On the Substantiality of Aristotelian Substances

Substances are the fundamental entities in Aristotle's ontology.

Sensible substances, paradigmatically individual biological organism, are constituted by a form or organisational structure, and some matter.

There are in particular two features characteristic of sensible substances: being separate, i.e. being independent in some sense, and being a this-something (τόδε τι), i.e. being an individual or something definite in some sense.

What these two features exactly amount to is clearly crucial for an understanding of Aristotle's conception of substance, however, it is unfortunately also notoriously obscure and highly controversial in the literature.

The purpose of this project is to clarify these two features, and thereby to advance the literature on the notion of substance and to provide new insights for important debates in contemporary metaphysics. Central in my project is a novel methodology based on Myles Burnyeat's influential work.

This 'two-level methodology' reflects Aristotle's own methodology to distinguish two levels of discourse, one where a subject-matter is discussed from a more abstract perspective and one where it is discussed from a more comprehensive, causal perspective.

This methodology provides the means to interpret the different passages in Aristotle's works in a context-sensitive way that allows to relativise the scope of certain assertions made there.

Employing this methodology allows me to resolve a central dilemma about the notion of separation consisting in the fact that there is prima facie good reason to assume three jointly incompatible assumptions: 1) forms are substances, 2) being a substance implies being separate, and 3) forms are not separate.

This method also provides the means to deal with prima facie problematic consequences of a straight forward, but largely rejected interpretation of separation, and to illuminate a largely neglected, but important aspect of being a this-something, related to final causality.