Hylomorphism

This article is about the concept of hylomorphism in Aristotelian philosophy. For the concept in computer science, see Hylomorphism (computer science).

Hylomorphism is a philosophical doctrine developed by the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, which conceives every physical entity or being (ousia) as a compound of matter (potentiality) and substantial form (actuality), with the generic form as immanently real within the individual. The word is a 19th-century term formed from the Greek words ὕλη (hyle: "wood, matter") and μορφή (morphē: "form"). Hylomorphic theories of physical entities have been undergoing a revival in contemporary philosophy, especially since the 2000s.

Aristotle's concept of matter

Further information: Aristotle's biology

The Ancient Greek language originally had no word for matter in general, as opposed to raw material suitable for some specific purpose or other, so Aristotle adapted the word for "wood" to this purpose. The idea that everything physical is made of the same basic substance holds up well under modern science, although it may be thought of more in terms of energy or matter/energy.

The Latin equivalent of the hyle concept – and later its medieval version – also emerged from Aristotle's notion. The Greek term's Latin equivalent was silva, which literally meant woodland or forest. However, Latin thinkers opted for a word that had a technical sense (rather than literal meaning). This emphasized silva as that of which a thing is made, but one that remained a substratum with changed form. The word materia was chosen instead to indicate a meaning not in handicraft but in the role that mother (mater) plays in conception.

Aristotle's concept of hyle is the principle that correlates with shape and this can be demonstrated in the way the philosopher described hyle, saying it is that which receives form or definiteness, that which is formed. It can also be the material cause underlying a change in Aristotelian philosophy. Aristotle explained that "By hyle I mean that which in itself is neither a particular thing nor of a certain quantity nor assigned to any other of the categories by which being is determined." This means that hyle is brought into existence not due to its being its agent or its own actuality but only when form attaches to it. It has been described as a plenum or a field, a conceptualization that opposed Democritus' atomistic ontology. It is maintained that the Aristotelian concept should not be understood as a "stuff" since there is, for example, hyle that is intellectual as well as sensible hyle found in the body.

For Aristotle, hyle is composed of four elements – fire, water, air, and earth – but these were not considered pure substances since matter and form exist in a combination of hot, moist, dry, and cold so that everything is united to form the elements.

Aristotle defines matter as "that out of which" something is made. For example, letters are the matter of syllables. Thus, "matter" is a relative term: an object counts as matter relative to something else. For example, clay is matter relative to a brick because a brick is made of clay, whereas bricks are matter relative to a brick house. Change is analyzed as a material transformation: matter is what undergoes a change of form. For example, consider a lump of bronze that's shaped into a statue. Bronze is the matter, and this matter loses one form (morphe) (that of a lump) and gains a new form (that of a statue). According to Aristotle's theory of perception, we perceive an object by receiving its form (eidos) with our sense organs. Thus, forms include complex qualia such as colors, textures, and flavors, not just shapes.

Body–soul hylomorphism

Soul

See also: On the Soul and Aristotle's biology

Aristotle applies his theory of hylomorphism to living things. He defines the soul as the form of a natural body having life potentially within it and the cause (αἰτία) or origin (ἀρχή) of the living body. The cause of the living body is to be understood in four ways: (a) the source of movement (b) the end or goal (c) the essence of the whole living body and the organs and larger body parts of the body are the proximate material causes, the homogenous compounds such as flesh and bone are the remote material causes and the material elements are their ultimate, separately-existing material causes. He says that a soul is related to its body as form is to matter and the actuality of whatever is potential is identical with its form or essence.

Hence, Aristotle argues, there is no problem in explaining the unity of body and soul, just as there is no problem in explaining the unity of wax and its shape. Just as a wax object consists of wax with a certain shape, so a living organism consists of a complex of matter and form. He argues that if the complex is the living thing then the body cannot be the actuality of the soul and the soul is the actuality of a certain kind of body and therefore the soul cannot be without a body.. Thus, Aristotle rejects the doctrine of reincarnation and any kind of afterlife, which were religious dogmas espoused by many before and after him, ridiculing the notion that just any soul could inhabit just any body.

Mind

See also: Nous, Active intellect, and Passive intellect

Aristotle defines νόος or mind in two different places in On the Soul, and describes its properties. First, in book III chapter 4 he writes "Thus that in the soul which is called mind (by mind I mean that whereby the soul thinks and judges) is, before it thinks, not actually any real thing." Second, in book III chapter 8: "the mind is the form of forms". "What it thinks must be in it just as characters may be said to be on a writing-tablet on which as yet nothing actually stands written: this is exactly what happens with mind." "Mind must be related to what is thinkable, as sense is to what is sensible."

He defines the active and passive intellect or mind in the highly controversial passage from book III chapter 5: "καὶ ἔστιν ὁ μὲν τοιοῦτος νοῦς τῷ πάντα γίνεσθαι, ὁ δὲ τῷ πάντα ποιεῖν" "And indeed there is one sort of intellect that is such by becoming all things, and another by producing all things" So, there is a faculty of the thinking soul that becomes forms and another which makes them, the forms being anything which is intelligible. The active intellect is the efficient cause that actualizes the passive intellect into something intelligible; it is the power that enables knowledge to be abstracted by the passive intellect. At book III chapter 5 line 22, Aristotle says the active intellect may be separated (χωριστός). Χωριστός means, for Aristotle, that the active intellect is not involved in physical life.

At 430a17 to 25 Aristotle adds separable (χωριστός), unaffected (ἀπαθής) and unmixed (ἀμιγής), in its essence activity, and when separated (χωρισθείς) it is alone just what it is, and this alone is immortal (ἀθάνατον) and everlasting (ἀΐδιον), we do not remember because this is unaffected while passive intellect is perishable, and without this nothing thinks.

Separability of the Active Intellect

Aristotle first asks whether each part of soul is soul or a part of soul, and if a part, whether it is such as to be separable in account only or also in place, χωριστὸν λόγῳ μόνον ἢ καὶ τόπῳ. Soul in general is first actuality of a natural organic body, neither a body nor without a body, not present as in a vessel but as craft is present through its instruments. That excludes a soul moving a body as a separate agent but not a soul using a body. On that basis he says perception is not without body, while intellect is separable, and concerning mind and the theoretical power nothing is yet clear, but it seems to be a different kind of soul, and this alone can be separated as the everlasting from the perishable, καθάπερ τὸ ἀΐδιον τοῦ φθαρτοῦ. The formulation therefore leaves two different senses of separable: being definable without reference to a body because it has no proper organ, and being able to be active without a body or to exist apart from other kinds of soul. The first does not entail the second.

Immortality and Eternity of the Active Intellect

Why Aristotle says immortal and everlasting is explained at 430a22-23. The aorist participle χωρισθείς, having been separated, marks abstraction in thought. In that abstraction active intellect is alone just what it is, and its essence is activity. As a productive force it is what arranges a given perishable material that becomes all things and is the passive intellect but considered apart from what it arranges it is pure activity without matter. What is without matter is indivisible and without potentiality for corruption, as argued in Metaphysics XII.9 and XIV.2, so it is called immortal and everlasting by definition. That is why the contrast follows immediately that passive intellect is perishable.

Teleology and ethics

See also: Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle holds a teleological worldview: he sees the universe as inherently purposeful. Basically, Aristotle claims that potentiality exists for the sake of actuality. Thus, matter exists for the sake of receiving its form, as an organism has sight for the sake of seeing. Now, each thing has certain potentialities as a result of its form. Because of its form, a snake has the potential to slither; we can say that the snake ought to slither. The more a thing achieves its potential, the more it succeeds in achieving its purpose.

Aristotle bases his ethical theory on this teleological worldview. Because of his form, a human being has certain abilities. Hence, his purpose in life is to exercise those abilities as well and as fully as possible. Now, the most characteristic human ability, which is not included in the form of any other organism, is the ability to think. The ability to deliberate makes it possible to choose the course of action that reason deems best—even if it is emotionally undesirable. Contemporary Aristotelians tend to stress exercising freedom and acting wisely as the best way to live. Aristotle argued that the best type of happiness is acting in accord with moral virtue. Either way, for Aristotle the best human life is a life lived rationally.

Legacy

Universal hylomorphism

See also: Sefer Yetzirah and Tzimtzum

The Neoplatonic philosopher Avicebron (Solomon ibn Gabirol) proposed a Neoplatonic version of this Aristotelian concept, according to which all things, including soul and intellect, are composed of matter and form.

With respect to Averroes’s view, what, if only I knew, could necessitate that we not say this very thing in the case of bodies that come to be and pass away, namely, that the matter they contain is their corporeality, and their form the form that is specific to each one and serves each one as the perfection of its corporeality? Corporeality, which he calls “corporeal form,” would then function as matter with respect to its specific form. If so, the matter, even without its specific form, would be in need of a place and would exist in actuality. Behold, my witness is in heaven, since the celestial body, which is a body without matter, is one that exists in actuality. In this way, many difficult and perplexing questions regarding hylic nature as it is generally understood will be resolved. It is open, therefore, to an objector to say that it is not a specific form through which a body exists, but that the corporeal form, which is the substratum in actuality, is that which sustains the specific form

— Hasdai Crescas

Hasdai Crescas imagines that celestial-body is like Hylé but as matter in actuality, sure over the opposition about this, i.e. in potential existence. Matter and form is always presents in all but celestial-bodies are without form because of their nature; so Hasdai Crescas finds the solution also about this paradox.

Medieval modifications

Thomas Aquinas emphasized the act/potency understanding of form/matter whereby form activates the potency of matter and existence activates souls. The angels are accordingly composites of esse (potentiality) and existence (actuality) that activates immaterial souls, while God alone is per se existence, pure act without any potencies.

Medieval theologians, newly exposed to Aristotle's philosophy, applied hylomorphism to Christian doctrines such as the transubstantiation of the Eucharist's bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus. Theologians such as Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas developed Christian applications of hylomorphism.

Aristotle's texts on the agent intellect have given rise to diverse interpretations. Some following Averroes (Ibn Rushd 1126–1198) argue that Aristotle equated the active intellect with a divine being who infuses concepts into the passive intellect to aid human understanding. Others following Aquinas (1225–74) argue that the Neoplatonic interpretation is a mistake: the active intellect is actually part of the human soul.

Substantial form, accidental form, and prime matter

See also: Substantial form

Medieval philosophers who used Aristotelian concepts frequently distinguished between substantial forms and accidental forms. A substance necessarily possesses at least one substantial form. It may also possess a variety of accidental forms. For Aristotle, a "substance" (ousia) is an individual thing—for example, an individual man or an individual horse. Within every physical substance, the substantial form determines what kind of thing the physical substance is by actualizing prime matter as individualized by the causes of that thing's coming to be. For instance, the chick comes to be when the substantial form of chickens actualizes the hen's egg and that actualization is possible insofar as that egg is in potency to being actualized both as a chicken due to the receptivity of its prime matter to the substantial form of chickens and into a chick with certain colored feathers due to the individualization of the egg given by its parents. So while the individualized matter determines individualized properties, the substantial form determines essential properties. The substantial form of a substance S consists of its essence and essential properties (the properties that S needs in order to be the kind of substance that S is). Substantial change destroys the ability of a substantial form to actualize individualized prime matter without affecting prime matter's ability to be actualized by a new substantial form; e.g., when the wolf eats the chick, the chick's rearranged matter becomes part of the wolf, and is thence animated by the wolf's substantial form.

In contrast, the accidental forms of S are its non-essential properties—properties that S can lose or gain without changing into a different kind of substance: the chick can lose its feathers (due to, e.g., parasites or the like) without ceasing to be an individual chicken.

Plurality vs. unity of substantial form

Many medieval theologians and philosophers followed Aristotle in seeing a living being's soul as that being's form—specifically, its substantial form. However, they disagreed about whether X's soul is X's only substantial form. Some medieval thinkers argued that X's soul is X's only substantial form animating the entire body of X. In contrast, other medieval thinkers argued that a living being contains at least two substantial forms—(1) the shape and structure of its body, and (2) its soul, which makes its body alive.

Thomistic hylomorphism

Thomas Aquinas claimed that X's soul was X's only substantial form, although X also had numerous accidental forms that accounted for X's nonessential features. Aquinas defined a substantial form as that which makes X's matter constitute X, which in the case of a human being is also able to transcend the limitations of matter and establish both the rational capacity and natural immortality of human beings. Nevertheless, Aquinas did not claim that human persons were their disembodied souls because the human soul is essentially a substantial form activating matter into the body. He held that a proper human being is a composite of the rational soul and matter (both prime matter and individualized matter). So a soul separated from its body does not become an angel but retains its orientation to animate matter, while a corpse from which the soul has departed is not actually or potentially a human being.

Eleonore Stump describes Aquinas' theory of the soul in terms of "configuration". The body is matter that is "configured", i.e. structured, while the soul is a "configured configurer". In other words, the soul is itself a configured thing, but it also configures the body. A dead body is merely matter that was once configured by the soul. It does not possess the configuring capacity of a human being.

Aquinas believed that rational capacity was a property of the soul alone, not of any bodily organ. However, he did believe that the brain had some basic cognitive function. Aquinas’ attribution of rational capacity to the immaterial soul allowed him to claim that disembodied souls could retain their rational capacity as his identification of the soul's individual act of existence allowed him to claim that personal immortality is natural for human beings. Aquinas was also adamant that disembodied souls were in an unnatural state and that the perfection of heaven includes God miraculously enabling the soul to function once again as a substantial form by reanimating matter into a living body as promised by the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead.

Modern physics

The idea of hylomorphism can be said to have been reintroduced to the world when Werner Heisenberg invented his duplex world of quantum mechanics. In his 1958 text Physics and Philosophy, Heisenberg states:

In the experiments about atomic events we have to do with things and facts, with phenomena that are just as real as any phenomena in daily life. But atoms and the elementary particles themselves are not as real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts ... The probability wave ... mean[s] tendency for something. It's a quantitative version of the old concept of potentia from Aristotle's philosophy. It introduces something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality.

A hylomorphic interpretation of Bohmian mechanics has been suggested, in which the cosmos is a single substance that is composed of both material particles and a substantial form. There is also a hylomorphic interpretation of the collapse of the wave function.

Hylomorphism in contemporary anthropology

Anthropologist Tim Ingold has critiqued the classical hylomorphic model in his article The Textility of Making (2010), arguing that form is not imposed on passive matter by an external agent but instead "emerges within the process of making". He describes this alternative as a morphogenetic approach, influenced by process philosophy and drawing on ideas from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Ingold emphasizes the active participation of materials, proposing that making is a relational and temporal unfolding rather than the execution of a predefined design.

See also

• Endurantism
• Hylotheism
• Hylozoism
• Inherence
• Moderate realism
• Sacramental matter and form
• Substance theory
• Tripartitism
• Vitalism

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External links

• Hylomorphism -- Encyclopædia Britannica