Aristotle's Concept of Matter : εζ ου and υποκειμνον

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  • アリストテレスの質料に関する一考察 : 「構成因」と「基体」
  • アリストテレス ノ シツリョウ ニ カンスル イチコウサツ コウセイイン ト

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Abstract

Aristotle characterizes matter both as 'that out of which' and as 'the underlying thing.' But these characteristics don't imply the same. Though 'that out of which' may have several meanings, matter is also described as 'that which persists', so it is meant to be a sort of constituent. Being a constituent implies that it has positive content or substance. When the artists are said to know the matter, they recognize its quality and necessity. Since it is also maintained that matter is unknowable in itself, the knowable aspect of matter must be form in a sense. The four 'primary qualities' are examples of this material form. 'That out of which' can mean terminus a quo as well as constituent. But 'privation' is more properly said to be terminus a quo. For there must be not only a pair of contraries that change from each other, but something that persists through that change. This persisting thing is identified with the underlying thing or matter. While in Aristotle's logic primary substances are what underlie everything else, in his physics the underlying principle is formless. 'Matter as constituent' does not imply this. Since he also says that matter, in the most proper sense of the term, is the underlying thing which is receptive of coming-to-be and passing-away, we must distinguish coming-to-be from the other kinds of change. If we distinguish between them severely, what underlies coming-to-be does not persist in the same way as what underlies the other changes does. What underlies coming-to-be(i.e. matter) has ontologically different status from what underlies the other changes (i.e. concrete substance). This difference corresponds to the distinction between the formal or essential factor and the material factor in a concrete substance. Aristotle makes so much of the formal factor, that he regards the material factor as something as much indeterminate as the accidents, and, further, that he rejects the materialism which might result from the concept of matter both as constituent and as persisting subject.

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