REALISTIC METAPHYSICS OF ARISTOTLE

Biographical Information
Aristotle was born in Stagira, a Greek colony in Macedonia in 384 BCE and died
in 322 BCE.  At Stagira, Aristotle's father Nichomachus was the personal physician to the
King of Macedonia, Amyntas.  In 367 BCE, Aristotle became a pupil of Plato at the
Academy in Athens, where he remained for over 20 years. Upon the death of Plato in 347
BCE, Aristotle had hopes of being named as Plato's replacement as the director of the
Academy, but was disappointed in this.  From 347 to 343 BCE, Aristotle traveled among
the Greek islands and Asia Minor.  In 343 BCE, he accepted the invitation of Philip, King
of Macedonia, to become the personal tutor to his son, Alexander, who would later
become known as Alexander the Great.  In 336 BCE, Philip was assassinated, and
Alexander succeeded his father as king.  His tutoring days now at an end, Aristotle left
for Athens, where he founded his own school at a place called the Lyceum. When
teaching at the Lyceum, Aristotle had a habit of walking about as he discoursed. It was in
connection with this that his followers became known in later years as the peripatetics,
meaning "to walk about."  Upon Alexander's death in 323 BCE, Athens revolted against
Macedonian rule; Aristotle, being considered pro-Macedonian, fled to the city of Chalcis,
where he died the next year.  What remains of Aristotle's writings are his lecture notes,
which are extensive; he wrote dialogues, as did Plato, but these have been lost. Main
writings: On the Soul, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Poetics ,and
Rhetoric.

Aristotle on Form and Matter

For Aristotle, the form is not something outside the object, but rather in the varied
phenomena of sense. Real substance, or true reality, is not the abstract form, but
rather the concrete individual thing. Aristotle thought that in order to explain
coherence and objective knowledge in this world, form must be located in particular
individual objects. Instead of splitting the world into two separate realms, Aristotle
divides objects into two parts or aspects: form and matter. All objects are composed of a
certain material arranged in a certain way. The material they are composed of is their
matter. The way it is arranged is their form. Take as an example a child playing with
building blocks. The child could use the same blocks to first build a wall, and then tear it
down and build a house. The material or matter in each case would be the same, the
blocks. Yet, the house and the wall have the matter arranged in different ways. They have
different forms. The house is still just one material object; yet it has two different aspects,
its form and its matter.
All objects then have matter, or the material of which they are composed, and
form, the way the matter is arranged. It is the form of a thing, however, that makes a
thing what it is. When the child knocked down the block wall, the blocks or matter
remained. The wall no longer existed, however, because the blocks no longer had the
arrangement or form characteristic of a wall. It is the form of an object that makes it the
particular object that it is. It is also the form of a thing that we know when we have
knowledge of it. To know a wall or a person is to know the peculiar arrangement of
matter or their form. This is what makes them what they are.

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 Aristotle uses this distinction between form and matter to explain how there can
be both permanence and change in the world:
Explanation of Change: Change can occur because the same matter can be arranged in
different ways. When the block wall was destroyed the matter, the blocks, remained. In
change, therefore, it is the form that changes while the matter remains the same. Change
occurs when the arrangement of the matter changes, when it moves from one form to
another.
Explanation of permanence: Yet, even though the form of an object can change, it is
form, not matter, that provides the order and permanence in the world. The matter of all
things is ultimately the same; it could not account for the order and intelligibility that the
changes of things have. There must be some part of the form of a thing, its essential
form that remains the same as the thing changes. The essential form of a thing
determines what an object is and guides the changes and development of that thing. That
is why we find changes intelligible or orderly. While some aspects of the form of a thing
are always changing, as long as a thing remains in existence, its essential form must
remain the same. For example, as a tree develops from a seed into a giant oak tree its
form is constantly changing. Yet its changes are not random; it does not change into a
rock or a pig. It changes in just the ways necessary to make it an oak tree. This is
because some part of the tree stays the same from the time it is a seed until it is a
mature oak. The essential form of a thing makes it what it is and guides the thing
through its changes to its final goal. This is how there can be permanent objects in a
world that is always changing.

Aristotle’s Doctrine of Causation

In the Metaphysics, Aristotle holds that philosophy deals with the first principles
and causes of things. In the Physics, Aristotle, drawing upon the traditions of his
predecessors, distinguishes four different kinds of causes or explanatory principles of
things: (1) The substance or the essence of a thing, i.e., Formal Cause; (2) the substratum
or the Material Cause; (3) the source of motion or Efficient Cause; and (4) the end or
purpose, or the Final Cause. Aristotle defines a cause as that which in any way influences
the production of something.
Matter, or material cause, is that out of which being or a thing is made; bronze,
for example, is the material cause of the statue. Aristotle considers matter as the
substratum, and hence a cause of change in several senses: First, different things are
composed of different materials; in general, what a thing is composed or made of is
matter. One cannot explain an existing thing without explaining what it is made of. So,
for each thing that changes, what it is composed of, i.e., its matter, is what is changed.
Second, matter is that out of which a thing comes to be, whether by nature or by art. You
cannot build a marble statue without marble. Third, matter is that for which an existing
thing persists. If the clay of a clay sculpture is stripped off, it is impossible for the
sculpture to exist.
Aristotle thought that a thing’s coming into being is a movement from potency to
actuality. Matter, for him, is potentially a substance. A thing, before it comes into being,
existed potentially in its matter. That is to say, its matter is potentially the thing that is
made of it. For example, building materials are potentially a building. Moreover, matter
is the main body of the movement by which a thing becomes actuality from potency. A

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thing exists potentially means not only that it has not yet actualized but also that it is
becoming an actual thing, i.e., that it is in the process of its actualization. For example,
when we say that the bronze, as the matter of a statue, is potentially a statue, we mean not
only that the statue exists potentially, but also that the potential statue is moving towards
an actual statue, i.e., the bronze as matter is becoming an actual statue. If it were not in
the process it should not be said to be the matter of the statue.
Form, or formal cause, is that into which a thing is made. It is the principle of
determination overcoming the indeterminateness of matter. Without it matter cannot
exist: it is actuality. The formal cause is the pattern or essence in conformity with which
the materials are assembled. Thus, the formal cause of the statue is the shape or form of
the statue. The formal cause of a house is the sort of thing that is represented on a
blueprint of its design..
The efficient cause is the agent or force immediately responsible for bringing the
matter and the form together in the production of the thing. Thus, the efficient cause of
the house would include the carpenters, masons, plumbers, and other workers who used
these materials to build the house in accordance with the blueprint for its construction.
Clearly the house would not be what it is without their contribution. The efficient cause
of a thing is always defined by Aristotle as the cause of motion – it is the moving force
required to bring about change. What causes the bronze to become a statue, what
produces this change, is the sculptor, the efficient cause of the statue.
Lastly, the final cause is the end, aim or purpose toward which the movement is
directed. When a statue is being produced, the end of this activity, what the sculptor aims
at, is the completed statue itself. The final cause of a house would be to provide shelter
for human beings. This is part of the explanation of the house's existence because it
would never have been built unless someone needed it as a place to live.
The next step in Aristotle’s Metaphysics is to reduce these four principles into
two, which he calls matter and form. This reduction takes place by showing that formal
cause, efficient cause and the final cause, all melt into the single conception of form. In
the first place, the formal cause and the final cause are the same. For the formal cause is
the essence, the Idea, of the thing. Now, the final cause, or the end, is simply the
realization of the Idea of the thing in actuality. What the thing aims at is the definite
expression of its form. Thus the end of the thing is the same as its formal cause. Secondly,
the efficient cause is the same as the final cause. For the efficient cause is the cause of
becoming (or change); the final cause is the end of the becoming, it is what it becomes. In
Aristotle’s opinion, what causes the becoming is just what it aims at the end. The
efficient cause of the statue is the sculptor. But what moves the sculptor and causes him
to act upon the brass, is the form or idea of the completed statue in his mind. The idea of
the end, the final cause, is thus the real ultimate cause of the movement.
Aristotle thus reduces the formal, efficient and final causes into a single notion of
Form. And this leaves only the material cause or Matter unreduced to any other. Matter
and Form are thus two fundamental categories of Aristotle’s philosophy, by means of
which he seeks to explain the entire universe. For Aristotle, form and matter are
inseparable. We think of them as separate in order to understand them clearly. That is to
say, they are separable in thought, but never separable in fact. There is no such thing as
form without matter or matter without form. Every existent thing, that is, every individual
object, is a compound of matter and form. Matter and form are never apart, and to think

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of form by itself or matter by itself is a mere abstraction. Aristotle also says that matter
is potentiality, form is actuality. Matter is a capacity of becoming something – it only
becomes something by the acquisition of form. That is to say, whatever gives its
definiteness as this or that, whatever makes it an actual thing, is its form. Thus the
actuality of a thing is simply its form.

Aristotle on God, the Unmoved Mover

Synopsis: Motion is eternal for Aristotle; it is impossible that there could be a
first motion, for this would require another motion to get it started. Nothing moves
without a cause for Aristotle. The cause of this eternal motion cannot be simply another
motion in the chain, it must itself be eternal and it must be unmoved itself. If it were not
eternal it could not explain eternal motion. If it were moved itself, this motion itself
would require another explanation. The eternal motion of nature requires an eternal
unmoved mover or cause. This unmoved eternal mover is God for Aristotle.
In his Physics, Aristotle argues that motion is eternal. Motion cannot begin
without the prior existence of something to impart motion in another thing, so that there
will always be something in motion, since something at rest cannot cause motion in
another thing.  In addition, if motion were not eternal, then time would not have always
existed, since time is the measure of motion; but, according to Aristotle, no one would be
willing to say that time has not always been in existence.  Nor can motion cease, since to
do so something must cause it to cease, but then the thing that caused motion to cease
would require something to cause its cessation and the process would continue ad
infinitum.  Aristotle concludes, "That there never was a time when there was not motion,
and never will be a time when there will not be motion."
that imparts motion without itself Since everything is moved by something and
since motion is eternal, Aristotle concludes that there must be something being moved;
otherwise, there would be an infinite regress of movers, the moved and instruments of
moving, which is unacceptable. (An axiom for Aristotle is that an infinite regress is
impossible.) According to Aristotle, all movable things are only potentially in motion,
and require something else to act upon them in order to be set in motion. Thus, if there
were no Unmoved Mover, there could be no motion, because a moved mover requires a
cause of its own motion and no infinite regress is possible. 
In Physics, Aristotle argues that, since motion is both eternal and necessary, the
Unmoved Mover must be equally eternal and necessary. Because those things
involved in the eternal and continuous process of motion are not eternal and necessary,
since they come into being and perish, there must be one or many eternal and necessary
thing or things outside the process of motion that imparts or impart motion to the things
in motion. This is the only way that there could be any motion, for non-eternal and
contingent movers cannot explain all motion, because their own coming into existence
needs a cause. Aristotle determines that there is only one Unmoved Mover, not only
because many unmoved movers are unnecessary, but also because only one mover could
produce a continuous motion, in the sense of being an interconnected system of causes
and effects.  Moreover, since it is continuous, motion is one; one effect requires a
single cause, so that the Unmoved Mover must also be one. He concludes that an
Unmoved Mover causing eternal motion must likewise be eternal.

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 In his Metaphysics, Aristotle identifies this Unmoved Mover as God. For him, the
Unmoved Mover or God eternally does one thing (but this is not self-movement), which
is the best thing: God thinks.  Likewise, God thinks about the best thing, which is
thought (since thinking is the best of activities), so that thought and its object are the
same: God's thinking about his own thinking. In addition, Aristotle says that, because
God thinks, God is alive: "And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is
life, and God is that actuality; and God's self-dependent actuality is life most good and
eternal." What Aristotle means by life's being the actuality of thought is that only living
substances can think, so that, if he actually thinks, God must be alive. What it means for
God to be alive—apart from the fact that God thinks—is not, however, clarified;
certainly, for God to be alive is different for other substances to be alive, since God has
no matter. Aristotle concludes, "We say therefore that God is a living being, eternal, most
good, so that life and duration continuous and eternal belong to God; for this is God."
Aristotle calls God, the Unmoved Mover, a substance, but differentiates this
substance from all other substances, insofar as it is "eternal, unmovable and separate from
sensible things." God is separate from sensible things because God has no magnitude,
meaning that God is without a body or a spatial existence. The reason that God can have
no magnitude is that God produces motion through infinite time, which means that God
must be infinite, since an infinite effect requires an infinite cause; but there cannot be
such a thing as an infinitude magnitude. As being a substance without magnitude, God is
without parts and, therefore, indivisible (magnitudes are divisible).
For Aristotle, the Unmoved Mover did not mean the same thing as a First
Mover, as though motion could be traced back to a time when motion began. Nor was the
unmoved mover considered by him a creator in the sense of later theology. For him,
matter is ungenerated, eternal; he expressly argues against a creation of the world. In
explaining how an Unmoved Mover can “cause” motion, Aristotle compared it to a
beloved who “moves” the lover just by being the object of love, by the power of
attraction. The Unmoved Mover moves things in nature because all things
(unconsciously) desire to be like the Unmoved Mover. Things in nature seek to fulfill
their potentialities. Just as you can be in love with someone and that someone can remain
unmoved, all things in nature are moved by Aristotle’s God, but God remains unmoved.

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