How Aristotle gets by in Metaphysics Zeta

Abstract

Metaphysics Book Zeta is widely regarded as the text in which Aristotle presents his fully developed theory of “substance”—his account of the basic entities on which the reality of things in the sublunary world must be based. Earlier writers have been interested most of all in Aristotle’s conclusions, featuring the distinctive Aristotelian concepts of matter, form, and form–matter compounds. Yet fully two thirds of Zeta is devoted instead to the views of others, not least Aristotle’s own other selves in the Organon, where form and matter do not appear. But the most striking “alien” presence in Zeta is that of Plato, who is frequently target, but at times, less expectedly, friend, not foe. Why does Aristotle suppress so much of his own, partisan theory, and devote so much space to the “received” views of Plato and others, or of his own other selves in other texts? The present work is interested less in the details of the partisan theory that Aristotle arguably is committed to, and more in his use of the philosophical tradition as he works through the discussion of substance as subject, as essence, and as universal, en route to his conclusion in the final chapter of Zeta. Aristotle’s goal is to produce a definition of substance—better, a definition of primary substance and of the substance of a thing. The status of his Aristotelian forms as primary substances is not the conclusion to Zeta, but rather a “given” that serves as a constraint on a successful definition.