HPhil Seminar: March 21, 2024

The HPhil (History of Philosophy) Research Group of the Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon announces the 2023/24 edition of its permanent seminar on the history of philosophy, devoted to the presentation of conferences by renowned specialists while also creating opportunities to emerging scholars, aiming to promote advanced studies in groundbreaking debates and the permanent training of its academic community.

In this session of the seminar, Gabriele Galluzo (University of Exeter) will present a paper, entitled “Reading Aristotle: two notions of Substance in the Middle Ages”, (abstract below)

The session will take place on March 21, 2024 at 5 p.m., in the Room C201.J (Room Mattos Romão, Department of Philosophy). Admission is free.

Abstract

In the talk, I present two different medieval interpretations of Aristotle’s doctrine of substance in the Categories and in the Metaphysics. I will take Averroes and Aquinas as representative of such two interpretations of Aristotle’s ontology and so of two different understandings of the notion of substance. My focus will be mainly on Averroes’s and Aquinas’s commentaries on the Metaphysics. The talk splits into a short introduction and three main parts.

In the short introduction, I start with a semantic analysis of the term ‘substance’ (οὐσία in Greek and substantia in medieval Latin) and its inherent polysemy. Then I move to the first part and briefly introduce Aristotle’s discussion of substance and show how the Categories and the Metaphysics seem to present two potentially conflicting views of what substances in general and primary substances in particular are. In the Categories, Aristotle identifies the primary substances with the particular objects of our everyday experience (e.g. horses, people, etc.). Particular objects are bearers of properties and belong to (natural or artificial) kinds. They are also the entities on whose existence the existence of everything else rests. While in the Categories ordinary particular objects are seen as metaphysically simple, in the Metaphysics they are analysed as composites of matter and form. In more than one place in the central books (Z-H-Θ) of the Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the form of particular objects as ‘primary substance’. This raises the question of whether form replaces ordinary particular objects in the role of primary substances that the Categoriesattributes to them.

In the second and third part, I turn to medieval interpretations. For reasons of clarity, I reverse the chronological order and take up Aquinas first. For Aquinas, there is no conflict between the Categories and the Metaphysics because the two works deal with different senses of ‘substance’ and so are interested in different questions. The Categories is concerned with ‘substance’ in an absolute sense (‘X is a substance), while the Metaphysics explores the relative or functional sense of ‘substance’ (‘X is the substance of y’). The Metaphysics in other words is interested in finding out what metaphysical constituent is the substance of ordinary particular objects and identifies that constituent with form. There is no conflict with the Categories, for the form of particular objects is only the substance of them and is not a substance in the same sense as they are, as it does not enjoy autonomous and independent existence.

I finally turn to Averroes’s different interpretation. Averroes agrees that the Metaphysics is concerned with the notion of substance of. Differently from Aquinas, however, Averroes does not believe that the notion of substance of introduces a sense of substance different from the absolute sense. It follows that, if form is the substance of ordinary particular objects, it must be a substance as well. What is more, since form explains why an ordinary particular object is a substance, it must ne more substance than the particular object. As can be seen, it is irrelevant to Averroes that form does not enjoy an independent existence. What matters to him are the relationships of explanation between form and ordinary particular objects.

Gabriele Galluzzo is Associate Professor of Ancient Philosophy in the Department of Classics, Ancient History, Religion, and Theology at the University of Exeter. He has previously held positions at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He has published extensively on Aristotle’s Metaphysics and its reception in the Middle Ages.