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Aristotle: Form and Matter as the “Reality Real”

Like many students, Aristotle began by accepting the theories of his teacher Plato.

Later, however, he made a significant departure. He continued to accept Plato’s basic

division of the world into Form and matter and to agree with Plato that Form is superior

to matter, shaping and defining it, making it what it is. Where he came to disagree with

Plato was on the question of a separate world of perfect Forms. In Metaphysics. he

writes:

Above all one might discuss the question what on earth the Forms contribute to

sensible things, either to those that are eternal or to those that come into being and

cease to be. For they cause neither movement nor any change in them. But again

they help in no wise either towards the knowledge of the other things . . . or

towards their being, if they are not in the particulars which share in them . .

In other words, although the Forms may appear to serve no purpose in sense

objects, Aristotle agrees with Plato that they give the object its form or identity. If they

existed somewhere other than in association with matter, however, Aristotle believes they

would have no effect on the being, or reality, of the object. At this point Aristotle, the

student, rejects his teacher Plato’s theory that Forms exist in a separate, otherworldly

state (Figure 2.2).

Apart from particular tables, Aristotle argues, “tableness” is a slippery and not very

meaningful concept. If asked the question “How can I learn what makes a table a table?”

Plato would probably advise the use of reason to contemplate the Form of a table—its

“tableness.”

Asked the same question, Aristotle would be likely to reply, “Go and look at fifty tables;

then you will understand what makes a table a table”

Aristotle is willing to grant that in our minds we could make the distinction between

“tableness” and wood and then combine both into the one concept of a wood table, hut he

insists this could only be done as a mental exercise. In fact, no one ever encounters

“tableness” except in actual tables. ‘Again,” he writes, “it would seem impossible that the

substance and that of which it is the substance should exist apart; how, therefore, could

the Ideas, being the substances of things exist apart?”’2 A separate world of Forms, or as

disconnected from material reality—seems nonsensical.

In Aristotle’s view, to exist is to exist as a specific something, composed of Form

and matter. Each of these two ingredients, which make up all the specific somethings in

the world, has a reciprocal relationship with the other. Form gives matter its particularity,

whereas matter gives concreteness to Form. Each needs the other for completion, for

existence. Wood is only wood until “tableness” gives it Form, and “tableness” requires

wood (or some other matter) to express itself.

Matter has within it what Aristotle calls enlelechy, meaning “inner purpose” or

“end.” This gives matter the potential for becoming formed. To describe this process a

little more poetically, we might say that matter yearns for Form and with it matter

becomes formed. When its potential, matter becomes actual, matter becomes real. All

matter possesses entelechy, so all of it is formed. There is no matter without Form and no

Form without matter.

For Aristotle, a kingdom of matterless Forms was self-contradictory. Aristotle’s

insistence on a “this world” orientation has distinguished his philosophy from that of his

teacher and mentor Plato. Whereas Plato wrote I a book (Republic) outlining what an

ideal society would he like and how it should he governed, Aristotle approached the same

challenge by studying 158 actual constitutions and then examining the societies they

produced to see which were the most successful.

Entelechy in Aristot1e’s ontology, the inner purpose, or end, in something that brings it

to actuality.

FORM AND MATTER AS CONCEIVED BY ARISTOTLE

Aristotle rejected Plato’s theory, believing FORM and MATTER could only be separated

in a mental exercise, not in reality.