--perhaps *the*--major
ground for their exclusion is the *primacy dilemma*, which we
shall now briefly investigate.



The philosophical background to the dilemma is this. If you are a
realist about scientific knowledge and truth, as Aristotle is, the
structure of your scientific theories must mirror the structure of
reality, so that scientific starting-points or first principles, must
also be the basic building blocks of reality. Suppose that this is not
so. Suppose that your physics tells you that atoms are the basic
building blocks of reality and that your psychology tells you that
sense-perceptions are the starting-points of scientific knowledge.
Then you will face a very severe problem, that of skepticism. For a
wedge can be driven between the starting-points of scientific
knowledge and reality's basic building blocks. Rene
Descartes' famous dreaming argument is one familiar form such a
wedge might take. Your sense-perceptions are consistent with your
being always asleep and having a very detailed dream.



In B.6, Aristotle introduces a similar problem about the relation
between our scientific representation of the world and how the world
in itself is structured:



> 
> We must ... ask whether [the starting-points] are universal or
> exist in the way we say particulars do. For if they are universal,
> they will not be substances. For no common thing signifies a this
> something but a such-and-such sort of thing, whereas substance is a
> this something.... If then the starting-points are universals,
> these things follow. But if they are not universals, but [exist] as
> particulars, they will not be scientifically knowable. For scientific
> knowledge of all things is universal. Thus there will be other
> starting-points prior to the starting-points, namely, those that are
> predicated universally, if indeed there is going to be scientific
> knowledge of these. (1003a7-17)
> 



The basic building blocks of reality, (Aristotelian) science tells us,
are particular matter-form compounds. Yet science's own
starting-points are the forms--the universal essences--of
such things. There is no science of you, or of me, though there is one
of human beings. How, then, can science possibly be reflecting
accurately the structure of reality, when its starting-points and
those of reality fail so radically to map onto each other? For there
is no greater difference, it seems, than that between particulars and
universals. The thing to do, then, given that science provides our
best access to the nature of reality, is to investigate the universal
forms or essences that are basic to it.



Aristotle begins the investigation with the most familiar and widely
recognized case, which is the form or essence present in sublunary
matter-form compounds. It is announced in Z.3
(1029b3-12), but not begun until some chapters later
and not really completed until the end of Th.5. And by then it is
with actuality (*entelecheia*) or activity (*energeia*)
that form is identified, and matter with potentiality. The science of
being qua being can legitimately focus on form, or actuality, then, as
the factor common to all substances, and so to all the beings. But
unless it can be shown that there is some explanatory connection
between the forms of all these substances, the non-fragmentary nature
of being itself will still not have been established, and the pictures
given to us by the various sciences will, so to speak, be separate
pictures, and the being they collectively portray, divided.



The next stage in the unification of being, and the legitimation of
the science dealing with it qua being, is effected by an argument in
L.6 that trades on the identification of form with actuality
and matter with potentiality:



> 
> If there is something that is capable of moving things or acting on
> them, but that is not actively doing so, there will not [necessarily]
> be movement, since it is possible for what has a capacity not to
> activate it. There is no benefit, therefore, in positing eternal
> substances, as those who accept the Forms do, unless there is to be
> present in them some starting-point that is capable of causing change.
> Moreover, even this is not enough, and neither is another substance
> beyond the Forms. For if it will not be active, there will not be
> movement. Further, even if it will be active, it is not enough, if the
> substance of it is a capacity. For then there will not be
> *eternal* movement, since what is potentially may possibly not
> be. There must, therefore, be such a starting-point, the very
> substance of which is activity. Further, accordingly, these substances
> must be without matter. For they must be eternal, if indeed
> *anything* else is eternal. Therefore they must be activity.
> (1071b12-22)
> 



Matter-form compounds are, as such, capable of movement and change.
The canonical examples of them--perhaps the only genuine or fully
fledged ones--are living metabolizing beings (Z.17,
1041b29-30). But if these beings are to be actual,
there must be substances whose very essence is
activity--substances that do not need to be activated by
something else.



With matter-form compounds shown to be dependent on substantial
activities for their actual being, a further element of vertical
unification is introduced into beings, since layer-wise the two sorts
of substances belong together. Laterally, though, disunity continues
to threaten. For as yet nothing has been done to exclude the
possibility of each compound substance having a distinct substantial
activity as its own unique activator. Being, in that case, would be a
set of ordered pairs, the first member of which would be a substantial
activity, the second a matter-form compound, with all its dependent
attributes.



In *Metaphysics* L.8 Aristotle initially takes a step in
the direction of such a bipartite picture. He asks how many
substantial activities are required to explain astronomical phenomena,
such as the movements of the stars and planets, and answers that there
must be forty-nine of them (1074a16). But these forty-nine
are coordinated with each other so as to form a system. And what
enables them to do so, and to constitute a single heaven, is that
there is a single prime mover of all of them:



> 
> It is evident that there is but one heaven. For if there are many, as
> there are many human beings, the starting-point for each will be one
> in form but in number many. But all things that are many in number
> have matter, for one and the same account applies to many, for
> example, human beings, whereas Socrates is one. But the primary
> essence does not have matter, since it is an actuality. The primary
> immovable mover, therefore, is one both in account and in number. And
> so, therefore, is what is moved always and continuously. Therefore,
> there is only one heaven. (1074a31-38)
> 



What accounts for the unity of the heaven, then, is that the movements
in it are traceable back to a single cause: the prime or primary
mover.



Leaving aside the question of just how this primary mover moves what
it moves directly, the next phase in the unification of beings is the
one in which the sublunary world is integrated with the already
unified superlunary one studied by astronomy. This takes place in
L.10. One obvious indication of this unification is the
dependence of the reproductive cycles of plants and animals on the
seasons, and their dependence, in turn, on the movements of the sun
and moon (L.5, 1071a13-16). And beyond even
this there is the unity of the natural world itself, which is
manifested in the ways in which its inhabitants are adapted to each
other:



> 
> All things are jointly organized in a way, although not in the same
> way--even swimming creatures, flying creatures, and plants. And
> the organization is not such that one thing has no relation to another
> but rather there is a relation. For all things are jointly organized
> in relation to one thing--but it is as in a household, where the
> free men least of all do things at random, but all or most of the
> things they do are organized, while the slaves and beasts can do a
> little for the common thing, but mostly do things at random. For this
> is the sort of starting-point that the nature is of each of them. I
> mean, for example, that all must at least come to be disaggregated
> [into their elements]; and similarly there are other things which they
> all share for the whole. (1075a16-25)
> 



Thus the sublunary realm is sufficiently integrated with the
superlunary one that we can speak of them as jointly having a nature
and a ruler, and as being analogous to an army (1075a13)
and a household (1075a22).



We may agree, then, that the divine substances in the superlunary
realm and the compound substances in the sublunary one have prima
facie been vertically integrated into a single explanatory system. As
a result, when we look at the form of a sublunary matter-form
compound, we will find in it the mark of a superlunary activator, just
as we do in the case of the various heavenly bodies, and, as in the
line of its efficient causes, we find "the sun and its movement
in an inclined circle" (1071a15-16). Still
awaiting integration, though, are mathematical objects, such as
numbers. But in Books M and N these are shown to be not substantial
starting-points and causes but abstractions from perceptible sublunary
beings--they are dependent entities, in other words, rather than
self-subsistent ones. Similarly, in *Physics* II.2 we read:



> 
> The mathematician too busies himself about these things [planes,
> solids, lines, and points], although not insofar as each of them is
> the limit of a natural body, nor does he get a theoretical grasp on
> the coincidents of natural bodies insofar as they are such. That is
> why he separates them. For they are separable in the understanding
> from movement, and so their being separated makes no difference, nor
> does any falsehood result from it. (193b31-35)
> 



This completes the vertical and horizontal unification of being:
attributes depend on substances, substantial matter-form compounds
depend on substantial forms, or activities, numbers depend on
matter-form compounds.



Beings are not said to be "in accord with one thing,"
therefore, as they would be if they formed a single first-order genus,
but "with reference to one thing," namely, a divine
substance that is in essence an activity. And it is this more complex
unity, compatible with generic diversity, and a genuine multiplicity
of distinct first-order sciences, but just as robust and well
grounded, that grounds and legitimates the science of being qua being
as a single science dealing with a genuine object of study (G.2,
1003b11-16). The long argument that leads to this
conclusion is thus a sort of proof of the existence, and so of the
possibility, of the science on which the *Metaphysics* focuses.
It is also the justification for the claim, which we looked at before,
that the science of being qua being is in fact theology
(1026a27-32).



There, then, in the starry heavens above us, are the forty-nine
celestial spheres, all moving eternally in fixed circular orbits. The
outermost one, which contains all the others, is the primary heaven.
Questions immediately arise: (i) how is the primary heaven moved by
the primary mover, the primary god? Aristotle gives his response in
L.7:



> 
> There is something [namely, the primary heaven,] that is always moved
> with an unceasing movement, which is in a circle (and this is clear
> not from argument alone but also from the facts). So the primary
> heaven would be eternal. There is, therefore, also something that
> moves it [namely, the primary god]. But since what is moved and moves
> something is something medial, there is something that moves without
> being moved, being eternal, substance, and activity. This, though, is
> the way the object of desire and the intelligible object move things:
> they move them without being moved. Of these objects, the primary ones
> are the same. (1072a21-27)
> 



Thus the primary heaven is moved by the primary god, in the way that
we are moved by a good that we desire. (That this heaven, as well as
the other heavenly bodies, are therefore alive is argued for in *De
Caelo* II.12.) But (ii) how can the primary god be such a good?
Moreover, (iii) why is he not moved by something else again?



The answer to question (ii) is also found in L.7:



> 
> Active understanding, though, is intrinsically of what is
> intrinsically best, and the sort that is to the highest degree best is
> of what is to the highest degree best. The understanding actively
> understands itself by partaking of the intelligible object. (For it
> becomes an intelligible object by touching and understanding one, so
> that understanding and intelligible object are the same.) For what is
> receptive of the intelligible object and of the substance is the
> understanding, and it is active when it possesses it, so that this
> rather than that seems to be the divine thing that understanding
> possesses, and contemplation seems to be most pleasant and best. If,
> then, that good state [of activity], which we are sometimes in, the
> [primary] god is always in, that is a wonderful thing, and if to a
> higher degree, that is yet more wonderful. But that is his state. And
> life, too, certainly belongs to him. For the activity of understanding
> is life, and he is that activity; and his intrinsic activity is life
> that is best and eternal. (1072b18-28)
> 



What the primary heaven is moved by, then, is the wish to be in the
good state of active contemplation that we, when we are happiest, are
in, and that the primary god is always in because he just *is*
that activity. Just as we seek the good that the primary god is, so
too does the primary heaven and its forty-eight celestial
companions.



This brings us to question (iii). When the understanding is actively
contemplating something, that something--that intelligible
object--is what activates it. So why isn't that object yet
more primary than the primary god? Aristotle gives his answer in
L.9; the reasoning, though compressed, should now be fairly
readily intelligible:



> 
> What does it [the primary god] understand? For it is either itself or
> something else. And if something else, then either always the same
> thing or sometimes this and sometimes that. Does it, then, make a
> difference or none at all whether it actively understands the good or
> some random object? Or are there not certain things that it would be
> absurd for it to think of? It is clear, therefore, that it actively
> understands what is most divine and most estimable and does not change
> [its object], since change would be for the worse, and would already
> be a sort of movement. First, then, if its substance is not active
> understanding but rather a capacity [to understand], ... it is
> clear that something else would be more estimable than the
> understanding, namely, what is understood. And indeed [the capacity]
> to understand and active understanding will belong even to someone who
> actively understands the worst thing, so that if this is to be avoided
> (for there are in fact some things that it is better not to see than
> to see), the active understanding would not be the best thing. It is
> itself, therefore, that it understands, if indeed it is the most
> excellent thing, and the active understanding is active understanding
> of active understanding (*he* *noesis
> noeseos noesis*). (1074b22-35)
> 



God is the understanding that understands himself, because his
understanding is like ours would be if we imagine it as being the
intelligible equivalent of seeing light without seeing any other
visible object. From the inside, then, from the point of view of the
subject experiencing it, it is a state of consciousness of a sort
familiar from the writings of the great religious mystics, in which
both subject and object disappear from an awareness that yet remains
fully and truly attentive, fully alive and joyous. Insofar as we have
any experience-based evidence of what a beatific state is like, this
one surely approximates to it. Were we to experience it or something
like it, then, there is some reason to think that we would agree that
it is bliss indeed, blessed happiness unalloyed. This is the
conclusion Aristotle himself comes to and defends in *Nicomachean
Ethics* X.6-8. Practical wisdom and theoretical wisdom, it
follows, have the same ultimate starting-point, the same first
principle, so that wisdom, too, is something unified.



Go back now to the primacy dilemma and notice that its resolution is
within our grasp, though one might be forgiven for not readily
understanding Aristotle's statement of it in M.10:



> 
> The fact that all scientific knowledge is universal, so that the
> starting-points of beings must also be universal and not separate
> substances, involves the greatest puzzle of those mentioned. But
> though there is surely a way in which what is said is true, there is
> another way in which it is not true. For scientific knowledge, like
> knowing scientifically, is twofold, one potential, the other active:
> the capacity [or potential], being as matter, universal and
> indefinite, is of what is universal and indefinite, whereas the
> activity, being definite, is of what is definite--being a this
> something of a this something. But it is only coincidentally that
> sight sees universal color, because this [particular instance of]
> color that it sees is a color, and so what the grammarian
> theoretically grasps, namely, this [particular instance of] A, is an
> A. For if the starting-points must be universal, what comes from them
> must also be universal, as in the case of demonstrations. And if this
> is so, there will be nothing separable and no substance either.
> However, in one way scientific knowledge is universal, but in another
> it is not. (1087a10-25)
> 



The idea is this. Since forms or essences are universals, you and I
may both know the same form, as we may both know the letter A. But
when I actively know or contemplate that universal form, what is now
before my mind is a particular: this actualization of that universal.
Now consider the primary god. He is eternally and essentially the
object of the active understanding that he is. So he is a substantial
particular. But since he is essentially an activity, he is also a
universal essence of a special sort--one that can only be actual,
never merely potential. In a way, then, the primary god overcomes the
difference between particulars and universals that seemed
unbridgeable. For he is at once a concrete particular and the
starting-point of all scientific knowledge. He thereby unifies not
just being, but the scientific knowledge of it as well, insuring that
the latter fits the former in the way that realism requires.


## 15. Glossary of Aristotelian Terminology


* accident: *sumbebekos*
* accidental: *kata sumbebekos*
* account: *logos*
* activity: *energeia*
* actuality: *entelecheia*
* alteration: *alloiosis*
* affirmative: *kataphatikos*
* assertion: *apophansis* (sentence with a truth value,
declarative sentence)
* assumption: *hupothesis*
* attribute: *pathos*
* axiom: *axioma*
* be: *einai*
* being(s): *on*, *onta*
* belong: *huparchein*
* category: *kategoria*
* cause: *aition*, *aitia*
* change: *kinesis*, *metabole*
* come to be: *gignesthai*
* coming to be: *genesis*
* contradict: *antiphanai*
* contradiction: *antiphasis* (in the sense
"contradictory pair of propositions" and also in the sense
"denial of a proposition")
* contrary: *enantion*
* definition: *horos*, *horismos*
* demonstration: *apodeixis*
* denial (of a proposition): *apophasis*
* dialectic: *dialektike*
* differentia: *diaphora*; specific difference, *eidopoios
diaphora*
* distinctive: *idios*, *idion*
* end: *telos*
* essence: *to ti en einai*, *to ti esti*
* essential: *en toi ti esti*, *en toi ti
en einai* (of predications); *kath' hauto* (of
attributes)
* exist: *einai*
* explanation: *aition*, *aitia*
* final cause: *hou heneka* (literally, "what something
is for")
* form: *eidos*, *morphe*
* formula: *logos*
* function: *ergon*
* genus: *genos*
* homonymous: *homonumon*
* immediate: *amesos*
* impossible: *adunaton*
* in respect of itself: *kath' hauto*
* individual: *atomon*, *tode ti*
* induction: *epagoge*
* infinite: *apeiron*
* kind: *genos*, *eidos*
* knowledge: *episteme*
* matter: *hule*
* movement: *kinesis*
* nature: *phusis*
* negation (of a term): *apophasis*
* particular: *en merei*, *epi meros* (of a
proposition); *kath'hekaston* (of individuals)
* peculiar: *idios*, *idion*
* per se: *kath' hauto*
* perception: *aisthesis*
* perplexity: *aporia*
* possible: *dunaton*, *endechomenon*;
*endechesthai* (verb: "be possible")
* potentially: *dunamei*
* potentiality: *dunamis*
* predicate: *kategorein* (verb);
*kateegoroumenon*("what is predicated")
* predication: *kategoria* (act or instance of
predicating, type of predication)
* principle: *arche* (starting point of a
demonstration)
* qua: *hei*
* quality: *poion*
* quantity: *poson*
* refute: *elenchein*; refutation, *elenchos*
* separate: *choriston*
* said in many ways: *pollachos legetai*
* science: *episteme*
* soul: *psuche*
* species: *eidos*
* specific: *eidopoios* (of a differentia that "makes a
species", *eidopoios diaphora*)
* subject: *hupokeimenon*
* substance: *ousia*
* term: *horos*
* this: *tode ti*
* universal: *katholou* (both of propositions and of
individuals)
* wisdom: *sophia*