On the Substantiality of Aristotelian Substances

Description du projet

Un examen plus approfondi de la conception de la substance chez Aristote

Les substances, par exemple les animaux, les planètes et les autres entités naturelles, sont fondamentales dans l’ontologie d’Aristote. Deux traits en particulier semblent caractériser les substances: le fait d’être séparé (indépendant dans un certain sens) et le fait d’être un «ceci-quelque chose» (défini dans un certain sens). Toutefois, la nature exacte de ces caractéristiques est plutôt obscure et controversée. Le projet SUBSTANTIALITY, financé par l’UE, vise à clarifier ces caractéristiques et entend ainsi fournir de nouvelles perspectives pour la recherche sur Aristote, mais aussi pour les débats connexes de la métaphysique contemporaine. Il le fait notamment en employant une approche très sensible au contexte, basée sur la méthodologie d’Aristote lui-même, comme l’a souligné Myles Burnyeat, qui suppose deux niveaux distincts de discours sur certains sujets: un niveau plus abstrait, logique, et un niveau plus complet, (méta)physique.

Objectif

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 (), 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.