46

FORM AND MATTER

robert pasnau

The first unquestionably big idea in the history of philosophy was the idea of
form. The idea of course belonged to Plato, and was then domesticated at the
hands of Aristotle, who paired form with matter as the two chief principles of his
metaphysics and natural philosophy. In the medieval period, it was Aristotles
conception of form and matter that generally dominated. This was true for
both the Islamic and the Christian tradition, once the entire Aristotelian corpus
became available. For this reason, although there is much to say about the fate
of Platonic Forms in medieval thought, the present chapter will focus on the
Aristotelian tradition.1
Aristotelian commentators have been puzzled by form and matter for as
long as there have been Aristotelian commentators. Indeed, it would not be
too much to say that these are topics about which Aristotelians have never
formed a very clear conception, and that their failure to do so was the principal
reason why Aristotelianism ceased to be a flourishing research program from
the seventeenth century onward. For those who aspire to a modern revival of
Aristotelianism, the concepts of form and matter can easily take on the aspect of
a kind of Holy Grail, such that if only we could get these ideas clearly in focus,
we could see our way forward on any number of philosophical fronts, such as
the union of mind and body, the coherence and endurance of substances, the
nature of causality, and so on. The historical record, however, suggests that this
hope is a snare and a delusion, insofar as there has never been any such thing as

1 Since medieval Latin before 1200 proceeded in ignorance of Aristotles metaphysics and natural
philosophy (see Chapter 4), one might suppose that it would have little to say about form and
matter in anything like an Aristotelian sense. In fact, this is not always the case. Peter Abae-
lard works with a sophisticated conception of form and matter, although he treats these con-
cepts in a highly reductive fashion. See Peter King, Peter Abelard, in E. Zalta (ed.) The Stan-
ford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu. Gilbert of Poitiers likewise gives form an
important role in his thought (see John Marenbons entry on Gilbert of Poitiers in J. Gracia and
T. Noone, A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages [Oxford: Blackwell, 2003] p. 264). See also
Chapter 49.

635
636 Robert Pasnau

the theory of form and matter. Although medieval philosophers of all kinds used
this terminology incessantly, it had no more of a fixed meaning than does the
ubiquitous contemporary philosophical talk of properties. Hence, the most a
general survey of the topic can do is consider some of the more important areas
of agreement and disagreement.

UNIVERSAL HYLOMORPHISM

Our default theory of bodies today is taken from the seventeenth century,
though it springs largely out of ancient atomism: we take material substances
to be constituted by their integral parts, and to be nothing more than the sum
of those parts. On this picture, the bodies we are ordinarily acquainted with
are just a collection of smaller bodies, perhaps with the further proviso that the
whole be assembled in a certain way. The rightness of this picture can seem so
self-evident as to require no defense. To medieval philosophers working in the
Aristotelian tradition, however, this analysis would seem so incomplete as to be
laughable. On their model, although bodies are composed of other bodies, this
sort of analysis never gets to the fundamental constituents of the material world,
however far down it goes, because it frames the analysis in the wrong way. For
an Aristotelian, the fundamental constituents of physical bodies are not integral
parts, but the metaphysical parts of form and matter.
On one understanding of matter, it is the counterpart of form the stuff that
gets informed so that whenever there is a form there must also be some mat-
ter that serves as its subject. On this conception, there will often be hierarchies
of matter, with the most basic stuff, prime matter, at the bottom, and various
formmatter composites at higher levels, which may themselves be conceived as
the matter for some further form. Wood, for example, is a formmatter com-
posite that can itself serve as the matter of a bed (see Aristotle, Phys. II.1).
This conception of matter lends itself naturally to universal hylomorphism:
the doctrine that every (created) substance is a composite of form and matter.
Perhaps the most influential proponent of this view was Solomon ibn Gabirol,
the eleventh-century Jewish philosopher and poet. According to Gabirol, every-
thing that exists has a form, because every existence of a thing comes from
form, and moreover every difference [between things] occurs only through
form (Fons vitae III.39). These claims are relatively uncontroversial, inasmuch
as all beings, material and spiritual, were standardly viewed as containing some
form, and such forms are what give character to otherwise homogeneous mat-
ter. Gabirols further, highly controversial claim is that all created substances also
contain matter:
 Form and matter 637

[A]ll things are composed of matter and form. That is to say, a body at the lower extreme
[of the hierarchy of being] namely, a substance having three dimensions is composed
of matter and form. And if the whole of what exists is a continuum extended from the
highest extreme to the lowest extreme, and the lowest extreme is composed of matter
and form, then it is clear from this that the whole of what goes from the uppermost
extreme high to the lowest extreme is also composed of matter and form.
(Fons vitae IV.6)

Many early scholastic authors, especially Franciscans, embraced this sort of

view. From the time of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, however, the
view fell entirely out of favor, replaced by the idea that matter occurs only in
the corporeal realm. Hence there arose the linkage we take for granted today,
between corporeality and materiality, so that to be a body (corpus) is just to have
matter.2
One way to confine matter to a narrower range of entities would be to
restrict form as well to the corporeal realm. This strategy does not go very deep,
however, inasmuch as it leaves untouched the principal rationale for universal
hylomorphism namely, to account for the mix of actuality and potentiality
found everywhere among creatures, material and spiritual. That forms are what
give actuality to their subjects, whereas matter is the corresponding potentiality
for that subject to enter into a certain state, by acquiring a form these are
perhaps the only truly uncontroversial things that can be said about form and
matter. This suggests that wherever there is the capacity for change, there will
be both form and matter.
In response, one might try denying that spiritual entities celestial intel-
ligences, human souls have any sort of potentiality for being affected in
any way. This, however, would introduce a radical discontinuity among crea-
tures that medieval authors were generally unprepared to accept. Aquinas, for

2 On hylomorphism among the early scholastics, see Erich Kleineidam, Das Problem der hylomorphen
Zusammensetzung der geistigen Substanzen im 13. Jahrhundert, behandelt bis Thomas von Aquin (Breslau:
Tesch, 1930); Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe si`ecles (Gembloux: Duculot, 1948
60) I: 42760; Richard Dales, The Problem of the Rational Soul in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden: Brill,
1995); R. James Long, Of Angels and Pinheads: The Contributions of the Early Oxford Masters to
the Doctrine of Spiritual Matter, Franciscan Studies 56 (1998) 23752. Among Franciscan authors,
see Bonaventure (Sent. II.3.1.1.1c, II.17.1.2c) and John Pecham (Quaest. de anima 4), and the detailed
discussion in Theodore Crowley, Roger Bacon: The Problem of the Soul in his Philosophical Commentaries
(Leuven: Institut Superieur de Philosophie, 1950) ch. 2. For Albert the Great, see Sent. II.3.4c, In
De an. III.2.9, and James Weisheipl, Albertus Magnus and Universal Hylomorphism: Avicebron,
in F. Kovach and R. Shahan (eds.) Albert the Great Commemorative Essays (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1980) 23960. On Gabirol, and especially the Neoplatonic background to his
thought, see Lenn Goodman (ed.) Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought (Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press, 1992).
638 Robert Pasnau

instance, accepts Gabirols basic assumption in the passage quoted above, that
what is found at the lower levels of creation will be found at the higher levels.
All created substances exhibit complexity and changeability, which is to say that
they exhibit potentiality and actuality. But Aquinas insists that not all potentiality
is material potentiality:
To receive, to be subjected, and other such things do not apply to the soul and to
prime matter in the same way (rationem), because prime matter receives a thing through
transformation and motion. And because all transformation and motion goes back to
local motion as to what is first and most common (as is proved in Physics VIII), we
get the result that matter is found only in those cases where there is the potentiality
for location. But only corporeal things, which are circumscribed to some place, are
of this sort. Hence matter is found only in corporeal things, with respect to how the
philosophers have talked about matter, unless one wants to use matter equivocally.
(Quaest. de anima 6c)

The argument aims to establish a general characterization of material change, so

that it can be distinguished from spiritual change. Only things whose changes
occur in virtue of local motion and so only things that occupy place can
undergo material change. This limits material change to bodies, and so limits
matter to bodies.3 Aquinass closing reference to a possible equivocal use of
matter recognizes that someone might want to treat any sort of potentiality as
matter, thereby retaining universal hylomorphism. Since Aquinas accepts that
all creatures contain potentiality, inasmuch as they are a composite of being and
essence (see Chapter 45), he can object to this locution only on the grounds
that it would equivocate between very different senses of what matter is. It is
much better, he claims, to restrict matter to the corporeal realm.

PRIME MATTER

When matter is restricted to the corporeal realm, the notion of prime matter takes
on a more precise meaning not just as the basement level of any hylomorphic
hierarchy, but more specifically as the stuff in virtue of which substances count as
corporeal substances. This, at any rate, is what the rationale that leads to restricting
matter to the corporeal realm naturally suggests. At the same time, however, the

3 Aquinass argument is liable to misinterpretation in several respects. First, although the text literally
says that all change reduces to local motion, Aquinas does not mean and does not understand
Physics VIII (at 260a27261a27) to assert that a reductive account of qualitative change in terms
of local motion is possible. He means only that, since bodies act on other bodies in virtue of spatial
proximity, local motion is always a basic and necessary condition for the onset of any material
change. Second, Aquinas believes that spiritual substances can literally have location. God, for
instance, is literally everywhere (Summa theol. 1a 8.3). But the actions of spiritual agents need not
involve any sort of local change.
 Form and matter 639

logic of the formmatter distinction tends to drain the concept of prime matter
of all content, making it very hard to see what exactly prime matter might be,
or might do. This tendency appears in its most extreme form in Aquinas, who
treats prime matter as pure potentiality to such a degree that it cannot possibly
exist on its own, or even be understood on its own, not even by God.4 Yet
although it would become a scholastic platitude to describe prime matter as
pure potentiality, few later scholastics were willing to go as far as Aquinas in
depriving prime matter of all actuality. Even Domingo de Soto, an influential
sixteenth-century Thomist, would feel obliged to postulate within prime matter
an essential metaphysical actuality that gives matter its distinctive character
a conclusion that, he remarks, seems so certain to me that there can be no
question about it, except in name (In Phys. I.5).
The worry that prime matter, conceived of as nothing but potentiality, would
lack character entirely, was stated forcefully by John Duns Scotus and then
William of Ockham. Contrary to Aquinass claim that prime matter by itself
would lack even existence, Ockham claims that matter is a kind of thing that
actually exists in the natural realm (Summula philosophiae naturalis I.9). It must
be so, he argues, because matter is a real principle of corporeal substances, but
that which is not an actual entity can be a part or principle of no being (ibid.,
I.10). Scotus had said much the same thing, but in somewhat more cautious
terms, remarking that if you ask whether or not matter ought to be called an
actuality, I have no wish to dispute over names. What is important, according
to Scotus, is that matter is a true reality and a positive being (Lectura II.12
[ed. Vatican XIX nn. 38, 37]). On the usual reading of Aquinas, these are
claims to which he, too, would assent; this raises the possibility that the dispute
over whether matter has some actuality just is, in large part, a terminological
dispute. Scotus, however, treats the strict pure potentiality line as tantamount
to denying that matter is a thing in its own right, distinct from form, and there
is indeed room to wonder whether this is correct, or even whether it might be
Aquinass intended view.5
The chief argument for prime matter having actuality was that it could not
otherwise serve as the stuff that endures beneath every change, both substantial

4 For Aquinas on prime matters dependence on form, see Quodlibet III.1.1; on its intelligibility, see
Quaest. de veritate 3.5c and Summa theologiae 1a 15.3 ad 3 (see also John Wippel, The Metaphysical
Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being [Washington, DC: Catholic Uni-
versity of America Press, 2000] ch. IX). The tendency appears in many other authors. Gabirol,
for instance, insists that matter without form must lack being (Fons vitae IV.5), as does Avicenna
(Metaphysics II.3).
5 For Scotus on prime matter, see also Quaest. in Meta. VII.5. For a reading of Aquinas as denying
that prime matter has any real ontological standing, see Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human
Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) ch. 1.
640 Robert Pasnau

and accidental. On this conception of prime matters role, it may not need any
special sort of character. But if matter is also to play a role in explaining the
corporeality of physical substances, then it must presumably be more than just
a bare, purely potential, substratum. Specifically, since the defining character
of body is three-dimensionality, prime matter might naturally be supposed to
account for extension. This idea, however, was extremely controversial. The
usual medieval stance was to distinguish prime matter from extension, but there
was a wide range of possible views. Both Avicenna and Averroes, for instance,
had conceived of extension as a form that inheres directly in prime matter,
prior to the substantial form that makes the matter be a stone or a horse. They
disagreed, however, on how to characterize that form. For Avicenna, extension
results from a substantial form what would be known as the forma corporeitatis
that endures through all change and accounts for the corporeal character of
matter. Averroes, in contrast, conceived of extension as an accidental form that
inheres in prime matter perpetually but in such a way that prime matter apart
from subsequent forms has merely indeterminate dimensions. Both of these
views were influential on the later Latin tradition, but competed against the
view associated with Aquinas that extension (or quantity) is posterior to the
substantial form, just as other accidents are. On this view, when prime matter
is conceived of apart from form, it lacks extension altogether.6
The notion of extensionless prime matter is, of course, puzzling in part
because it is unclear how we are to conceive of prime matter, if not as extended.
Averroes took the rather surprising position that prime matter is numerically
one everywhere it exists, even within corporeal substances:
We have already said elsewhere that prime matter is numerically one. Let us then
demonstrate how numerically one thing can be found in many places. This is not found
in what is actual. But in what is potential it can be said that a thing is numerically one
and common to many, and that it does not have the differentiating features by which
[the many] differ from each other in singular individuals. And because they have no
indivisible differences and they lack forms, through which is found numerical plurality,
these things are said to be one.
(In Meta. XII.14)

Averroess view seems to be that prime matter is located throughout space, but
that since it is the same everywhere, this does not count as being extended.
This sort of extensionless spreading out, so as to exist wholly in multiple

6 For Avicenna, see Metaphysics II.23, and the discussion in Abraham Stone, Simplicius and Avi-
cenna on the Essential Corporeity of Material Substance, in R. Wisnovsky (ed.) Aspects of Avicenna
(Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2001) 73130. For Averroes, see De substantia orbis ch. 1, and
Arthur Hyman, Aristotles First Matter and Avicennas and Averroes Corporeal Form, in
S. Lieberman et al. (eds.) Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee Volume (Jerusalem: American Academy for
Jewish Research, 1965) pp. 4006.
 Form and matter 641

places at the same time, is more often associated with immaterial entities
like the soul, or else with universal properties. Averroes, however, denies that
a form, or anything actual, could be present in many places. This mode
of existence is possible for prime matter, however, given its lack of actu-
ality, inasmuch as there is nothing to distinguish one bit of matter from
another. This is a view that would be defended in the early fourteenth cen-
tury by the leading Latin proponent of Averroism, John of Jandun (In Phys.
I.24).
If prime matter is strictly and purely potential, then it must lack any intrinsic
distinctness. Thus, according to the fifteenth-century Thomist John Capreolus,
prime matter is actually indivisible and one, but potentially divisible, multiple,
and plural. Or, to avoid the impression that prime matter is actually anything,
he goes on to gloss actually indivisible as not actually divisible (Defensiones
II.13.1.3). To others, however, it seemed that prime matter had to have some
feature that at least lent itself to extension. According to Scotus, prime matter
is not intrinsically extended, but nevertheless it has substantial parts parts
not necessarily spread out in space, but there nevertheless, and apt to be spread
out, when informed by quantity.7 Scotuss idea that prime matter could have
parts and yet lack extension struck Ockham as needlessly obscure, as did the
Averroistic view that prime matter could be spread out without having parts at
all, being numerically one at each location. Ockhams own conclusion, instead,
is that prime matter is intrinsically extended:

It is impossible for matter to exist without extension, because it is not possible for matter
to exist unless it has part distant from part. Hence although the parts of matter can be
united in the way in which the parts of water and air can be united, still the parts of
matter can never exist in the same place.
(Summula I.13)8

On this view, prime matter is necessarily spread out in space, part-wise, in virtue
of its own nature. Since this is a theory of prime matter, not of body, we are still
a long way from Descartess later identification of body with extension. Still,
building extension into the notion of prime matter gives Ockham the resources
to reduce much of the standard scholastic ontology especially the accidental
category of Quantity to nothing more than matter variously situated. This
move thus serves as a critical foundation for his parsimonious, nominalistic
ontology (see Chapter 48).
7 Scotus, Reportatio II.12.2 n. 7 (ed. Wadding XI: 322b; cf. VI.2: 683). See also Paul of Venice, Summa
philosophiae naturalis VI.13. For another statement of the Thomistic view, see Robert Orford (?), De
natura materiae ch. 5 n. 390.
8 See also Marilyn McCord Adams, William Ockham (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1987) pp. 67195.
642 Robert Pasnau

SUBSTANTIAL FORM

Although the obscurity of prime matter is naturally captivating, of far greater

significance to medieval philosophy is the conception of form, which serves as
the chief analytic tool in nearly every area of Aristotelian thought. There are two
basic kinds of form, substantial and accidental. Although the status of accidental
forms was one of the most controversial issues in later medieval philosophy,
the focus here will be on substantial form, leaving the dispute over accidents
for elsewhere (Chapters 479). To concentrate on substantial form and prime
matter, leaving aside accidental forms, is in fact to concentrate on the substance
itself, since on the standard medieval Aristotelian understanding, a human being
or a horse is just a composite of prime matter and substantial form.9 Thus, the
substances color, size, and shape inhere in it, but are not strictly speaking a part
of it. (When Locke and other critics of scholasticism call into question our grasp
of substance, they have in mind this notion of the substance as the thing itself,
apart from its accidents.) In terms of Aristotles often-cited example, a white
man is not a genuine substantial unity, because it is a composite of a substance
(the man) and an accidental form (whiteness). In contrast, what became known
as the essential parts of a human being (prime matter and substantial form)
make a thing that is one per se that is, yield the sort of unity characteristic of
substances.10
It is not at all easy to account for the unity of a formmatter composite,
however, when form and matter are understood as distinct things. Scotus, for
one, thinks there simply is no such explanation, but that instead their unity is a
brute fact:

If you ask why there is one thing per se in one case more than in another, I reply that
just as, according to Metaphysics VIII, there is no question of why one thing is made
from actuality and potentiality, except that this is actuality per se and that potentiality per
se, so too there is no cause for why one thing per se is made from this actuality and that
potentiality, either in things or in concepts, except that this is potentiality with respect
to that, and that is actuality.
(Ord. IV.11.3 n. 53 [ed. Wadding VIII: 652]).

What Aristotle had said is that if one is matter, the other form, one in poten-
tiality, the other in actuality, then the question [of their unity] will no longer

9 Admittedly, this oversimplifies the views of some authors, who would add certain further ingredients
to a substantial composite, such as Averroess indeterminate quantity, Scotuss haecceity, or even
multiple substantial forms (see below).
10 For the case of the white man, see Metaphysics VII. On the per se unity of substances, see, e.g.,
Aquinas, De ente 6 (ed. Leonine XLIII: 380.2349); Scotus, Lectura II.12.1 nn. 4551. I discuss
Lockes view in a forthcoming book on the origins of seventeenth-century philosophy.
 Form and matter 643

appear to be puzzling (1045a235). Rather than try to explain why there is

no longer a puzzle at this point, Scotus contends that the appeal to potentiality
and actuality is the end of the story, leaving nothing more to be said. This is
an unorthodox conclusion, but it captures the unsettled state of the discussion
over how a hylomorphic account might explain the unity of soul and body, or
of any other hylomorphic compound.
A substantial form is more than just a cluster of necessary properties, and more
even than just those properties that give a thing its essential nature as a thing of
some kind (horse, gold, etc.). To be sure, the substantial form is closely associated
and sometimes identified with the essence of a thing.11 But an essence is more
than just a certain sort of defining property an essence defines a thing because
it plays a critical functional role within a substance, explaining the various
characteristic properties of a thing, both necessary and accidental. This is not to
say that the essence explains every property of a thing, however; some properties,
like having a scar, have extrinsic causes. Thus, according to Avicenna, among
accidents, there are some that occur from without and some that occur from
the substance of the thing (Sufficientia I.6). Drawing on Avicennas discussion,
Aquinas remarks that everything that holds true of something is either caused
by the principles of its nature, as is a human beings capacity for laughter, or
comes to it from an external principle, as light in the air comes from the suns
influence (De ente 4 [ed. Leonine XLIII: 377.12730]). This idea runs through
all of medieval Aristotelianism. Water, to take a common example, was thought
to have all its various characteristic features the tendency to be cold, to freeze
at a certain point, to be transparent, etc. in virtue of its essence. And just as
the features of a substance that distinguish it as a natural kind stem from the
kind of substantial form it has, so a substances intrinsic individual properties
are often said to stem from the distinctive features of an individuals substantial
form. (Thus, it is my soul that accounts for the intrinsic accidental features
that are distinctive of me in contrast with other human beings.) For medieval
Aristotelians, the need to postulate some such intrinsic explanatory principle
was the undisputed rationale for postulating substantial forms.12
Once substantial forms are justified in terms of this specific causal framework,
the theory becomes at once more concrete and more vulnerable. There is no
temptation to embrace any sort of conventionalism about essences, inasmuch

11 There was a running medieval dispute over whether the essence of a thing should simply be identified
with its substantial form, as Averroes had argued (In Meta. VII.34), or whether, as Aquinas had
argued (Summa theol. 1a 75.4c), a things essence is its substantial form together with its common
matter (those general features of its matter that it shares with all members of the species).
12 For further discussion, see Robert Pasnau, Form, Substance, and Mechanism, Philosophical Review
113 (2004) 3188.
644 Robert Pasnau

as it is clearly more than convention that explains why water has its distinctive
characteristics. But in taking on the aspect of a kind of proto-scientific hypoth-
esis, the theory loses touch with its more metaphysical roots as an abstract
principle of analysis. In Aristotle, these two aspects of form proto-scientific
and metaphysical exist side by side, so that sometimes forms are conceived of
on the model of souls, where souls are thought to have certain causal powers,
whereas at other times forms are conceived of as abstract, functional principles,
offering explanations at a level that is quite independent of whatever causal,
physical story might be told about the natural world. Both of these aspects
of form are present in medieval discussions as well, but the more pronounced
tendency as time went on was to think of forms as causal agents. Hence, Francis
Bacon would complain that in the natural philosophy of his day forms are
given all the leading parts (De principiis, p. 206).

THE PLURALITY OF FORMS

The doctrine of substantial form was never seriously challenged during the
Middle Ages. There was, however, a very contentious dispute over how many
substantial forms to postulate within a single substance. Avicennas corporeal
form, described above, marks him as a pluralist, and Gabirol postulates an even
larger hierarchy of forms within living things (Fons vitae IV.3, V.34). Averroes,
in contrast, seems to take the unitarian position, arguing that a substantial form
can inhere only in prime matter, not in an actualized matterform composite,
and that therefore it is impossible for a single subject to have more than one
form.13 Among Latin authors, the initial tendency was pluralistic, at least until
Aquinas forcefully defended the unitarian position. Although unitarianism was
condemned at Oxford in 1277 and again in 1284, Aquinass influence endured,
and the result was a persistent division on the topic.14

13 De substantia orbis ch. 1, quoting from the medieval Latin translation (ed. 1562, IX: 3vK). Most
Hebrew manuscripts have the inverted claim that it is impossible for one form to have more than
one subject. But the context of the passage, and the commentary tradition on the passage, suggest
that the intended sense is as quoted (see De substantia orbis, ed. Hyman, p. 50n).
14 On the thirteenth-century debate, see Roberto Zavalloni, Richard de Mediavilla et la controverse sur

la pluralite des formes (Louvain: Editions de lInstitut Superieur de Philosophie, 1951), and Dales,
Problem of the Rational Soul. For Aquinas, see, e.g., Summa theol. 1a 76.34, Quaest. de anima 9, 11.
On the controversy in Oxford, see Francis Kelleys introduction to Richard Knapwell, Quaest. de
unitate formae. For the Thomistic defense, see Frederick Roensch, Early Thomistic School (Dubuque,
IA: Priory Press, 1964). Prominent pluralists include Henry of Ghent (Quod. IV.13), Scotus (Quod.
IV.11), Ockham (Quod. II.1011), and Paul of Venice (Summa philosophiae naturalis V.5). Unitarians
include Thomists such as Giles of Lessines (De unitate formae) and Capreolus (Defensiones II.15),
and also Gregory of Rimini (Sent. II.1617.2), John Buridan (Quaest. Metaphys. VII.14), Albert of
Saxony (Quaest. de gen. et cor. I.5), and Marsilius of Inghen (Quaest. de gen. et cor. I.6). Francisco
Suarez offers an extended defense of unitarianism in Disputationes metaphysicae XV.
 Form and matter 645

In a sense, however, this ongoing dispute obscures the real story: although
Aquinass unitarian account was attacked for centuries, the consensus through-
out was that such an account was preferable when available. When Henry of
Ghent argued against the unitarian conception, for instance, he did so only for
the special case of human beings, and even there he postulated only two sub-
stantial forms. Scotus likewise argued only for two forms, and only in the case
of living things. Ockham was relatively extravagant in positing three substantial
forms within a human being: a rational soul, a sensory/nutritive soul, and a
form of the body. (Ockham was also unusual in his willingness to describe a
human being as having two souls.) All three, however, agreed with Aquinas
in the case of non-living things, and they also agreed that the default view
should be the unitarian one, unless special considerations make it untenable.
Aquinas thus succeeded in changing the terms of the debate. The kind of plu-
ralism he attacked had posited a substantial form corresponding to each of a
things necessary properties; the force of his arguments was such that this kind
of promiscuous pluralism ceased to be a live view.
Although it is not immediately obvious that very much rests on the question
of whether a human being has one substantial form or more, the debate in
fact raises some fundamental metaphysical questions. The principal benefit of
unitarianism is the work it does in accounting for substantial unity. Because
of the substantial forms role in explaining the properties of a thing, one can
say that a substance has its enduring character over time in virtue of having
a single substantial form that gives rise to those characteristics. Pluralists, with
their multiple substantial forms, need to have some further story about what
unifies a living organism. By treating the rational soul as distinct from the form
of the body, they in effect abandon the promise of hylomorphism to explain the
unity of mind and body. Balanced against that cost, however, are the resources
available to pluralism to explain various puzzling features of substantial change.
Intuitively, it seems that in many cases where a thing goes out of existence, part
of that thing remains. An animal dies, but its body remains. A statue is smashed,
but the clay remains. Philosophers have sometimes been tempted to deal with
these sorts of cases by holding either that there is no real substantial change
(that is, nothing goes out of existence) or that in fact there were two substances
overlapping for a time (the statue and the clay), only one of which remains.
Pluralists are able to say something less strange: there is only one substance,
but its identity is centered on two axes, as it were, around one or the other
of which its various properties revolve. The animal is a single substance, then,
and it goes out of existence when it dies, but nevertheless part of it endures, in
virtue of its corporeal form. A unitarian must instead say that when a substance
goes out of existence, it wholly goes out of existence. Thus when an animal
dies, not only is the corpse not that same body, but nothing about that corpse
646 Robert Pasnau

is the same. The corpse may have qualitatively the same properties, but those
properties are numerically distinct. It was this implausible consequence and
the difficulty of explaining why a numerically distinct corpse should happen
to have the same properties as the living body that fueled the philosophical
opposition to unitarianism.15

15 For Aquinas, see, e.g., Summa contra gentiles II.72, Summa theol. 1a 76.8 (see also Wippel, Metaphysical
Thought of Thomas Aquinas, pp. 32751). Aristotle suggests this sort of view at Meteor. IV 12,
389b31390a19, De an. II 1, 412b202. Pluralists had other, theological objections to unitarianism.
For objections of both kinds, see Adams, William Ockham, pp. 64769; Richard Cross, The Physics
of Duns Scotus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) pp. 4793. Because statues are artifacts, they would
not generally have been regarded as substances, and so the analysis in such a case would run rather
differently than in the case of a true substance like an animal.