Francis Petruccelli

PH471 Ancient Philosophy

November 9, 2010
Final Draft – Aristotle Paper

Aristotle on Why We Need Substance

The notion of substance is both one of the most widespread and widely misunderstood
concepts in all of Western philosophy; at different times different philosophers have used it for
entirely different denotations. This paper purports to be not so much a total explication of the
notion of substance in general, or even of the Aristotelian notion of substance, but rather a
consideration of why Aristotle thought substance played a central role in ontology as well as
epistemology. To do this, I will examine two doctrines or problems that pose a challenge to
substance. The first, the ancient problem found in Plato’s grappling with the separability of the
forms, poses a threat to the knowability of things. The second is modern empiricism, which,
borrowing from medieval nominalism, tends to toss out universals and treat the “this” of a thing
as an object of description using sensation, rather than an object of affirmation using the intellect.
What will become clear in the brief analysis is that Aristotle uses substance as a principle of unity,
both in the order of being and in the order of knowledge.
So, what exactly is a ‘substance’ according to Aristotle? He defines it in the Categories thus:
“Substance, in the truest and primary most definite sense of the word, is that which is neither
predicable of a subject nor present in a subject.”1 Further, In Book Z of the Metaphysics, Aristotle
says that substance is the primary sense of being, and is indicated by essence: “that which ‘is’
primarily is the ‘what’ [essence], which indicates the substance of the thing [italics mine].”2 Later
on in the paragraph he asserts, “that which is primarily, i.e. not in a qualified sense but without
qualification, must be a substance.”3 At this point, Aristotle’s outlining of substance takes a turn
away from Plato’s ontological account of the forms: he notes that “both separability and ‘thisness’
are thought to belong chiefly to substance.”4 For Plato, the forms must be separate precisely
because they are universals, immune to the muddy world of becoming. Here we arrive at the main
point of contention between Plato’s doctrine of the Forms and Aristotle’s theory of substance.
Plato’s problem is how it is that a particular—a ‘this’—can participate or share in a form and,
further, how this participation works such that the particular thing is intelligible. Aristotle’s
account of substance solves the Platonic dilemma because substance, which, as essence fixes our
eyes to the intelligibility of things, is informed matter.5
Aristotle’s formula, then, is a direct response to these Platonic problems. The crossroads
that unites the essence and the particularity of a thing is substance. 6 The salient point here is not
the intricate complexities of Aristotle’s explication of substance as essence, but that he sees the
need, both in the realm of being and in the realm of knowledge, for there to be this unity in a thing
such that, a) as a thing it retains its particularity and b) as an object of knowledge it retains its
universality (as knowable form). That is, matter individuates when it is informed, and it is the

1
Categories, Book 5.
2
1028a.10-15
3
1028a.29-30
4
1029a.28-29
5
1041b.7-9 “what we seek is the cause, i.e. the form, by reason of which the matter is some definite
thing; and this is the substance of the thing.”
6
1031a
form of the thing that the mind is able to know precisely because the matter is informed with the
form, the unity of which is substance.7
While Plato seems preoccupied with the immaterial and intelligible realm of universals,
modern philosophy seems to be characterized by a preoccupation with particulars, and, at times,
in the spirit of medieval nominalism, a wholehearted disavowal of universals. In such an
‘empirical’ climate of philosophy, the notion of substance has been greatly challenged, explained
away, or even replaced. It has been even charged that substance is an unnecessary “construct”.
The majority of modern philosophy seems in some way to be a response to the distinctly
epistemological problems of early modern philosophy. Michael Novak notes, however, that the
moderns understanding of substance greatly differs from the Aristotelian formulation. He says
that ‘postcartesian substance’ has been understood primarily as a kind of underlying substratum
or even a posited construct:
Aristotle’s substance is not an ‘underlying somewhat,’ a ‘something I-know-not-
what’, a queer entity inferred ‘behind’ or ‘beneath’ the appearances or
characteristics, a residue discovered by the process of ‘stripping off’ as Descartes
discovered the ‘substance’ of wax, or a postulated and unseen thing-in-itself behind the veil
of phenomena.8
Neither Descartes nor Hume, neither Locke nor Kant, fully grasp what Aristotle means by
substance. Aristotle himself dismisses such formulations as the ones above when he says that the
word substance is applied to “both the essence and the universal and the genus are thought to be
the substance of each thing, and fourthly the substratum.”9 Substance is not the substratum, and
reality is not simply sense-data-in-succession. Matter of its own accord, according to Aristotle
(and many other ancients as well) cannot be known, and so ‘underlying matter’ is a terrible
candidate for substance. The Aristotelian response is that if there is no substance, that is,
informed matter, then there is no knowledge.
Aristotle thus avoids the Platonic problem of separate forms and at the same time rescues
the intelligibility of particulars. A particular substance, as knowable, is informed matter, a
complex of the particular matter that individuates and the form that allows intelligibility. Novak
shows substance to be the key that allows Aristotle to navigate between the Platonic/modern
horns of this substantial dilemma: “[Substance] does not add to, it unites. Substance is no extra
entity. Then why talk about it? To fasten our attention on the intelligibility of things rather than on
their sensible presentations.”10 Plato had thought that substance was form, an extra entity.
Aristotle critiques this position because the substance must involve ‘thisness’; it is not simply form
alone, but informed matter. Yet, the “why talk about it?” that arises from the modern philosophers
mind is a result of the reduction of intelligibility to sensibility, and therefore the discarding of the
formal cause. The doctrine of modern empiricism is that only what can be sensed can be known.
Aristotle remains an empiricist (and his empiricism is crucial for a unified notion of substance)
but he does not fall for the positivist trap. What is known are not the objects of the senses but the
objects of the intellect, through the aid of the senses. 11

7
Novak, 9. This why Novak says that for Aristotle, “The universal has no extension beyond its
particulars. Both universal and particular are known through the same act.”
8
Novak, 1-2.
9
1028b.34-36
10
Novak, 16.
11
Substance is essentially prior to accidents in the order of being but not in the order of knowing.
Substance can be known through its particulars; this is the very revolution Aristotle is able to
formulate. He is an empiricist in starting from sense knowledge, and he remains a realist by not
reducing the world to the complex of human sensations.
 Works Cited

The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon. New York: Random House, 2001.
---. Metaphysics. Trans. W.D. Ross.
---. Categories. Trans. E.M. Edghill.
Novak, Michael. “A Key to Aristotle’s Substance.” Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research. 24.1 Sep. 1963. 1-19.