Aristotle Metaphysics Bk. 9 Ch. 7
The following is an essay I had to write for class. Footnotes have been omitted, not by choice.
Explain the account of matter that emerges from Metaphysics Book IX, Chapter 7. Though your focus should be on that text (and I do want you to tease out the line of argument there), I encourage you to draw from other things we have read by Aristotle, if you find it useful to do so.
Matter, for Aristotle, is potentiality. To explain this, we must first consider what potentiality is. There is a limited range of potentialities, that is to say, X may be potential for Y but not for Z. To illustrate the range of potentials, Aristotle considers health. Not everything can be healed, like perhaps rocks or water, and so they cannot be said to have the potentiality for health, but only certain things have the potentiality for health, like humans or foxes. There is a categorical difference here. But within the appropriate categories, we have a question of how we discover it is potentially healthy (or potentially X, whatever X may be). If a thing can be acted upon externally, then it has the potential for that act. So if a doctor acts upon a patient, then the patient is potentially healthy. If a mason can act upon stone to build a house, then the stone is potentially a house.
While this may tell us what has potential for being an artefact, Aristotle extends this to natural things as well when he says that the power to change is internal, and it changes to what it will eventually become. Those things it will eventually become naturally are also said to be potential to it. So return to the example of the ill patient, the patient has within himself certain powers or capacities to naturally heal itself, granting that nothing prevents it from doing so. So this is another way we know that the patient has the potential for health, it naturally gravitates towards health. Or to use another example, if the acorn naturally grows into an oak tree, granting nothing prevents it like a drought, then we say the acorn has the potentiality for being an oak tree.
Given this background, we can begin to comment on matter. Matter plays a naming role for Aristotle. When we try to name or describe a thing, we do so by reference of the last or prior stage of potentialities. We have established that potentialities have a range, and so what we call or describe a thing will depend on where within that range it is positioned. So for example, we have the following ordered range: Earth, Wood, and Casket. Earth is potentially wood, but not potentially a casket. We therefore call wood earthen, but we do not call a casket earthen. So, what we call a casket, or what we describe as casket as, depends on the matter or potentiality that came right before it. We would call wood earthen for the same reason. We are tipped off to this by our linguistic use of “-en”. This consideration of matter and the range of potentialities allows us to know and discover what kind a thing a thing is. What differentiates X from Y would be the matter.
Aristotle considered the limit of this range of potentiality. So we can go from casket, back to wood, and further back to earth. Naturally, we think how far back this goes, and the limit of this range Aristotle calls prime matter. While wooden can be predicated to the casket, and earthen can be predicated to wood, if you go all the way back down, you will have a matter that is not properly predicated to anything. So, given a thorough account of matter, Aristotle says that modifications used in a “thaten” sense are predicates of matter, and not of subject or substance. Modifications used of substance then indicate a different kind of form, and this also lets us know we are dealing with a new kind of thing. But insofar as the “thaten” is indeterminate, we are dealing with the matter of a thing.
Explain the account of matter that emerges from Metaphysics Book IX, Chapter 7. Though your focus should be on that text (and I do want you to tease out the line of argument there), I encourage you to draw from other things we have read by Aristotle, if you find it useful to do so.
Matter, for Aristotle, is potentiality. To explain this, we must first consider what potentiality is. There is a limited range of potentialities, that is to say, X may be potential for Y but not for Z. To illustrate the range of potentials, Aristotle considers health. Not everything can be healed, like perhaps rocks or water, and so they cannot be said to have the potentiality for health, but only certain things have the potentiality for health, like humans or foxes. There is a categorical difference here. But within the appropriate categories, we have a question of how we discover it is potentially healthy (or potentially X, whatever X may be). If a thing can be acted upon externally, then it has the potential for that act. So if a doctor acts upon a patient, then the patient is potentially healthy. If a mason can act upon stone to build a house, then the stone is potentially a house.
While this may tell us what has potential for being an artefact, Aristotle extends this to natural things as well when he says that the power to change is internal, and it changes to what it will eventually become. Those things it will eventually become naturally are also said to be potential to it. So return to the example of the ill patient, the patient has within himself certain powers or capacities to naturally heal itself, granting that nothing prevents it from doing so. So this is another way we know that the patient has the potential for health, it naturally gravitates towards health. Or to use another example, if the acorn naturally grows into an oak tree, granting nothing prevents it like a drought, then we say the acorn has the potentiality for being an oak tree.
Given this background, we can begin to comment on matter. Matter plays a naming role for Aristotle. When we try to name or describe a thing, we do so by reference of the last or prior stage of potentialities. We have established that potentialities have a range, and so what we call or describe a thing will depend on where within that range it is positioned. So for example, we have the following ordered range: Earth, Wood, and Casket. Earth is potentially wood, but not potentially a casket. We therefore call wood earthen, but we do not call a casket earthen. So, what we call a casket, or what we describe as casket as, depends on the matter or potentiality that came right before it. We would call wood earthen for the same reason. We are tipped off to this by our linguistic use of “-en”. This consideration of matter and the range of potentialities allows us to know and discover what kind a thing a thing is. What differentiates X from Y would be the matter.
Aristotle considered the limit of this range of potentiality. So we can go from casket, back to wood, and further back to earth. Naturally, we think how far back this goes, and the limit of this range Aristotle calls prime matter. While wooden can be predicated to the casket, and earthen can be predicated to wood, if you go all the way back down, you will have a matter that is not properly predicated to anything. So, given a thorough account of matter, Aristotle says that modifications used in a “thaten” sense are predicates of matter, and not of subject or substance. Modifications used of substance then indicate a different kind of form, and this also lets us know we are dealing with a new kind of thing. But insofar as the “thaten” is indeterminate, we are dealing with the matter of a thing.
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