. Matter-involving forms

As we have seen, Aristotle introduces matter and form as contrasting notions, distinct causes, which together make up every ordinary object. It may come as a surprise, then, to find that he makes comments which suggest that matter and form are more intimately intertwined than is obviously required by the manner of their introduction. It is worth noting in this regard that he is eager to distance himself from Plato’s theory of Forms, which exist quite apart from the material world. He does so in part by insisting that his own forms are somehow enmeshed in matter (Metaphysics vi 1 and vii 11, and De Anima i 1). He also maintains that all natural forms are like something which is snub, where something is snub only if it is concavity-realized-in-a-nose (Physics ii 2; cf. Sophistical Refutations 13 and 31). The purport seems to be that all natural forms are such that they are themselves somehow material beings, or at least that one must mention matter in their specification. Consequently, some scholars have been inclined to suppose that a thing’s form itself contains a specification of the matter which anything with that form has to have (see Balme 1984, Charles 2008, Peramatzis 2011). If so, rather than being contrasted with matter, forms will be themselves somehow intrinsically material. Other scholars have been disinclined to draw this inference, not least because it seems to result in an unhappy conflation of the separate roles that matter and form are meant to play in Aristotle’s metaphysics (see Frede 1990).
The passage in the Metaphysics where Aristotle most obviously addresses this question is vii 11. He begins the chapter by asking “what sorts of thing are parts of the form, and which are not, but are parts of the compound” (1036a26–7). He first discusses the case of things which are realized in multiple different sorts of matter: a circle may be realized in bronze or stone; so it is clear that its matter, bronze or stone, is not part of the form of the circle, since it is separate from them (1036a33–4). We are then told that, in the case of things which are not seen to be separate, nothing prevents the same considerations from applying to them, “even if all the circles that had been seen were bronze” (1036b1).
Having considered the case of circles, Aristotle moves on to consider the form of a man, and to ask of flesh and bones, “Are these too parts of the form and definition?” (1036b5). Some interpreters understand the next sentence to contain Aristotle’s answer:

اقتباس :: In truth no, they are the matter; but, because ‹the form› is not also in other ‹sorts of matter›, we are unable to separate them. (1036b5–7)

Rendered thus, the text suggests that, as in the circle case, flesh and bones are not part of the form of man. However, other editors, especially those friendly to matter-involving forms, print this sentence as a question, so that it reads

اقتباس :: Or are they rather matter; but because ‹the form› is not also in other ‹sorts of matter›, we are unable to separate them?

This second way of understanding the sentence, though it does not require it, leaves open the possibility that Aristotle’s answer will be that, unlike in the circle case, flesh and bones are indeed part of the form of a man. Since punctuation marks are a later invention, it is impossible to be certain which reading Aristotle intended. The sentence, as it stands, is inconclusive.
We might hope that Aristotle’s view about whether flesh and bones are part of the form of man will become clearer later in the chapter. Unfortunately, the relevant passage is also open to multiple interpretations. The chapter goes on to describe how

اقتباس :: some people are in doubt even in the case of the circle and the triangle, on the grounds that it is not right to define them in terms of lines and continuity, but that these too should all be spoken of in the same way as flesh and bones of man and bronze and stone of statue. (1036b8–12)

Presumably these thinkers object to lines and continuity being parts of the definitions of circle and triangle on the grounds that they are matter, comparing them to other sorts of matter that are obviously inadmissible in definitions. Aristotle criticizes this line of thought, which suggests that maybe he does think that certain sorts of matter or at least matter-like concepts are admissible in definitions. However, the fact that he groups flesh and bones with bronze and stone as the sort of matter that is obviously inadmissible suggests that he does not think that they are parts of the form of man.
The impression so far is seemingly contradicted a bit later, when we are told:

اقتباس :: And therefore to reduce everything in this way and to take away the matter is futile: for surely some things are this ‹form› in this ‹matter› or these things is this state; and the comparison in the case of animal, which Socrates the Younger used to make, is not a good one; for it leads away from the truth, and makes one think that it is possible for man to exist without his parts, as the circle can without bronze. (1036b22–8)

Here Aristotle would seem to be referring back to the earlier comparison between the flesh and bones of a man and the bronze or stone of a statue at 1036b11, and claiming that the comparison misleadingly suggests that flesh and bones are not part of the form of a man, when in fact they are.
That anyway is how those in favour of matter-involving forms take this passage, but there is another possible reading. Instead of failing to realize that human beings, unlike circles, are essentially realized in flesh and bones, and as such these must be included in their form, Socrates the Younger’s mistake might have been his paying insufficient attention to the fact that circles, being mathematical objects, need not be instantiated in any specific kind of matter at all, whereas human beings always are. If this is the mistake that Aristotle is identifying, this passage would not support any sort of matter-involving forms, but only the view that natural forms, like the form of a man, are always instantiated in matter of certain sorts. Even if the forms were necessarily so instantiated, this would not require that the matter be included in the specification of the thing’s form.
There are other texts, which have been used to argue directly for the view that Aristotle embraces matter-involving forms: De Anima i 1, where Aristotle describes anger as desire for retaliation manifested in boiling of the blood around the heart; or Physics ii 2, where he says that natural forms are analogous to snubness, i.e., concavity realized in a nose. Defenders of pure forms can attempt to deal with these passages by distinguishing between a pure form, and a broader “definition” (logos, horos, horismos) which brings in other causes.
As well as purely textual arguments, several more philosophical motivations have been proffered in favour of matter-involving forms. One such argument relies on the fact that natural things, unlike mathematical ones, are subject to change. Only things with matter are capable of change, and, if natural forms are to account for the characteristic changes undergone by natural compounds, the claim is that they must themselves be matter-involving. For example, the property of falling downwards when unsupported is one had by all human beings. Aristotle would explain this propensity as being due to their being made of a preponderance of the heavier elements, earth and water. If the form of a human being is to account for this fact, plausibly it will have to make mention of the material constitution of human beings that results in this sort of characteristic behaviour.
In assessing this argument, a lot seems to depend on how extensive an explanatory role can be assigned to hypothetical necessity (cf. Physics ii 9). All human beings have a tendency to fall, necessarily, at least in a world with laws of physics like ours. However, it is not so clear whether this characteristic sort of change is one which must be explained by the form or essence of a human being, as opposed to his matter. After all, there are lots of other sorts of thing, both living and inanimate, which share this particular characteristic. Supposing there was a characteristic sort of change peculiar to all and only human beings, even then it is not obvious (a) that this fact has to be explained by the essence of a human being, and (b) that its explanation will require the essence to be matter-involving. To be sure, we would like some explanation of why this sort of change is peculiar to this sort of creature, but it might simply be a fact about the world that anything with an essence of this sort has to change in this sort of way, without that change being something that is specified within the essence itself.
In this connection it is important to notice that Aristotle recognizes the existence of idia, that is of properties that apply to all and only instances of a given species, which an instance of that species has necessarily, but which are not part of its essence: e.g., all and only human beings are capable of laughter (cf. Categories 5, 3a21, 4a10; Topics i 5, 102a18–30, and v 5, 134a5–135b6). The essence of a human being is rationality, and the fact that we all (apparently) have a sense of humour follows from the essence together with how the world is. Many characteristic changes of organisms may be best explained in a similar way: all ducks waddle, but waddling is not part of their function. Rather anything that fulfils the functional requirements of a duck must (in a world like ours) walk inelegantly.
The question of whether or not Aristotelian forms are “essentially matter-involving” is further complicated by some unclarity about what this description precisely amounts to. In particular, it is unclear whether it is supposed to be a thing’s form, which is also its essence, which is matter-involving, or the essence of the form (or both). Aristotle identifies a thing’s form with its essence at Metaphysics vii 7, 1032b1–2: “by form I mean the essence of each thing and ‹its› primary substance”. (He makes the same identity claim at vii 10, 1035b32, cf. also viii 4, 1044a36.) With this in mind, we can divide the possible views about matter-involving forms into the following four positions, with ascending degrees of matter-involvement:

Pure forms: natural compounds (and their forms) have forms or essences that are not matter-involving.
Compounds have forms or essences that involve matter, i.e., matter is part of the compound’s essence or form. The form that is part of the compound’s form, however, itself has a further form or essence that is not matter-involving.
As in (2), compounds have forms or essences that involve matter; but forms themselves have no essences or forms.
As in (2) and (3), compounds have forms or essences that involve matter; and so do forms, i.e., not only are the forms or essences of compounds themselves in some sense compounds of matter and form, as in (2) and (3), but they themselves have further essences or forms that are compounds of matter and form.

A serious objection to position (4) is that it apparently leads to a vicious infinite regress: if a compound’s essence or form is itself a compound of matter and form, and this second form has an essence or form which is also a hylomorphic compound, etc., every compound will have an infinite series of essences or forms associated with it. Socrates is (essentially) a compound of matter and form, so is his form, so is its form, etc. Note that this regress only applies if all forms are held to be matter-involving. It does not afflict the more moderate matter-involving position, (2), since it holds that the form of the compound is matter-involving, and hence has both material and formal parts, but that this second form, the form of the form, is pure, and has itself as a form, e.g., the form of a computer may be computing functions in certain suitable matter, but the formal part of that form (computing functions) would be pure. The regress is not merely unattractively bloated and otiose. If a full explanation of what something is requires one to list an infinite series of forms, such explanations will not be viable for finite beings like us.
A different way to avoid the regress which plagues (4) would be to deny the assumption that anything that is matter-involving must be a compound of matter and form. Form is matter-involving, but that is not to say that it has its own form or essence and its own matter. Form and matter are introduced to explain certain facts about ordinary objects of perception, such as this man or this horse. Once those facts have been accounted for, there is no need to look for the same explanations of the theoretical entities which have been introduced to provide the original explanation. This way out of the regress involves denying that forms have essences, i.e., it reverts to position (3). This position faces a number of textual obstacles. For instance, at the beginning of De Anima i 1, Aristotle announces that “our aim is to grasp and understand [the soul’s] nature and essence, and secondly its properties” (402a7–8). In Metaphysics vii 11, he refers to the account (logos) of the essence (1037a22–3), and claims that “the account of the soul is [the account] of the man” (1037a28–9) (cf. also Physics ii 2, 194a13). For these textual reasons it would be preferable for a proponent of (3) to be able to say that forms do have essences or definitions in a sense, but they are identical with these (as snubness = concavity in a nose). Their essences are not some further thing, distinct from them.
The difficulty with this is that it is not clear that the defender of (3) can claim that forms have definitions of any sort and still maintain a doctrine that is distinct from both (2), on the one hand, and (4) on the other. Given that forms are definitions, they must have a structure that approximates to that of a linguistic entity. Whatever else one says about them then, it seems clear that they must be divisible (in thought) into component parts, as complex predicates are divisible into words. We may ask of these component parts whether or not they are matter-involving, i.e., the question which the proponent of (3) answers in the affirmative with respect to the form or essence of the compound—does it have parts which correspond to material terms like “flesh” or “hand” or “matter”? If some parts of the form’s definition are matter-involving, and others are not, this seems to make the definition in some sense a compound of material and formal parts. We can then identify the formal parts, and ask if there is a definition of them, and, if the answer is “yes, a matter-involving one”, we are stuck once again with the regress which afflicted (4). On the other hand, if no part of the form’s definition is matter-involving, the proponent of (3) must hold that, while compounds have essences which are matter-involving, these essences have definitions which are not, and this seems to make his view intolerably similar to (2).
It might seem as though it does not make much difference whether Aristotle subscribes to position (1) or (2). According to (2), every physical object has two forms associated with it: a matter-involving one, which combines with the proximate matter to make up the compound, and a second form or essence of this matter-involving form, which is not matter-involving. On position (1), a thing has only one form, which is “pure” in the sense that it contains no matter. However, the defender of pure forms must admit that there is also a broader definition of a thing, which does include its matter, as well as its other causes. Superficially, the only difference seems to be whether or not this “definition” gets to be classified as a form, and this might appear to be a merely verbal disagreement. In fact, more is at stake here: although, “definition”, “form” and “essence” are often treated as though they were interchangeable, a definition is strictly-speaking something linguistic, whereas an essence or form may have a structure that corresponds to something linguistic, but it is still a thing in the world. For example, the essence or form of a human being is a soul. A commitment to two essences or forms per compound substance is an additional metaphysical commitment in a way that a broader linguistic definition of a thing that mentions both its form and its matter need not be. If important theoretical work cannot be found for matter-involving forms, then, pure forms are the more ontologically parsimonious choice.
In any event, one can see that Aristotle’s initial contrast between matter and form grows quickly complex once hylomorphism leaves the domain of change. Although introduced as contrastive notions suited to explicate change and substantial generation in the absence of generation ex nihilo, any easy contrast between form and matter turns out to be difficult to sustain once it finds employment in its further applications. Even so, as Aristotle implies, and as many of his followers have affirmed, hylomorphism proves no less elastic than explanatorily powerful across a wide range of explanatory roles.

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. Matter-involving forms

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. Matter-involving forms

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