On the Substantiality of Aristotelian Substances

Descrizione del progetto

Uno sguardo più attento alla concezione aristotelica della sostanza

Le sostanze, ad esempio animali, pianeti e altre entità naturali, sono fondamentali nell’ontologia di Aristotele. Due tratti in particolare sembrano caratteristici delle sostanze: l’essere separate (in un certo senso indipendenti) e l’essere un «qualcosa» (in un certo senso definite). Risulta tuttavia piuttosto oscuro e controverso in cosa consistano esattamente questi tratti. Il progetto SUBSTANZIALITY, finanziato dall’UE, si propone di chiarire questi tratti e quindi intende fornire nuovi spunti per la conoscenza di Aristotele, ma anche per dibattiti correlati in metafisica contemporanea. A tal fine, impiega in particolare un approccio altamente sensibile al contesto, basato sulla metodologia di Aristotele, come evidenziato da Myles Burnyeat, che presume due distinti livelli di discorso su determinati argomenti: un livello più astratto, logico, e un più completo livello (meta)fisico.

Obiettivo

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.