Substance and Essence in Aristotle

Substance and Essence in Aristotle
Author(s): M. J. Woods
Source: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 75 (1974 - 1975), pp. 167-180
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Aristotelian Society
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XI*-SUBSTANCE AND ESSENCE

IN ARISTOTLE
by M. J. Woods
In this paper I have two aims, one more and one less ambitious.
My more ambitious aim is to offer an interpretation of Aristotle's doctrine of essence or ToTI rqvelvat as we find it in the
central books of the Metaphysics,and in particular to offer an
clucidation of the rather obscure doctrine that in the case of
some things, the thing itself is identical with its own essence, by
relating it to Aristotle'stheory of predication, and through that,
to his attempt to deal with the problems raised by the Platonic
theory of Forms. I shall try to support what I say by appeal to
some rather difficult passages in MetaphysicsZ 4-6. My less
ambitious aim is simply to offer a contribution to the solution
of some of the problems raised by those chapters. My appeal
to the text is therefore extremely selective; what I want to say
can, I think, be supported from other parts of MetaphysicsZ
and H. But if what I say makes any sense at all of some of the
things said in cc 4-6, this may be some evidence in favour of it.
One of the more surprising and bizarre consequences of
Aristotle's acceptance of the doctrine that substances are
identical with their essences' is that it commits him to the
position that a statement like 'Socrates is a man' is some sort of
identity statement. That this is a consequence which Aristotle
was inclined to accept has been recognised by G. E. L. Owen,2
but it has not so far, I think, been given any very extended
discussion.
That Aristotle accepted it as a consequence of the identity
of a substance with its essence that an individualsubstance like
Socrates or Callias was identical with his essence may be
disputed. If a certain phrase expressesthe essence of the species
man, it seems intelligible, and in accordance with Aristotle's
doctrines, to say that in a sentence of the form 'Man is ...',
* Meeting of the Aristotelian Society at 5/7, Tavistock Place, London,
at 7.30 p.m.
I975,
W.C.I, on Monday 24th March
I67

i68
M. J. WOODS
with the gap filled by the favoured, essence-specifyingphrase,

that phrase simply designates the form/species itself. But
how can Socrates and Callias have been thought by
Aristotle to be identical with their essence, which presumably
is the essence of man? In the course of Z, chapter 4, Aristotle
says3 that only species of a genus have an essence at all, in a
strict sense.
In reply to this, it must be pointed out, first, that in the
chapters of Book Z in which Aristotle is explicitly confronting
the problems that we are concerned with, there is no suggestion
that this conclusion has only a restricted application, and holds
only of the forms of substance species,rather than of individuals.
Further, the conclusion that Callias is, despite appearances,
identical with the form of the species man follows if we put
together some remarks in A chapter i 8 (devoted to a discussion of 'KaO'o' and therefore, in particular 'KaG' av6ro) with
what is said in Z chapters 4 and 6. In A Aristotle says: 'It
follows that that which is by itself (in its own right) (KaG' avTo')
is necessarily also so called in several ways. For in one, [a thing
is] in its own right what it is to be each thing, as for instance
Callias is in his own right Callias, and what it is to be Callias'
(Io22a
24-27,
Kirwan'stranslation).Here we have Aristotle
committing himself to the identity of Callias with his own
essence; but the essence of anything, for Aristotle is what is

expressedby a definition (horismos)of the appropriate sort, and
the only such definition available for Callias will be the
definition of the species he belongs to: so the essence of Callias
will be the essence of the species man,which, by the doctrine of
Z, will be identical with the species itself. Thus 'Callias is a
man' will be an identity statement.
Resistance will be felt to this suggestion, which is indeed
extremely bizarre, and it may be suggested that it is a mistake
to put together the evidence of MetaphysicsZ with that of A in
this fashion. But evidence pointing in the same direction is
forthcoming from other parts of the Metaphysicscommonly
thought to belong to the same period as Z.4 And if we suppose
that Aristotle identified the individual man Socrates with the
form of the species, sense can be made of a number of other
doctrines of MetaphysicsZ, as I shall indicate later.
In order to see how Aristotle arrived at this extremely

SUBSTANCE AND ESSENCE IN ARISTOTLE
I69
paradoxical position, it is necessary, as Owen has insisted,5 to

see his theory of predication against the background of Platonic
problems. I shall begin by surveying some familiar difficulties
that the classical theory of Forms encountered. What I have
to say will, I hope, be reasonably uncontroversial, though the
position will be presented with a view to the later, Aristotelian,
developments. A central strand in the classical theory of Forms
is the idea that at least a large range of simple predicate
expressions are endowed with sense by being assigned to a
non-sensible entity; it is of this entity that the predicates in
question are most strictly and truly predicated or 'said'. It
follows from this that, in the case of ordinary predicative
statements, in which something is said about a sensible
particular, what is said is not strictly true, at any rate if taken
at its face value. The predicate-expressionwill be applied to
('said of') the sensible particular only derivatively from its
application to the relevant Form, to which the predicate properly and fundamentally applies. This, in turn, means that, in
the case of ordinarypredications about particulars,it wiil be possible to distinguish what the predicate is said of, and that on
the basis of which it is truly said of that thing, if the predication
is true. That thing on the basis of which the predicate is truly
applied to the particular will, according to Plato, be a Form,
and the predication in question will be a true one in so far as
the particular stands in the appropriate relation to it.
If the distinctness of what a predicate is said of, and that on
the basis of which it is so said is always insisted on, and the
doctrine that the entity to which the predicate is assigned, in
being given a sense, is that of which the predicate is most
strictly true is maintained along with it, we are involved, as is
now well known, in absurdities of the Third Man sort. For the
first of these two is what is now cornmonly referred to, in
discussions of the Third Man argument as the non-Identity
assumption, the second the Self-Predication assumption, both
of which underlie the derivation of Third Man regress as it
occurs in the first part of the Parmenides.6
What I want to say, in brief, is that Aristotle's theory of
predication involved the denial of the non-Identity Assumption
in the case of substances, and the denial of self-predication in
the case of non-substances.Aristotle's theory of predication, or

I70
M. J. WOODS
the theory that we find in MetaphysicsZ is to be seen partly

against the background of his own categorial distinctions and
the doctrine of form and matter, and partly in the light of a
recognition of the features of Plato's theory which were
responsible for its coming to grief. As has been pointed out
recently, Aristotle seems in the Peri Ideonto have had a fair
degree of understanding of the crucial assumptions that lead
to the Third Man.7This, it seems to me, provides some explanation of the fact that, in Z 6, he raises the question whether a
thing is identical with its essence, and reaches the conclusion
that the identity holds for some things and not for others. It
also explains the fact that in the course of this chapter, at
103ia 29, he launches into a discussion of the Platonic Ideal
Theory, and insists that those who postulate Forms of the
Platonic kind must accept the identity.
I now want to give some support to these generalities by
discussing the detail of cc 4-6. These chapters form part of
Aristotle's discussionsof essence, which occupies cc 4-6, Io and
i i. They can, I think, be seen as forming a unity. Aristotle's
preliminary survey of the candidates for being ousiaoccurs in
c 3, Io28b 33f., and we find at the end of c I I, I037a 2I, a
summary of his conclusions about essence. As I have said I
shall be concerned with 4-6.
Chapter 4 has presented some difficulty as a whole to commentators because it appears to be divided into two parts. In
the first part, Aristotle seems to be engaged in saying certain
things about the subject logikos(Io29b I3), and then, at Io3oa
27, to move on from a linguistic to an ontological discussion.
Unfortunately, much of what he says before the supposed
point of transition seems to be as ontological as what follows it,
and indeed it is hard to see Io3oa 27 as marking any serious
change in the style of the discussion. Well before the supposed
transition Aristotle has raised the question of what categories
of thing have an essence, and concluded that in the primary
sense only substances do. Conversely, after that point, at
Io3oa 32 f., he introduces the concept of homonumia,and
is one of the terms that are used homonysuggeststhat 'horismos'
mously, the secondary senses of 'horismos'being related focally
to the primary one, that applicable to substances; and a discussion of that kind would seem to qualify under the rubric

171
'logikjs'. I think that this difficulty is an artificial one, and is

created by the assumption which seems to have been generally
made that the chapter falls into two halves, with Io3oa 27 as
the point of transition, which in turn seems to arise from the
assumption
that '&EZ/Ev ot)v
sKoTEVT
A
; ayev' refers back,
so to speak to 'logikos'at Io29b 13. But it is not clear to me that

this assumption is necessary. It seems at least possible that the
remark at Io29b 13 refers simply to the immediately ensuing
discussion, in which Aristotle explains the notion of essence in
terms of kathautopredication, and which ends at 1. 22 when he
raises the question whether 'composites in other categories'
(crlvGIETa KaTa- Tas JAAasKarqyoplasr) have an essence. There is
then no need to regard the chapter as falling into two halves,
since the remark at IO3oa 27 will then refer back only to the
passage immediately before, beginning at io3oa 17, where
Aristotle suggests that 'horismos'is a term which is pollachos
The problem is if the structure of the chapter as a
legomenon.
whole is, in any case, of less importance than the interpretation
of individual arguments, to which I now turn.
The chapter begins with an explanation of the notion of
essence in terms of idea of something's being said of an object
kathauto.As Aristotle says, you are not mousikoskata sauton,so
is not your essence. What Aristotle seems to have
being mousikos
had in mind is presumablythe following points, which may not
have been clearly distinguished by him: first, it is a contingent
matterthat anyone is mousikos;
second,if he is, an individual could
cease to be mousikoswithout ceasing to be the same individual,
so to speak; being mousikosis not a condition of an individual's
retaining his identity. Of these two points, which do need to be
distinguished from one another, the second seems to have been
what Aristotle seems to have had mainly in mind, for reasons
which I shall elaborate in a moment. The reason that I think
they are independent is that there may be some things which
are true of an individual only contingently, but, given that they
are true of that individual, they are not such that they could
cease to be true of it, or be true at one time and not at another.
So what fails to be true kathautoof a subject in the first sense
need not fail to be so in the second; the second sense of kathauto
is weaker than the first. Something may be such that it must be
true of an individual, if true at all, throughout its existence

172
M.
J. WOODS
but it may still be true of that individual only contingently in

the first place. It may be contingently true of Socrates that he
was born in 470, but being born in 470 is not something that
could be true of him at one time and not at another. (This, of

course, touches on matters of philosophical controversy which
I cannot pursue here.) 8
Having pointed out that being mousikosis not the essence, or
even part of the essence, of Socrates, Aristotle goes on to
eliminate an irrelevant sense of kathauto-that in which colour
belongs kathautoto a surface. For clarification of this we can
turn to A c i8, especially IO22a 29 and also PosteriorAnalytics
73a 35f. As already mentioned, this chapter in A is devoted
to a discussionof the various ways or senses in which X may be
that kata which something is said of Y. X may be that kath'ho
somethingis said or predicatedin a number of differentways, and
kathautoitself is pollachos legomenon.
At I022a 29f., Aristotle uses
the example of surface which is AEvK7) KaG' E'aVTrV. It is so
described because a surface is the 'primary recipient' of colour;
the surface is white Ka0' avr'Tv because 8'v av6l 8&EKTUat
rpdOTrco. What Aristotle has in mind may be clearer if we
consider the ordinary Greek use of kata with the accusative
which supplies the basis for the technical use that we find in
Aristotle, of 'kathauto'and 'katasumbebekos'.
It looks as if these
technical uses of 'kata' derive from the use where it means
something like 'in virtue of' or 'in respect of'. In that sense we
can say that a physical object can be correctly called white in
respect of its surface; it is something about its surface which
makes it true to say of the object that it is white; hence the
surface itself is called white, in a sense, in respect of itself; but
in another sense, of course, it is not the surface, but some feature
or characteristic which it possesses which makes it a white
surface. Nonetheless, on this line of thought, the predicate
'white' applies to a surface directly, as compared to the way in
which it applies to a piece of ivory. (In fact Aristotle seems to
be wrong in holding that only three-dimensional objects with
surfaces can be coloured; we can after all describe rainbows
and beams of light, or the sky, as coloured, where there does
not seem to be any question of regarding the colour as a
property of some surface. But that point is irrelevant for our
present purposes.)

I73
If my general interpretation is correct, if there are some

predicates which apply to something kathauto,they will be
predicates which apply to something in respect of itself, and
that will be so in the strongest sense of 'kathauto'where that
which a predicate is applied to and that in respect of which it
is so applied are one and the same. Now if that to which a
predicate is applied and that in respect of which it is so applied
are the same, the predicate in question must be one which
could never fail to apply to the thing in question; for it could
fail to apply to the object concerned only if it were possible to
distinguish the bearer of the predicate from the feature of
character of that bearer which supplied a basis for the application; for it looks as if what Aristotle has in mind when he
speaks of something's being true of a particular individual
kathautois the possibility of some predicate's holding in virtue
of its being just that individual. So, as I suggested earlier, when
he says that you are not mousikoskatasauton,what he has in mind
is that you could cease to be mousikos
and still persist as the same
individual. If so, a logosof a thing's essence will specify what
cannot cease to hold of an individual so long as it persists. In
the case of Socrates, his essence will be the eidosbecause, in
more recent terminology, that is the concept under which he
is identified.
What I have said so far is perhaps fairly familiar; and of
course it is full of difficulties. But I hope I have made it clear
that the phrase kathautocan be given an explanation in terms
of the theory of predication. I return to a discussion of the
difficulties by continuing my elucidation of the arguments of
c 4. As we saw, Aristotle disposes of an irrelevant sense of
'kathauto'in which a surface is said to be white kathauto.It is
not immediately clear what this sense is. Ross, if I understand
him correctly, takes Aristotle to be disposing of the suggestion
that we might regard being a white surface as the essence of a
surface, and refuting it by pointing out that it is tautological.
But this seems a rather strange interpretation. If Aristotle has
already established that white does not belong kathautoto a
surface in the appropriate sense, why should anyone hope to
avoid this difficulty by suggesting that white surfacebelongs
kathautoto a surface? Exactly the same objection would apply
as before, that a surface need not be, or could cease to be, a

174
M. J. WOODS
white surface. I think it makes much better sense to suppose

Aristotle to be considering the suggestion that being white
is the essence of white surface; although a surface can cease to
be a white surface and still continue to exist as a surface, a
white surface cannot go on existing as a white surface while
ceasing to be white; so being white might be thought of as the
essence of white surface. So I take 11. I8-I9 as saying 'nor is
that which is composed of both (sc. white and surface) the
same as being white, since it itself (sc. white) is included in
addition'. In this way these lines attach smoothly to what
precedes, since they answer an objector who tries to make white
something which belongs to a subject kathautoin the relevant
sense.
What the objector is doing is to treat whitesurfaceas if it
were a species of surface, and then claim that being white will
be its essence. Aristotle's objection is that, as it stands, the
proposed definition is circular, because 'white' occurs both in
definiensand in definiendum.However, in the succeeding
lines, he suggests a way out of the difficulty by mentioning the
possibility of defining white surface in terms of the physical
properties of a surface which make it white; if a surface is
white by being smooth, then being smooth will be the essence
of white surface. In order to interpret him in this way we have
to understand ',rc E'rfaveta AEVKij Etat' after "r'o'av'3r- Ka' (v'.
Here once again I part company with Ross. Ross says 'so
that if to be a white surface is to be a smooth surface, then,
though we are not told the essence of surface,it is implied that
"to be white" and "to be smooth" are the same thing'. As I
interpret the sentence, he is saying that if being a white surface
is the same thing as being a smooth surface, being white and
smooth will be the same thing as being a white surface. The
phrasing is rather telescoped, but this reading makes the
sentence more relevant to the surrounding argument, since he
will still be concerned with the question of defining the essence
of white surface, which his objector regards as being simply a
species of surface. At the moment Aristotle is not quarrelling
with the suggestion that white surfaceis a genuine species of
surface, and is allowing the objector to avoid the circularity
objection of 11. I8-I9; since a white surface is necessarily a
smooth one, if the physical theory is correct, this property is

I75
not one which a white surface could lose and still persist as a
white surface, so being smooth would appear to be the essence
of whitesurface.
If this reading of II 2I-22 is correct, we can understand why
Aristotle immediately goes on to consider whether ovrvOEa Ka-ra'
Tas aAas'aKarqyoptas have an essence at all. The reason is
that he has left in the field the suggestion that white surface
does have an essence (being smooth) and he now wishes to
dispose of this by considering whether composites of objects
consisting of substances in combination with an item from
another category have an essence at all. Where he speaks of
cvvOera KarTa -r4 ascaAasa Kar)qyopktaS he is presumably appealing
to an analogy between the way in which whitemanis a composite item, consisting of a substance and a quality, and the way
in which an individual man is a composite of form and matter.
He supposes that 'himation'is a synonym of 'white man' and
asks whether it has an essence. One of the puzzling features of
this stretch of argument is that Aristotle insists on using an
invented example, when there are presumably any number of
actual examples in Greek which he might have used, and
would have served his purpose equally well. A hoplite is a man
wearing heavy armour, and that would have done just as well
as an example of a substance plus an accidental attribute.
Perhaps he wanted to forestall any doubt about whether the
logos of the expression was correctly given by supposing
'himation'to be defined by fiat as 'leukosanthropos'.If I am
right, what Aristotle says here will apply similarly to the vast
majority of things described by substantival expressions, since
most of these will not qualify as genuine substance kinds. 'Man'
stands for an eidos, but all the more specific substantival
expressions will stand for composites of a substance with an
accidental attribute. So the argument about 'himation'here
has a wide application.
Clearly, if there are two senses in which something may fail
to belong to a subject kathauto,this will be because the term
kathautohas two senses. The first case is given as the case where
someone, in trying to define 'white' proceeds to give the
definition of whiteman. (I 029b 3I-33) The precise syntax of the
sentence is not entirely clear, but it seems that the first half of
the sentence should be interpreted as follows: 'In the one case,

176
M. J. WOODS
a thing is said to be what is being defined (sc. in this case,

'to be white') in virtue of its being attached to something
else . . .'9 For light on what this means we may turn to the
problem about snub-nose,which occupies chapter 5 of Z. At
Io3ob i6, Aristotle says that such terms must be defined 'ek
prostheseos',
where the problem is that in the case of such terms,
an adequate definition must mention not merely the property
(in this case concavity) but specify the sort of substance that
the property inheres in. Another way of putting that is to say
that the definitions of such terms cannot content themselves
with identifying what the word being defined designates. What
is in question is the definition of 'snub-nosed' in its application
to the property, not in its application to the substance having
the property; and similarly with 'white', a term which has a
dual application, giving rise to two different senses, both to the
colour itself and to the substance which has the colour, as
Aristotle notes at 103ib 22-28. But if the correct definition has
to be of the form 'the property of being ... in such and such a
kind of substance', the name will not be applied to the property
on the strength of its being just the property that it is, i.e. in
respect of its being itself, so to speak. And that will explain in
what sense such definitions that involve 'addition' are not
kathauto.
If all this is correct, we may naturally suppose that the
second sense of 'kathauto',in which there is no 'addition'
involved is that in which it has already been admitted that a
term like 'musical' does not apply kathautoto a man. That being
so, Aristotle is correct to say that 'white man' would be true
kathautoof himation,so far as this argument goes.
However, at IO3oa 2f. Aristotle asserts roundly that white
man lacks an essence, that an essence is something which is
todeti-a this. Since only substancesare 'what this something is'
(OiTep
T&8r'Tt),
only substanceshave essences.The conclusion
that only things which are the eideof gene,i.e. substance-forms,

have essences, is stated at Io3oa I I-I4. Later in the chapter he
qualifies this statement by saying that other things than
substances may have a horismosand therefore an essence, but
in a secondary sense. But, as he says at Io3ob 4-6, the primary
and unqualified use of the terms 'essence' and 'horismos'is in
application to substances.

SUBSTANCEAND ESSENCEIN ARISTOTLE
177
As I have already said, one of the things which is rather

perplexing about the discussion of essence in these chapters is
that he seems not to be interested in drawing any distinction,
in the case of substances, between particular substances like
Socrates, and the form or kind which he shares with Callias.
If I am right in connecting the doctrine that some things are
identical with their own essences with the notion of kathauto
predication, we can understand his remark at Io3Ib 27 that
the pathosor quality white is the same as its own essence by
appealing to the fact that the term 'white' applies to a colour
in respect of itself; it is correct to describe the colour white as
'white' on strength of its being just that colour; and similarly
the term 'man' applies to the eidoson the strength of its being
just that eidos. But if we consider the sentence 'Socrates is a
man' do we not have the same reason for asserting that 'man'
applies kathautoto Socrates, or so it appears. It looks as if we
shall have to say that 'man' applies to Socrates in virtue of his
possessing the form or belonging to the species, and this would
seem to give a parallel reason for denying that the eidos is
predicated kathautoof an individual man to the one that
Aristotle offered for his denial that the term 'white' is applied
kathautoto an individual man.
I want to suggest that Aristotle held that a statement like
'Socrates is a man' was, despite appearances, to be construed
as a statement of identity. When we use a proper name like
'Socrates' to pick out an individual man, what we pick out is
always the form; though we pick it out as it occurs in a particular piece of matter. The essence of Socrates is simply the
form man, an essence which he shares with Callias. What
distinguishes Socrates and Callias is their matter. Thus he
says at IO34a 6-8: 'And when we have the whole, such and
such a form in this flesh and in these bones, this is Callias or
Socrates; and they are different in virtue of their matter (for
that is different) but the same in form; for their form is indivisible.' (Ross's translation.) Socrates and Callias are each
identical with the form man and 'Socrates is a man' becomes a
statement of identity. This doctrine is, of course, extremely
paradoxical, but I am inclined to think that it is Aristotle's.
KaO'aV'rOvKaAAias'
o KaAAlasg
It will make sense of A 1022a26-27:
to Tl Xv JEvaL KaAAia. The essence of Callias is the
Kat

178
M.
J.
WOODS
essence which he is-the name 'Callias' picks out that essence

or form, though it picks it out in its occurrence in a particular
piece of matter. When he says at IO34a 8 that the eidos is
atomon,what he means is that eidosis not something divided up
among particular things in the way in which the colour white is
divided up among particular white things. Hence there is no
or whatever, holding between
question of a relation of methexis,
the substances belonging to a species and the form which
defines it. Aristotle is quite happy to use the term 'methexis'
for the relation which holds between the colour white and
particular white things (I o3oa I3: substance forms are not said
think he regarded the colour white as something shared out among particular objects in a fairly literal
way. But this notion of the sharing out of an attribute among
the things that possess it is only intelligible if we regard the
things that share in it as already distinguished; and according
to Aristotle, they are distinguished by being different occurrences of a form in a particular piece of matter. To describe the
relation of particular white things to the colour as one of
sharing is harmless provided we insist that the predicate in
question does not apply in the same sense to the attribute as it
does to the bearer of the attribute (cf. Io3Ib 23). No Third
Man regress threatens if we deny self predication. In the case
of substances, non-identity is denied; Aristotle insists that the
eidoshas the term 'man' applied to it in virtue of itself; nothing
further mediates the application of the term 'man' to the form.
Again, Socrates can be truly described as a man, not on the
strength of his standing in some relation of methexisto a form,
since that would suggest that you could pick Socrates out
independently of his possessing-or rather of his matter's being
an embodiment of-the form.
This interpretationhas the merit of taking seriouslyAristotle's
I
KaTa ILErooX<'v).
statements that a form is a this (cf. Io2ga 28, and the passage
already mentioned in c 4). We can see why Aristotle says this

if we suppose that Aristotle thought that when we use a
demonstrative to pick something out, what we pick out is
always the form. We can also explain the fact that in MetaphysicsZ, he reservesthe term 'primarysubstance'for substance
forms or essences, and abandons the terminology of the
in which it is an individual man like Socrates that is
Categories

SUBSTANCE
AND ESSENCE IN ARISTOTLE
179
a primary substance, and man and horse are called secondary

substances (cf. Io32b 1-2). We can also explain along these
lines his idea that forms are separate (xWpLara).

That Aristotle's theory of essence was developed in part with
a view to avoiding difficulties of the Third Man kind
is, I think, confirmed by the fact that in c 6, the chapter
ostensibly devoted to a discussion of the question whether
forms are the same as their essences, he discusses the
matter with reference to the Platonic theory, and says that if
we say that Forms are distinct from their essences, we are
involved in an infinite regress. At IO32a 2f. he says that if the
essence of unity is distinct from unity, there will be an infinite
regress. The language used is reminiscent of the language of
the Third Man argument. Given the distinction of substance
from other categories, and the analysis of an individual
substance into form and matter, Aristotle thought he could
present a theory of predication which was immune to Platonic
difficulties. Admittedly, the particular difficulties that are
reflected in the Third Man regress required only that the
non-Identity Assumption should not have been accepted by
him in full generality; and that condition would have been
met if Aristotle had simply contented himself with asserting the
identity of the species-form with its own essence. However, it
seems reasonable to suppose that the problems of the Platonic
theory which clearly preoccupied Aristotle a good deal, play a
large role in explaining how Aristotle came to develop his
theory of kathautopredication. This theory of predication carried
with it the notion of something's being said of a subject kathauto,
in a number of different senses, which are distinguished in c4
of MetaphysicsZ. Socrates is a man in respect of himself because
man is what Socrates, in the fullest sense, is. When we trace
Socrates' career through his life, what we are tracing is the
form in its occurrence in the particular piece of matter that
constitutes Socrates' body.
In order to grasp the way in which Aristotle conceived of the
identity of Socrates, Callias, etc. with the form of the species,
it may be illuminating to think of the relation between a
(type)-word and its various occurrences. It is not natural to
regard the relation between a token of a given word to the
(type)-word itself as simply a special case of the relation of

I80
M. J. WOODS
instance to sort: it is much more natural to suppose that when

the same word occurs in severalplaces in the course of a printed
page that it is indeed the same word that is recognisable in its
various occurrences.
Of course, much more needs to be said on the subject of
Aristotle'smature theory of predication. A full discussionwould
require some discussionof how Aristotle would have regarded
predications in which a form is assigned to its genus. In order
to explain this it would be necessary to offer an interpretation
of the doctrine that the genus is not something over and above
the species belonging to it. 10 This in turn would require some
understanding of Aristotle's baffling use of the matter-form
model in chapter 6 in explaining the relation between a genus
and its diferentiae.What I have attempted to do in this
paper is simply to throw some light on a doctrine which makes
its main appearance in the early chapters of Metaphysics
Z.
FOOTNOTES
1 I follow the established practice of using 'essence' as a conventional
translation of Aristotle's 'T'i-v etvaL' and 'the essence of man' as a trans-
lation of such expressionsas 'To av6porcw etvat'.

2
In 'The Platonism of Aristotle', British Academy Lecture I965 pp.

(reprinted in Studiesin thePhilosophyof ThoughtandActioned. P. F.
Strawson). In a footnote, Owen raises doubts about how far the theory of
predication, and the associated doctrine that the primary substances are
species-forms rather than individuals, survives the discussion of the later
chapters of Z.
I36-137
3 I03oa
4 cf. r
11-13.
IOO7a
33-b i8. Compare also PosteriorAnalyticsI 22 83a 24-32.
5 Op.cit.
6 Cf. Gregory Vlastos 'The Third Man Argument in the Parmenides'in
PhilosophicalReview I 954.
7 Cf. Owen, op. cit.
8 I have in mind, of course, the recent work of Saul Kripke.
9 I think that '"pt'raL' is best taken as passive rather than middle,
despite the occurrence in the immediate context of the same verb used in
the middle.
10 Cf. Z i3 Io38b 33-34-


Substance and Essence in Aristotle

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Substance and Essence in Aristotle

This content downloaded from 134.76.63.66 on Mon, 23 Feb 2015 16:52:58 PM

XI*-SUBSTANCE AND ESSENCE

W.C.I, on Monday 24th March

This content downloaded from 134.76.63.66 on Mon, 23 Feb 2015 16:52:58 PM

with the gap filled by the favoured, essence-specifyingphrase,

Kirwan'stranslation).Here we have Aristotle

committing himself to the identity of Callias with his own

essence; but the essence of anything, for Aristotle is what is

This content downloaded from 134.76.63.66 on Mon, 23 Feb 2015 16:52:58 PM