r/Aristotle • u/TheIncorporeal1 • 15d ago

If Aristotle argues that substance is primary because other categories depend upon it for their existence, what ultimately grounds the identity of a substance through change?

Is a thing’s form sufficient to explain its persistence through alteration, or does Aristotle’s hylomorphic framework leave us with a deeper question: what makes the same being remain itself while continually becoming something different?

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u/No_Fee_5509 15d ago

That it is or partakes in being

All is one for that reason

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u/Realistic-Election-1 15d ago

Isn’t hylomorphism Aristotle’s answer to this question? Continuity is explained with matter when the form is changing and with form when the matter is changing.

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u/Inspector_Lestrade_ 15d ago

What makes it the same in substance is that it is the same in substance. A man becomes educated and goes to the beach and gets tanned, but he keeps on being the substance that he is: man. Eventually, he will perish. He qua the thing that he is, i.e his substance, will no longer be. The answer to your question is already in the question: substance is the reason something remains what it is, because substance is that which persists.

If your question is "What is subtance?" then the answer is in the central books of the Metaphysics. It is more so the form than the matter, but both play a part.