The Metaphysics by Aristotle

Author:Aristotle
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-10-21T16:00:00+00:00

ZETA 9

This chapter is a kind of appendix to the argument of the previous two, and especially to the general account of composite production in chapter 7. In that chapter, Aristotle had divided productions up into three classes, natural, artificial and spontaneous. He proceeded to discuss natural and artificial production at some length. He now adds some remarks about spontaneous production. It is not clear whether spontaneous production can in fact be successfully married with Aristotle’s basic conception of production, and it is the Cinderella of production in his various discussions. In the present chapter, the account of spontaneous production seems to have affinities with the account of chance production in book II of the Physics. In any case, this is all a digression from our principal interest in substance.

The chapter ends at least with a clear restatement of the central point that Form is not produced. Aristotle also allows that items in the other categories are also not produced, but he insists that the difference between the other categories and the category of substance in this regard is that substance requires the presence of an actual substance to be realized in the composite produced, whereas in the case of the other categories the category item need only exist previously in potentiality.

The treatise as a whole is clearly somewhat uncomfortable where it sits in Zeta, and it has often been suggested that it is an addition that has not been very effectively integrated into the main text. Something like this is very probably true, but the connection between the doctrines of the treatise and the previous discussion of essence and species is both clear (although not explicitly stated) and important. In addition, the treatise is admirable in its own right as giving a particularly clear statement of the Aristotelian doctrine of immanent form.

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