Platonic Hylomorphism

Rhizomata 2022; 10(1): 26–57
Lloyd P. Gerson*
Platonic Hylomorphism
https://doi.org/10.1515/rhiz-2022-0002
Abstract: Hylomorphism is almost universally claimed to be a staple doctrine

of Aristotle. In this paper, I discuss a wide range of texts from the dialogues of
Plato that straightforwardly display hylomorphism. Both Plato and Aristotle rest
their cognitive realism on their hylomorphism. The crucial difference between
Aristotle’s hylomorphism and Plato’s is that Aristotle believes that hylomorphism
supports and is supported by essentialism whereas Plato does not. Plotinus pre-
sents arguments against Aristotle’s essentialism at the same time as he defends
Platonic hylomorphism and his cognitive realism.
Keywords: hylomorphism, essentialism, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, universals,

cognitive realism
1 Aristotle
The term “hylomorphism” is universally associated with Aristotle’s account of
the composition of things in the sensible world, although the word itself is of 19th
century coinage. Aristotle argues that everything found in nature is composed of
form (μορφή, εἶδος) and matter (ὕλη).1 He does this in the course of his effort to
take up the challenge of Parmenides according to whom change is an impossibil-
ity since change, were it to exist, would mean that something came out of or dis-
appeared into nothing. In order to understand change, we need to deploy three
scientific principles: form, matter, and privation (στέρησις).2 The third principle,
privation, is needed to complete the terminological framework of change. The
1 See Phys. II.2 194a12–13: “Since nature (φύσις) is spoken of in two ways, the form (τὸ εἶδος) and
the matter (ἡ ὕλη) …”. See 193a30–31 for the use of μορφή and εἶδος as synonyms in describing
the hylomorphic composite.
2 See Phys I.8 191a35–192b4, where Parmenides’ challenge to the possibility of change is in focus.
The spectre of the Parmenidean challenge hangs over the entirety of Book A and the search
for the irreducible principles of change. Aristotle implicitly returns to the identical challenge in
Meta. Ζ.7 1032b30–1033a5.
*Corresponding author: Lloyd P. Gerson, University of Toronto, 170 St. George St., Toronto,
Ontario M5R 2M8, Canada. E-mail: lloyd.gerson@utoronto.ca
Platonic Hylomorphism 27
privation is the contrary of the form that, together with the matter, comprise the
composite. Thus, a change is not a case of something coming out of nothing or
of something disappearing altogether—real impossibilities—but a case of some-
thing composed of form and matter which has a privation with respect to the con-
trary of its form. The termini of the change are the contraries, designated as the
form and the privation. Thus, when a green leaf becomes yellow in the autumn,
green is the form and yellow is the privation which, when actualized, is the termi-
nus of the change. The reason why this is not a case of something (yellow) coming
out of nothing or of something (green) disappearing altogether, is that the leaf’s
privation with respect to yellow is something that the leaf “has” in the technical
sense that it has the potency for becoming yellow even though it is not so now.
In the green leaf, the privation of yellow is distinct from and irreducible to the
potency that the green leaf has for becoming yellow.
The hypothesis of hylomorphism provides the basis for what has come to
be known as essentialism.3 This is the doctrine that the changes to be explained
within a hylomorphic framework are of two sorts: accidental and essential. In
the first sort of change, it is the composite or substance (οὐσία) that underlies
the change or provides the material principle; in the second, the substance itself
comes into existence (γένεσις) or goes out of existence (φθορά). Such a change
would be impossible according to the Parmenidean dictum if there were not
some material principle or continuant that perdured through the change, too.4
Two obvious problems immediately arise with the essentialistic application of
hylomorphism, to which I shall return. If the substance is a composite of form and
matter, in what sense is this composite itself the matter for an accidental change?
And if the matter of a composite is always functionally related to the form, in
what sense does the matter that underlies essential change perdure through the
change consisting of the destruction of the composite, including the form?
It seems that essentialism in a science of nature requires hylomorphism of
some sort. Without hylomorphism, there could be no explanation for change.
If change is inexplicable, then there can be no distinction between accidental
change and essential change. If this were the case, there would be no point to
essentialism, which is principally adduced to explain the changes that things
3 The application of hylomorphism to essentialism is approached by Aristotle variously: as a

way of distinguishing among changes; as a basis for the construction of scientific demonstra-
tion; as a principle of being in the science of being qua being.
4 Cf. Phys. I.7,190b3–4, I.8 191a23–b10, IV.4 211b31–33. At GC II.1 329a31–33, for example, ‘matter’
(ὕλη) and ‘underlying subject’ (ὑποκείμενον) are used synonymously. See also Meta Λ.1 1069b3–
8, where Aristotle asserts that there must be something that perdures (ὑπομένει).
28 Lloyd P. Gerson
that exist by nature undergo, both those changes that they experience and the
substantial changes that result in their generation and destruction.
Does hylomorphism require essentialism? In other words, since hylomor-
phism was hypothesized in order to explain change, does it follow that all
changes thus explained will be essential or accidental? What would a change be
that is neither essential nor accidental? This is obviously a crucial question for
anyone who, though willing to take on the hypothesis of hylomorphism is, for
whatever reason, unwilling to accept essentialism.5
The hypothesis of hylomorphism in Aristotle’s natural philosophy is immeas-
urably strengthened by its powerful application in epistemology.6 If our goal is
scientific knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) of the cosmos, what is needed is a theory accord-
ing to which this knowledge can be distinguished from fantasy or flights of the
imagination. The scientific knowledge sought is evidently a connection with the
world of an order entirely different from the connections that physical bodies
have with other physical bodies and their properties. For in the quest for scien-
tific knowledge, we aim to encounter the world not by its physically affecting
us or by our physically affecting it, but by our representing accurately the way
the world is. If we think along this path, we very shortly arrive at the problem
of how to distinguish accurate from inaccurate representations. If we cannot do
this, then we really have not found a way of attaining knowledge as opposed to
one of producing fantasies.
Hylomorphism allows us to do better than mere representation. For according
to the hylomorphic hypothesis, that which is composed of form and matter has in
a very precise way all of its present reality in its form. Its matter is only a promise
of future reality, assuming that no sensible composite could even exist without
a future, however limited.7 How does this fact allow us to escape the perhaps
insurmountable difficulties of representation? Since a thing is composed of form
and matter it can be decomposed in two ways. The more dramatic way is for it to
be destroyed at which time it is no longer the composite it was. This would be an
5 In Physics, Aristotle does not explicitly link hylomorphism with essentialism, though it seems
clear that he is assuming the latter. For example, when he explains the fourfold schema of causal
analysis, he identifies the form with an account (λόγος) of the “essence” (τὸ τι ἦν εἶναι). See II:3
194b26–27. In Meta. Ζ.4, Aristotle explains the latter expression as what a thing is “in virtue of
itself” (καθ’ αὑτό) (1029b13–14). He adds, 1030b4–6, that essence belongs primarily to substance.
6 It is outside the scope of this paper to consider the views of scholars who hold that “categori-
alism” as it is presented in Categories is incompatible with hylomorphism. I doubt that there is
an incompatibility or even a tension between Categories and Physics, but showing why this is so
is not my task here.
7 See Plotinus, Enn. II 5 [25], 5.3–4 and below, section 3.
essential change. The less dramatic way is that it can be decomposed cognition-
ally so that the form—the reality of the thing—can be transferred to the intellect
of the knower. Let us leave aside the myriad of issues in physiology and psychol-
ogy pertaining to exactly how this transfer actually occurs and instead focus on
its very possibility. How can the identical form, as opposed to a simulacrum, be
present in the composite and in the intellect? The simple and momentous answer
to this question is that form in itself is neither existentially tied to the composite
nor is it existentially tied to the intellect. For example, circularity does not have
to be exclusively the shape of this or that circle. Nor does it have to be exclusively
the content of a concept of circularity. The form of whale is not only that which
makes this or that mammal what it is. Nor is it only the content of the concept
studied in marine biology. It can be both but is in itself neither. The identical
form of circularity or the identical form of the whale can be found in circles and
whales, on the one hand, and in the thinking of scientists and everyone else, on
the other. So, in seeking scientific knowledge about circles or whales, we do not
need to be content with representations of these; we can do better. We can have
all that is real about circles and whales, or at least, all that is intelligible about
them, in our intellects. Thus, hylomorphism both supports and is supported by
(non-representational) scientific or epistemological realism.
The commonality of form to things that have it and things that think it, is so
important that it is well to provide some additional argument. When a form is
particularized, as in the case of this circle and this whale, particularization does
not alter the form. If it did, there could not be two things with the identical form.8
And, indeed, it is precisely at this point that many would say that hylomorphism
falls apart. For no two things can have the identical form. We may choose to
classify two or more things as falling under the identical concept, but that can
easily be justified pragmatically. Things classified together need not have identi-
cal forms for us to find it convenient to make the classification, since that which
differentiates the forms in each might be below the threshold of our interests.
Most readers will recognize this as the beginning of the nominalist challenge to
hylomorphism or, indeed, to any theory that maintains that two or more things
can actually be the same. To put it simply, this challenge holds that if two or more
things are the same, then they are identical; if they are not identical, then they are
not the same. And along with the rejection of sameness as having logical space
8 We should be careful not to impose anachronistic notions of individuation on the “particulari-

zation” of a form since the form in itself is not an individual. Nor is the matter which it “informs.”
Thus, the particularized form does not make the individual to be an individual. The individual is
made to be an individual by the efficient cause of its existence whatever that may be.
30 Lloyd P. Gerson
distinct from identity, goes the attempt to surmount representationalism. All we

can possibly have cognitionally of things in the sensible world are representa-
tions of some sort, signs or symbols or pictures or language tokens, and so on.
A full-scale defense of an anti-nominalist theory is outside the scope of this
paper. Plato and Aristotle both consider nominalism, but only briefly since they
find it minimally plausible. However, with a view to what follows in this paper,
it is perhaps worth making a few remarks about the anti-nominalistic basis of
hylomorphism. Start with difference. I mean the differences we encounter in our
experience of the world. For example, we perceive sensible differences, say, odors
or colors or sounds. We also perceive, broadly speaking, operational differences,
say, the difference between something moving and something standing still,
between something behind us and something in front of us, between something
responsive to our behavior and something that is not. But in order to cognize
differences, we have to be able to identify the different items. A claim to be able
to differentiate A and B seems to entail a claim to be able to identify each in some
way. Further, the ability to identify something as different from something else
entails the ability to re-identify it. Imagine someone who, on noting the marked
difference in smell between two spices, expressed this difference by reference to
one or the other smell but then demurred when asked if she could re-identify
each smell. Or, again, imagine someone who is mugged and reports the mugging
to the police, assuring them that he saw who did it. But then when asked if he
could re-identify the perpetrator in a police lineup said that he could not possibly
do so. Not that he was afraid to do so or that he might get confused but that he
saw clearly the person who mugged him but that he could not under any circum-
stances re-identify him. I think in such a case we would be inclined to say that, if
he was in earnest, he did not after all really see the mugger.
The point of these examples is that our ability to identify and re-identify
things in this world is rooted in our manifest ability to cognize differences in our
experience. But to re-identify anything is to be able to say exactly this: A at t1 is
the same as A at t2, where “same” obviously does not mean “identical.” After all,
the only thing formally identical with A-at-t1 is A-at-t1. But sameness presupposes
identity and difference, too. In short, the triad identity-difference-sameness is, as
we shall see, the fundamental framework within which hylomorphism operates.
The obvious objection to this argument is that it is question-begging. For my
claim to be able to discern differences and so to be able to identify and re-identity
things and properties of things does not mean that there really are samenesses in
the world. It only means that it is useful or convenient for us to classify A at t1 as
the same as A at t2 because, for all that it matters to us, they can be treated as if
they are the same. Obviously, if it is true that you are taken by me to be the same
person as the person I met last year, it is also true that you differ in countless ways
from that person. It is just that these differences do not matter so much to me.
Of course, it would be more accurate to say that the differences do not matter as
much to me as that which makes him the same. But couldn’t we focus on the puta-
tive samenesses and challenge just these? Couldn’t we say that the differences
at the micro level do not matter to us, but that these differences undermine our
claim to unequivocal sameness? For example, the number of atoms comprising
A at t1 is no doubt different from the number comprising A at t2, but this is just
irrelevant to almost any conceivable purpose that one may have in claiming that
A is the same across time.
In reply to this line of attack, we should readily concede that the claim made
about the triad of identity-difference-sameness does not purport to ignore or reject
the value of pragmatic classifications, or even different pragmatic classifications
that would identify something in contrary ways. One is reminded of the edict of
the American Roman Catholic Church in World War Two that declared whales to
be fish and not mammals for the purposes of Friday abstinence from meat-eat-
ing. But our pragmatic purposes do not in themselves constitute an argument
against the cognitional precision that accrues to unequivocal claims about the
above triad. One may object further that the precision is only an illusion caused
by our limited cognitive capacities. In reply to this objection, I would insist that
this version of an argument from illusion can have no purchase unless one can
adduce a criterion for distinguishing the illusory from the real. That is, one must
be able to offer real differences against which other putative differences can be
declared illusory. And, of course, if we can offer real differences that can only be
because we can discern real differences, on the basis of which we can identify
and re-identify the things that are different and declare these things to be the
same through time.
None of the above is intended to dispute the claim that the world in its
modern scientific image is far more complex than Plato or Aristotle imagined.
Nor is it even intended to dispute the claim that the taxonomies of things in the
world look very different from what philosophers living before modern science
could imagine. Hylomorphism in itself does not contain a substantive declaration
that is supposed to be able to tell us if a whale is a mammal or a fish. Neverthe-
less, it is intended to provide a hypothesis according to which all the changes in
nature—however complex these turn out to be—are potentially intelligible to us
and according to which the intelligibility is not transmuted into representation-
alism. One may, after all, be content with representationalism and so indifferent
to hylomorphism. I would only urge that this does not constitute an argument
against hylomorphism so much as a declaration of defeat or a counsel of despair.
Returning to the fundamental claim that (a) the form in the circle and (b)
the content of the concept of circularity are identical, the principal argument for
32 Lloyd P. Gerson
this claim is that what differentiates (a) and (b) is that the former is particular-
ized and the latter universalized. By this I mean that the particular circle has all
the specificity of a particular. There is no particular circle that does not have a
specific circumference and radius, and so on. But the content of the concept of
circularity has none of these. The most common error found among those who
admit that a circle and a concept of a circle are simply different and so not the
same is that they take the latter to be an abstract generalization from the particu-
lar, some vague representation of what we encounter in sense-perception. This
was the mistake made by Berkeley and by Hume, among many others. In fact, the
universality found in the conceptualization of circularity is adverbial, not adjec-
tival, so to speak. That is, “universally” names the way in which circularity is
cognized. It is not a property of a substantial thing. We can, of course, in thinking
universally of form, hypostasize the content of our thinking, using the word “uni-
versal” or “concept” to indicate the hypostasization. We can talk about forms as
if they were independent things. But this does not make them so. As we shall see,
Plato did not burden himself with the absurdity of supposing that there are par-
ticular “things” that are universal. “Universally” is the way we think about form
that, apart from intellects, is found in particulars. It is the identical form that is
cognized universally and found in one particular or another. And since the form
is not itself universal or particular, there is no logical impediment to the identical
form being present in multiple particulars and being present in an intellect where
it is cognized universally. That is, there is no impediment to there being real dif-
ferences, identities, and samenesses in the world and for these to be cognized by
animals with the appropriate cognitional equipment.
2 Plato
In this section of the paper, I aim to show that Plato held a version of hylomor-
phism. I do this not with the intention of denying Aristotle’s genius or originality
or of advancing a thesis in the dreary world of source-hunting. Instead, I do it in
order to support the claim that hylomorphism is not weighted down by obsolete
science. I could of course do this by adducing contemporary scientifically-minded
proponents of hylomorphism who do not shirk from attempting to demonstrate
the relevance or even necessity of applying hylomorphism to the most advanced
scientific theorizing.9 Rather, I want to lift the basic hylomorphic position out of
9 See e.g, Tahko (2012), Groff and Greco (2013), Novotný and Novák (2014).
its familiar Aristotelian scientific habitat and re-examine it as it is found in the

different habitat of Platonic metaphysics. I do this hoping to advance our under-
standing of hylomorphism. In the last section of the paper, I will turn to Plotinus’
Platonic critique of Aristotle’s hylomorphism, again with a view to advancing our
understanding of this hypothesis.10
The fundamental principle on the basis of which the hypothesis of hylomor-
phism arises is that absolute simplicity is uniquely instantiable in the world.
That is, there can at most be one absolutely simple being. The reasoning is quite
straightforward. Let there be two absolutely simple beings, ex hypothesi. Then
whatever property each possesses in order to make it different from the other will
negate its absolute simplicity. It and whatever property we assign to it will be dis-
tinct. Thus, everything but one being (at most) is composite.11 I want to stress that
a denial of this argument requires taking up a very large task, indeed. It requires
showing not that an absolutely simple being does not exist but that it is possible
for there to be more than one absolutely simple being. Hylomorphic composite-
ness follows from the impossibility of showing that there can be more than one
absolutely simple being. The opponent who wished to deny hylomorphism au
fond would need to provide an explanation of how two things can be two and so
at least numerically different from each other, and yet each retain absolute sim-
plicity. Even if the two things had only a different location in space, the location
of each would be a property of it and so the recognition of this would contradict
its absolute simplicity.
In speaking of “composites” I do not mean “has elements.” As we have seen,
the elements of a composite cannot be absolutely simple. So, whether or not some-
thing has elements, the relevant sense of “composite” is deeper. The necessary
compositeness of everything, with at most one exception, is a compositeness in
principle. That is, to be composite in this sense is to have at least two composing
principles irreducible to each other. That is exactly what Aristotle insists on when
10 Aristotle, Phys. I.4 187a17–20, criticizes his predecessors, including Plato, for the way that they
treat matter and form. Plato, says Aristotle, treated his principles, One and the Great-and-Small,
as form and matter. This testimony alone suggests that Aristotle did not think he was innovating
entirely with the introduction of matter-form composition. Leaving aside the controversy regard-
ing Plato’s doctrine of principles, I want to show that hylomorphism is present in Plato’s natural
philosophy in a way that is not out of line with Aristotle’s commonsensical approach to change
in nature.
11 It must be added that if there is in fact one absolutely simple being, it cannot be really dif-
ferent from all composite beings, although they can be really different from it. The term “real
difference” applies only to substances or composites. The sort of difference that an absolutely
simple being has from substances is variously explained in the tradition.
34 Lloyd P. Gerson
he says that things that exist in nature are hylomorphic composites. But composi-
tion, as I have defined it, is ubiquitous and not necessarily limited to things that
exist in nature. Plato holds that in the intelligible world, irreducible composite-
ness reigns. Whether it is appropriate to call this compositeness a sort of hylo-
morphic compositeness is a question I shall take up later. For the purposes of this
paper, I am going to limit my discussion to hylomorphic compositeness in the sen-
sible world or in nature for both Plato and Aristotle, although as we shall see, the
differences between them follow not so much from their analysis of the sensible
hylomorphic composites but from how these are related to the intelligible world.
One additional point should be added. It is that absolute simplicity entails
absolute self-identity. That is, there are no differences even within that which is
absolutely simple such that we could say that it has the identity of a composite or
that its identity is just the “sum” of its parts. From this it follows that “identity” is
equivocal and proximity to absolute simplicity is gradable. Thus, an artifact may
be supposed to have an identity inferior to an organic individual. And an organic
individual with a body may be supposed to have less identity than some theoret-
ical immaterial individual which, having no body, does not have parts outside of
parts or magnitude (μέγεθος). This point will become crucial when we consider
the relationship between hylomorphism and essentialism in Plato.
There are a number of passages in the dialogues that demonstrate Plato’s
commitment to hylomorphism of some sort. Recall that Aristotle’s hylomorphism
was introduced to address the problem of the intelligibility of change and that,
in addition, it enabled him to introduce essentialism and to establish a realist,
though non-representationalist epistemology. First, I shall consider three pas-
sages in the dialogues that show that Plato is thinking “hylomorphically.” I shall
then consider four more passages that show how his hylomorphism is connected
to his epistemology. I shall then consider a passage that might be taken to connect
his hylomorphism with essentialism. I begin with a brief presentation of the evi-
dence contained in the passages dealing with change.
(1) Phaedo 102d6-103a2
This passage contains the final argument in the dialogue for the immortality of
the soul.
Socrates’ aim is to show that soul is not just a principle of life, that which
differentiates a living from a dead creature, but that it itself is the property of life
added to make something alive. So, soul can no more be divested of that property
than a triad could be divested of its oddness. But the passage I wish to focus on
for this paper is the following:
Now it seems to me that not only is largeness itself never willing to be large and small at
the same time, but also that the largeness in us never admits the small, nor is it willing to
be overtopped. Rather, one of two things must happen: either it must retreat and get out of
the way, when its opposite, the small, advances towards it; or else, upon that opposite’s
advance, it must perish. But what it is not willing to do is to abide and admit smallness,
and thus be other than what it was. Thus, I, having admitted and abided smallness, am still
what I am, this identical individual, only small; whereas the large in us, while being large,
can’t endure being small. And similarly, the small that’s in us is not willing ever to come to
be, or to be, large. Nor will any other of the opposites, while still being what it was, at the
same time both come to be, and be, its own opposite. If that befalls it, either it goes away or
it perishes. (Phd. 102d6–103a2, trans. Gallop, slightly modified)
The words “Thus, I, having admitted and abided smallness, am still what I am
(ὢν ὅσπερ εἰμί), this identical individual (ὁ αὐτός), only small” seems to be a
rather straightforward assertion of the hylomorphism that allows Aristotle to
counter Parmenides.12 When largeness “gets out of the way” for smallness in a
subject, that subject remains identical. So, becoming small or smaller having pre-
viously been large or larger, is not a case of something coming from nothing nor
of something disappearing altogether. For with the advance of smallness, large-
ness “retreats” or it “perishes,” while the subject perdures.13
Clearly, what is missing from this simple hylomorphic analysis is an explicit
distinction between the subject or the matter of the change and the privation.
As Aristotle insists, the three principles of change—matter, form and privation—
cannot be reduced to two.14 So, must we conclude that a supposed hylomorphism
without a distinction between privation and matter is after all no type of hylomor-
phism at all? As we shall see, this is a complicated question, the answer to which
has broad implications. For the present, I shall only mention the implicit dis-
tinction between matter and privation in the present argument. One of Socrates’
12 Plato does not have the technical term ὑποκείμενον to indicate an underlying subject of
change. He simply provides instances of this as referents.
13 Does the possibility of the “perishing” of largeness not run afoul of the Parmenidean dictum
that something cannot disappear into nothing? Perhaps, though since Socrates’ largeness is an
image of the Form of Largeness, the sense in which it is “something” is not, at least according
to Plato, the sense in which the disappearance violates the dictum. The dictum, taken strictly,
puts an embargo on change. If change is shown to be possible, then in one way or another the
embargo must be modified, if not lifted.
14 At Phys. I.7 191a5–7, Aristotle suggests that there is a sense in which we can “reduce” the three
principles to two. He says that one of the contraries is sufficient to produce the change by its
presence or absence. But in order for this elliptical concession not to be question-begging against
Parmenides, “presence” and “absence” must somehow implicitly include the underlying contin-
uant. Aristotle must be suggesting that the form plus matter can be considered as one.
36 Lloyd P. Gerson
interlocutors expresses some doubt in what is being said, recalling them having
agreed that one opposite comes from its own opposite, whereas what is being
said now is that this is impossible. Socrates replies, correcting this recollection,
pointing out that
It was said then that one opposite thing comes to be from another opposite thing; what we’re
saying now is that the opposite itself could never come to be opposite to itself, whether it be
the opposite in us or the opposite in nature. Then, my friend, we were talking about things
that have opposites, calling them by the names they take from them; whereas now we’re
talking about the opposites themselves, from whose presence in them the things so called
derive their names. It’s those latter that we’re saying would never be willing to admit com-
ing-to-be from each other. (Phd. 103b2–c2, trans. Gallop)
Socrates is insisting that opposites (or contraries) do not come from each other,
but that the things that have one opposite come to have another or its contrary.
By contrast, as he goes on to argue, a group of three cannot admit the opposite
of oddness, snow cannot admit of hot. Now, the soul is a thing that has life but
cannot admit of its opposite, death.15 Thus, the contrast is between things that
can admit of opposites, like the large thing that can become small, and things
that cannot admit of the opposite which is opposite to the opposite it has. For
the latter kind, a further distinction is necessary between those things that must
either retreat or perish when their opposite approaches them, and that one thing,
namely, the soul, that, lacking the option of perishing, must retreat without being
destroyed when death approaches.
I am not now concerned with how hylomorphism is applied to the question
of the immortality of the soul but with whether we have implicit in the above
distinction privation in all but the name. For whereas the large thing can become
small, fire cannot become cold, and in the unique case, soul cannot perish. The
threefold distinction here would be expressed by Aristotle as follows: the large
thing has a privation with respect to smallness whereas fire and the soul do not
have the privations of cold and dead except in an extended sense when we deny
a property to something that could not possibly possess that property.16 For Plato,
the modalities of possibility and impossibility do the work of indicating privation
in the primary and derivative senses. But as I said, the issue is complex. For in
Aristotle, the subject of the change that perdures through the change is matter in
a sense different from matter in the sense of the capacity for acquiring an oppo-
site. Aristotle will have to distinguish between the capacity that a large thing has
15 Phd. 104c11–105e4.
16 See Meta. Δ.22 1022b22–24. The example is of a plant deprived of eyes.
for being small and the thing itself which remains identical when it does become
small. And, perhaps not surprisingly, it will turn out to be quite difficult to locate
a capacity in the large thing that is not characterizable as one property or another.
For as soon as a property is identified, we know that we are no longer talking
about a capacity or a potency; we are talking about an actual form. Let us leave
this complication aside for the moment. We shall return to it in section three. For
now, we can say at least that Plato has the relevant distinction without the name.
This is, after all, a very common occurrence in the sequence of philosophical rea-
soning found first in Plato and then in Aristotle. Plato has the distinction, has not
a name for it, or no fixed name, and then Aristotle, or perhaps someone else in
the Academy, comes up with a technical name that is henceforth agreed upon in
the tradition.
(2) Theaetetus 179e1–183c3
In this passage, Socrates is examining Theaetetus’ proposal to define knowledge

(ἐπιστήμη) as sense-perception (αἴσθησις). In the course of his examination, he
aims to show the futility of extreme Heracliteanism. The relevance of this to the
issue at hand is that if knowledge is sense-perception, then sense-perception has
to be able to attain to the truth or to what is.17 But according to the Heracliteans,
everything is changing in every way possible all the time. In that case, there is no
possibility of attaining the truth about anything through sense-perception.
The account they [the Heracliteans] give of the genesis of hotness or whiteness or what-
ever it may be, we stated—didn’t we?—in this sort of way: that any one of these things is
something that moves in place, simultaneously with a sense-perception, between agent and
patient; and that the patient becomes perceptive, not a perception, while the agent comes to
have a quality, rather than to be a quality. Perhaps this word “quality” strikes you as queer
and uncouth and you don’t understand it as a general expression; so let me give particular
instances. The agent does not become hotness or whiteness, but hot or white, and so on
with all the rest. No doubt you remember how we put this earlier: that nothing has any
being as one thing just by itself, no more has an agent or patient, but, as a consequence of
their intercourse with one another, in giving birth to the sense-perceptions and the things
perceived, the agents come to be or such and such a quality, and the patients come to be
percipient. (Tht. 182a4–b7, trans. Cornford, slightly modified)
17 See Tht. 152c5: “Sense-perception, then, is always of what is and is infallible (ἀψευὲς) if it
is knowledge.” That these two criteria of knowledge cannot be met independently is a crucial
feature of the complex dialectical result of this dialogue. See my Ancient Epistemology (2009),
44–55.
38 Lloyd P. Gerson
I am not here concerned with the particular theory of sense-perception that

Socrates advances in order to make the best case for the definition of knowledge
as sense-perception. Rather, I am concerned with the basis for the rejection of
extreme Heracliteanism. Socrates has Theaetetus agree that putative changes are
basically of two sorts: locomotion (φορά) and alteration (ἀλλοίωσις).18 If the Hera-
cliteans are correct, then we cannot even say that something is moving or altering
in quality of any sort. This is so because to say that x is, say, moving, is to distin-
guish an x from its position(s) in space; to say of y that it is, say, changing color,
is to distinguish y from the color it had and from the color it is going to have. In
fact, if the Heracliteans are correct, then we cannot even name (προσαγορεύειν)
anything; for naming it presupposes that it has an identity, an identity which, at
least for sensibles, is inseparable from its perdurance through time.
Socrates’ remarks certainly do not constitute a refutation of Heracliteanism.
For the Heracliteans can simply deny the correctness of names or the possibil-
ity of non-arbitrarily distinguishing between things and their properties. They
can even insist that change, as commonly understood, is not real – not for the
reason that the Eleatics claim that this is so, but for the reason that change so
understood cannot even be conceived without that which is not changing relative
to the change. The proponent of total change must insist on the complete unin-
telligibility of the sensible world, which would of course render it unknowable.
As repugnant as this position might be, it is no refutation to express that repug-
nance, although it is worth adding Aristotle’s remark about the Eleatic denial of
the existence of the natural world, namely, that such a denial must be based on
evidence stronger than the self-evidence of that world.
It seems clear enough that hylomorphism of some sort underlies the present
argument. But equally important is the connection made between the hylomor-
phism brought against the Heracliteans and the possibility of knowledge which
it is adduced to permit. Things undergoing change will have to have sufficient
stability in order to be able to be named non-arbitrarily. That is, we have to be
able to have cognitive access to identities and differences through sense-percep-
tion. So far, we do not know what this cognitive access is precisely supposed to
be, but the distinction between quality and thing possessing that quality at least
opens up the possibility that cognitive access to the real does not require that
things literally be present in our intellects in order to know them.19 Our ability to
cognize differences and identities, including re-identification, entails the ability
18 Tht. 181d5–6.
19 At Tht. 182a9–b1, Socrates introduces the neologism ποιότης (quality), certainly a seminal
moment in the history of hylomorphism.
to discern samenesses. And this in turn entails that the identities underlying the
samenesses are somehow detachable from the things that are identifiable and
re-identifiable across time. So, cognitive access is not a physical encounter even
if it requires a physical encounter.
(3) Philebus 23c4–e2
The final passage in this group to be considered is introduced in Philebus as the

metaphysical foundation ultimately aimed at answering the question about the
relative superiority of the lives led in pursuit of pleasure and of intellectual activ-
ity. As we know, the latter will win out, but not before a long and difficult discus-
sion about the nature of the universe, of the classification of things and activities,
and the criteria that must be adduced for adjudicating the claims of each to supe-
riority over the other. Here is the crucial passage for my purposes.
Taking everything at present in the universe, let us make a twofold distinction, or perhaps
better, if you don’t mind, a threefold one.—What’s the principle of this distinction?—
Suppose we avail ourselves of some of our earlier points.—What for instance?—We said,
if you remember, that God has shown us that part of the things that are is unlimited, part
a limiter.—Agreed.—Let’s take these as two of the categories. The third is a unity formed
by combining these two. I think I shall be making a fool of myself, distinguishing these
into kinds and enumerating them.—What do you mean?—It looks as though I need a fourth
class.—Why don’t you tell us what it is?—Take what is responsible for the combination of
these two, and allow me this as a fourth class along with the other three.—Won’t you need
a fifth, capable of dissolving the mixture?—Perhaps, but not yet at any rate. If I do, I hope
you will forgive me going after a fifth?—Of course. (Phil. 22c4–e2, trans. Gosling, slightly
modified)
The crucial question for my purposes is whether or to what extent the threefold
distinction between limiter (τὸ πέρας), unlimited (τὸ ἄπειρον), and their mixture
(σύμμειξις) are legitimate analogues to Aristotle’s form, matter, and composite of
the two.
Let us consider the examples of limiter, unlimited, and their mixture in order
to answer this question. As Socrates goes on to explain, the unlimited includes
Everything we find that can become more and less, and admits of strength and mildness,
too much, and everything of that sort, we are to put in the unlimited category, as constitut-
ing a single class. (Phil. 24e7–25a2, trans. Gosling, slightly modified)
And the limiters include

40 Lloyd P. Gerson
Things that don’t allow these features but admit of all the opposite things—equal and
equality, and after equal, double and every proportion of number to number or measure to
measure, all these we should be advised to apportion to the class of limiters. (Phil 25a6–b2,
trans. Gosling, slightly modified)
On the face of it, this seems to be a distinction among properties or, perhaps,
forms, not between matter and form. But this cannot, on any reading, be quite
right, since as we learn at once, the class of mixtures includes
that of equal and double, and whatever puts an end to opposites being at odds with each
other, and by the introduction of number makes them commensurate and harmonious.
(Phil. 25d11–e2, trans. Gosling, slightly modified)
The distinction between the class of limiters and the class of mixtures is between
number and the “product” of the imposition of number on a continuum of some
sort. The distinction is illuminated by a passage in Timaeus in which the Demi-
urge
first gave [the pre-cosmic elements] their configurations with shapes and numbers.20
In the pre-cosmic Receptacle, we find proto-elements, manifesting their phenom-

enological properties confusedly or indistinctly. In the present cosmic period,
with the imposition of shapes and numbers, the elements acquire their distinct
unalterable properties.21 The imposition of shapes and numbers produces some
ordering or other; the good imposition of shapes and numbers produces a harmo-
nious or symmetrical ordering.
If limiters are exclusively mathematical, then the central question is whether
or to what extent Platonic limiters and Aristotelian forms are comparable. In
general, the question becomes: is intelligibility a mathematical notion or is math-
ematical intelligibility only one type of intelligibility? I would suggest that the
way to approach this question is via a fundamental distinction shared by Plato
and Aristotle, and indeed by virtually all ancient Greek philosophers. This is the
distinction between the sensible (τὸ αἴσθητον) and the intelligible (τὸ νοητόν),
what is available to the five senses and what is available only to an intellect. As
20 Tim. 53b4–5. See A. E. Taylor (1928), p. 358, ad loc., for the use of εἶδος for geometrical shape
and of ἀριθμός for numerical formulae, including ratios.
21 In the light of the Timaeus passage, the phrase πάντα τὰ νῦν ὄντα in the above Philebus pas-
sage (22c4) appears to refer to the cosmic elements that are “now”, that is, as opposed to their
pre-cosmic state.
we have already seen, one important property of the intelligible, as opposed to

the sensible, is that an intellect cognizes form universally, whereas, in sense-per-
ception, form is cognized in all its particularity. Aristotle provides the simple but
illuminating examples of the letters of a syllable, a and b, and their ordering, ab
or ba, and the elements that go to make up flesh and the ordering of the elements,
fire and earth or hot and cold, that produces flesh.22 The form is a principle (ἀρχή)
and cause (αἴτιον) as opposed to the matter which is comprised of the elements
(στοίχεια).
So, form is over and above the elements which are informed and it is cognized
universally. Since the form is not decomposable into the elements, it is, relative
to the elements, simple.23 It is simple relative to what is sensible, even if it is not
absolutely simple. Thus, the appropriateness of the use by Plato and Aristotle of
metaphors of sight and touch to indicate the immediate awareness of intelligibles,
analogous to the immediate sense-perception of sensibles. For example, in the
so-called Fibonacci sequence, 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13 … one “sees” that the next number
in the sequence is 21. Mentally “seeing” the sequence is not reducible to and is in
fact radically distinct from seeing the elements of the sequence. To take another
example, in the pattern of reasoning, If A is greater than B, and B is greater than
C, one “sees” that necessarily A is greater than C. It does not matter how complex
the mathematics or whether the mathematical ordering is static or dynamic, the
mental seeing is of a simple, that is, of a form, whatever the complexity of the
material or elemental foundation. As Aristotle points out, the reason why natural
science is difficult is that the natural scientist cannot ignore the elements or the
matter of a composite and so isolating the relatively simple and irreducible form
is by no means inevitable regardless of the efforts we make.24
The simplicity of the form is not absolute simplicity. As we have seen, absolute
simplicity is, at most, uniquely instantiable. Any form has an οὐσία, which elimi-
nates implicitly its absolute simplicity, since there must be a distinction between
it and its οὐσία.25 In the above Fibonacci sequence, the form that our intellect cog-
22 See Meta. Ζ.17 1041b11–33.

23 At Meta. Ζ.8 1034a8, Aristotle says that the form (τὸ εἶδος) is “indivisible” (ἄτομον). And yet,
the identical form can be present in many things, e. g., the form of humanity can be present in
Socrates and in Plato. From this it follows that the oneness or unity of the form (the form of hu-
manity as opposed to the form of cat) is not compromised or negated by its multiple presence in
numerically distinct human beings. This at least leaves open the possibility that the form in an
intellect is identical to the form in one of its many instantiations.
24 See Phys. II.2, 194a14–15: “… we should investigate [the objects of physical science] not with-
out including the matter nor only according to the matter.”
25 Plato has Parmenides make this point in his eponymous dialogue at 142b5–6.
42 Lloyd P. Gerson
nizes is a rule: the next number is the sum of the two previous numbers. Although
there are a number of words in the rule, grasping it does not amount to memoriz-
ing the words or saying them; one “sees” the principle of ordering that the words
represent. Or else one does not. After all, what may be intelligible to one person
may not be intelligible to another. What trained mathematicians “see” is far more
than what the rest of us can manage to do.
Plato apparently came to believe that intelligible order is essentially a math-
ematical notion.26 Or, stated otherwise, to be intelligible is to be an ordering of
parts or elements and ordering can always be expressed quantitatively, whether
geometrically or arithmetically. By contrast, we may infer from Aristotle’s distinc-
tion among physics, mathematics, and theology, that he did not identify order
or intelligibility with mathematical order.27 Since for Aristotle quantity is a cat-
egory accidental to substance, the intelligibility of substance is not exclusively
expressed quantitatively. And yet, Aristotle does not, for example, scruple to
define a virtue as a mean (ἡ μεσότης) between extremes, that is, as the imposition
of the appropriate limiter on an unlimited continuum.28
I shall not here pursue the complex and elusive issue of the mathematization
or quantification of form in Plato and Aristotle in part because I am convinced
that Plato’s conjecture in this matter took him to the end of his life without con-
clusive result and in part because it would take us too far from hylomorphism. In
the next section, I want to return to the issue raised earlier regarding the irreduci-
bility of privation to matter. We shall see in Plotinus’ addressing of this issue how
the understanding of hylomorphism affects larger metaphysical issues.
Next, I want to consider very briefly a selection of passages that show Plato’s
commitment to the identical non-representational realism that we find in Aris-
totle and that I claim was entailed by and entailed his hylomorphism. The pas-
sages are: (4) Phaedo 79d1–7; (5) Phaedrus 247c6–d1; (6) Republic V 477e5–478a2;
(7) Republic VI 511b2–c2.
26 See Meta. Α.8 990a29–32, Ζ.11 1036b13–25, Λ.8 1073a18–19, Μ.6 1080b11–14, Μ.7 1081a5–7, Μ.8
1083a18 and 1084a7–8, Μ.9 1086a11–13, Ν.2 1090a4–6, Ν.3 1090a16 on the putative reduction of
Forms to Numbers in Plato.
27 See Meta. Ε.1 1026a23–32.
28 See EN II.6 1107a6–8. Sense-perception is also defined by Aristotle as a mean. See DA II.11
424a4–5.
(4) Phaedo 79d1–7

Whereas whenever it [the soul] studies alone by itself, it departs yonder towards that
which is pure and always existent and immortal and unvarying, and in virtue of its kinship
(συγγενής) with it, enters always into its company, whenever it has come to be alone by
itself, and whenever it may do so; then it has ceased from its wandering and, when it is about
those objects, it is always constant and unvarying, because of its contact (ἐφαπτομένη) with
things of the same kind; and this condition (πάθημα) of it is called “wisdom”, is it not? (Phd.
79d1–7, trans. Gallop, slightly modified)
This passage is part of the so-called Affinity Argument for the immortality of the
soul. It purports to show that the soul has the same immaterial and invariable
composition as Forms. The key phrase in this passage for present purposes is
“contact with things of the same kind.” If cognizing Forms were a representa-
tional act, there would be no need whatsoever for the thinker to be of the same
kind as the Forms.29 So, it is the Form itself, not its representation, that is present
in the intellect, just as Aristotle asserts.30 But it is not present in the embodied
soul without qualification; it is cognized universally.31
(5) Phaedrus 247c6–d1

What is in this place [heaven] is without color and without shape and without solidity, a
being that really is what it is, the subject of all true knowledge, visible (θεατή) only to intel-
lect, the soul’s steersman. (Phdr. 247e6–d1, trans. Nehemas and Woodruff, slightly modified)
29 The almost universal contemporary assumption that all cognition is representational natu-
rally leads to the assumption that anything can serve to represent anything. So, in the words of
the computational scientist Marvin Minsky, the brain (locus of representation) is just a computer
made of meat.
30 Aristotle, De anima III.6 431a1–2, says, “actual knowledge is identical with the object
(πράγματι) [known].” Cf. III.7 431b17. The object known is the form of the knowable; it is the only
thing knowable in the object.
31 In Parm. 132b3–c11, Parmenides demonstrates to the young Socrates that a Form is that
which is an object of intellection (τὸ νοούμενον), most emphatically not a concept (τὸ νόημα).
And yet, concept and object of thinking are identical in content. What differentiates the concept
from the object is that the former indicates the manner of the reception of the object, that is,
universally. By contrast, in Tim.29e1–2 with 30c2–d1, it is clear that the cognitive identity that
the Demiurge has with Forms means that the Demiurge does not think universally about Forms;
it is really, not cognitively, identical with them. See Soph. 248e7–249a2. This is equally true of
Aristotle’s unmoved mover, at least on one traditional interpretation according to which the un-
moved mover’s self-knowledge is not “narcissistic,” but is knowledge of all that is knowable. The
unmoved mover is identical with the knowable. But even this identity does not entail absolute
simplicity if there is any complexity in the knowable or if there is any distinction between the
activity of knowing and its intentional object(s).
44 Lloyd P. Gerson
Here, we need to focus on the phrase “visible only to intellect” which assumes
the appropriateness of the analogue to sense-perceptual seeing. That Forms are
“visible” to intellect indicates the directness of the cognition, precluding any
form of representation. It is no objection to maintain that although this may be so
for separate Forms, it is not so for instances of Forms in the sensible world. As we
saw in (1) above, the instance of a Form has the identical nature of a Form, even
though it is embedded in a material substrate. Insofar as intellect can separate
what is intelligible from what is sensible, it can make it “visible.”
(6) Republic V 477e5–478a2

Socrates: But a moment ago you agreed that knowledge and belief are not identical.
Glaucon: How could anyone with any sense think a fallible thing is identical with an infal-
lible (ἀναμάρτητον) thing?
Socrates: Then clearly we agree that belief is different from knowledge. (Rep. V 477e5–
478a2, trans. Reeve, slightly modified)
From the infallibility of knowledge, we can directly infer its non-representational

character. No representation can represent infallibly since for any representation,
we can always ask if it is accurate or not. This is never a question whose answer
is known beforehand. In order to give the correct answer, we have to have knowl-
edge of what is represented. That is why, incidentally, a representation for Plato
is primarily made by a knower, firstly to herself, and then to someone else. The
representations by and among those who do not know are all fallible and, among
other things, constitute the milieu in which sophistry thrives.
(7) Republic VI 511b2–c2

Also understand, then, that by the other subsection of the intelligible I mean what reason
itself grasps by the power of dialectical discussion, treating its hypotheses not as first prin-
ciples, but as genuine hypotheses (that is, as stepping-stones and links in a chain), in order
to arrive at what is unhypothetical (ἀνυποθέτου) and the first principle of everything (τοῦ
παντὸς ἀρχὴν). Having grasped this principle, it reverses itself and, keeping hold of what
follows from it, comes down to a conclusion, making no uses of anything visible at all, but
only of Forms themselves, moving on through Forms to Forms, and ending in Forms (Rep.
VI 511b2–c2, trans Reeve, slightly modified).
What has puzzled many scholars about this passage, apart from the requirement
that knowing Forms requires “ascending” to the Idea of the Good, is that the dia-
lectician proceeds “up” and “down” among the Forms, explicitly reasoning about
their logical connections. Although this procedure is generally assumed to be

something like conceptual analysis, Plato does not say anything about νοήματα
as opposed to the Forms themselves. This does not mean that the dialectician
does not express to himself his thinking conceptually or in language, but that
the thinking itself is not the manipulation of images of any sort. It is meant to be
an intellectual seeing, but one which can only occur if one “sees” the Forms in
the light of the unificatory role of the first principle of all. I think it is sufficiently
clear that what Plato envisions here would not be possible if Forms—the identi-
cal Forms that serve as the “ones-over-many” thereby making the sensible world
intelligible to a certain extent—were not understood by Plato to be in themselves
neutral between particularization and universalization.
Finally, in this section, I want to address briefly the question of how Plato
sees his hylomorphism in relation to essentialism. This is a difficult question to
consider since Plato does not have the technical language to make a distinction
between essential and accidental change. And yet, even while recognizing that
the sensible world is the world of becoming, he frequently speaks in a way that
seems to imply such a distinction. For example,
(8) Symposium 207d5–e1

… even when each living thing is said to be identical (ὁ αὐτός) starting from childhood to old
age, and even though he is called by the identical name, he never has the identical things
in him, but he is always being renovated (νέος) with some things being destroyed in his hair
and flesh and bones and blood and in his whole body. (Symp. 207d5–e1)
It seems that here the human being remains identical even though he is constantly
changing as he grows. This could be a description of essentialism, wherein all
the changes mentioned are accidental changes in the one essentially identical
person. But there are complications.32
32 See F. Ademollo, “On Plato’s Conception of Change,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy
LV (2018), § 3. Ademollo argues that this passage does not support essentialism. Instead, “we
could speculate … that this relation of resemblance between stages [of the life of sensible beings]
is grounded in their having the same features, namely (from Plato’s point of view) participating
in the same forms; and that thereby, by structuring a world of physical stages, the forms lend it
whatever degree of stability it enjoys (49).” I think this is close to being correct, but is not neces-
sarily inimical to essentialism, as Ademollo appears to take it to be. For if Socrates participates
in the Form of Humanity from birth until death, everything that Ademollo says could be true,
while it also would be true to say, with Aristotle, that Socrates is essentially a human being since
generation and destruction—essential changes—frame his being.
46 Lloyd P. Gerson
Plato argues that something is called “F” because it participates in F-ness.

So, the human being in this passage is a human being because he participates
in the Form of Humanity, just as the circle participates in Circularity and Helen
participates in Beauty, owing to which she is said to be beautiful. As we shall see
in the next section, that something has its identity owing to participation is for
Aristotle not sufficient to establish essentialism. Why not? Because an essence is
supposed to be the foundation of identity, whereas participation seems somehow
to be adventitious because what the human being is—the Form of Humanity—is
separated from him. In what sense exactly the Form of Humanity is separate from
a human being is obscured by the fact that, as we have seen, the Form is in itself
neither universal nor particular and that it is the identical Form that is present in
the particular and in an intellect. For Plato, “intellect” does not just refer to human
intellects, but also and primarily to the intellect that the Demiurge is.33 So, to par-
ticipate in the Form of Humanity is to participate in a divine intellect which is,
among other things, intimately involved with the production of human beings.34
In Socrates’ “autobiography” in Phaedo, Plato rejects naturalistic explana-
tions for things saying that these can be at best “that without which” the par-
ticipation in a Form would not occur.35 So, the “elements” of nature provide the
conditions for the participation in a Form: when the conditions are right, then
participation occurs; when they are not right, there is no participation. Some-
thing with the anatomy and physiology of a cat could not participate in the Form
of Humanity. So, it would seem that Plato can explain how a human being can
be identical from birth to death, while changing all the time, which is what the
distinction between essential and accidental change is supposed to allow us to
do. But he can do so without compromising on his claim that the true explanation
for identity through time is an eternal Form.
Recurring to my previous argument concerning the uniqueness of absolute
simplicity and therefore the necessity of compositeness both in the sensible world
33 See Tim. 47e4. Cf. 46e4. To participate in the Form of Humanity is to participation in the Liv-
ing Being, the paradigm used by the Demiurge. The Demiurge has nominally two goals: to make
the world like himself (29e1–3) and to make the world like the Living Being (30c2–d1). That these
two goals are really one is suggested by 37a1, where, at least on one standard reading of the text,
the Demiurge is himself the best among “intelligibles” (νοητῶν).
34 See Tim. 41c–d with 89d–90b on the Demiurge’s direct involvement in the production of our
intellects.
35 See Phd. 99b2–4, where cause (τὸ αἴτιον) is sharply distinguished from condition (ἐκεῖνο
ἄνευ οὗ … οὐκ). These are irreducible to each other. A good way to begin to get Plato wrong is
to insist on thinking of causes as necessary and sufficient conditions. I suppose as much can be
said about Aristotle too.
and in the intelligible world, one way to explain essentialism is as a thesis about
identity whether through time or not. But from the uniqueness of the absolutely
simple, it follows that “identity” is gradable in exactly the same way that simplic-
ity it. Just as things can be more or less simple in comparison to the absolutely
simple, things can be more or less self-identical in relation to that which is une-
quivocally self-identical. There is no doubt that Aristotle recognizes that oneness
or identity is gradable.36 The less strictly we take identity, the more essentialism
in the sensible world can be attributed to Plato. The more strictly we take it, the
more we shall be inclined to base essentialism on an Aristotelian type of hylomor-
phism. I mean that for Aristotle, the highest grade of identity in natural science
will belong to substances, whereas for Plato all types of identity can be graded
according to their proximity to the absolutely highest type which is found in the
absolutely simple first principle of all. For Aristotle, “natural” identity is suffi-
cient to ground essentialism in natural science and the possibility of scientific
knowledge. For Plato, the putative natural identity is that of an image of the really
real. Such identity is insufficient for science, even for a science of nature.
3 Plotinus
In defense of Platonism against the Peripatetics, Plotinus argues that privation
and matter are identical.
Is, then, matter identical to Difference? In fact, it is not; rather, it is to be identified with
a part of Difference that is organizationally opposed to Beings in the principal sense, and
these are expressed principles. For this reason, even if matter is not-being, it is still being
in a way and is identical to privation, if privation is opposition to what is contained in an
expressed principle. (Enn. II 4 [12], 16.1–4, trans. Gerson et al.)37
Why does Plotinus want to insist on the identity of matter and privation? The
answer to this question takes us back to the ambiguity in Aristotle’s use of the
36 See Meta. Δ.6 1015b3 ff. The phrase ἓν καθ’ αὑτό (one in itself) is, I take it, synonymous with
our “identical” or “self-identical.” Aristotle uses the phrase μᾶλλον ἕν (more one) (b13) to indi-
cate gradations of identity.
37 The reference to Difference and to Beings is to Plato’s Soph. 258e2–3 where the μέγιστα γένη
are being discussed. The translation “expressed principle” for λόγος indicates that for Plotinus
generally a λόγος refers to the expression of a principle at a lower level of reality. Thus, some-
thing at the level of Intellect is a λόγος of the One or Good, Soul and psychical activity is a λογος
of Intellect, and something in nature is a λόγος of Soul, and so on.
48 Lloyd P. Gerson
term “matter” referring both to an underlying subject of change (τὸ ὑποκείμενον)

and to the potency that this subject has for receiving a contrary that is a contrary
of the one it presently possesses. For example, assume that a leaf that is green is
supposed to have the privation of red and is therefore said to have the potency
for becoming red. If we seek to give different accounts of the privation and the
potency, we are faced with a puzzle that “not-red,” the presumptive account of
the privation and “is able to be red,” the presumptive account of the potency,
although seemingly different, do not accurately indicate the difference. For “not-
red” and “is able to be red” must be understood in this case to be extensionally
equivalent. That is, we only say of something that it is “not-red” if we mean to
imply that it has a color contrary to red and that it has the potency for becoming
red; and we only say of something that it “is able to be red” if we mean to imply
that it is not-red. So, it might seem reasonable to say that matter and privation are
one in reality but two in their accounts.38
The problem with this resolution of the difficulty is that “one in reality, two
in λόγος” applies to something sufficiently complex in its being to be able to be
considered in different ways. For example, Aristotle’s example of teaching and
learning, which are one in reality but two in λόγος, works because the single
reality is considered from the point of view of the teacher and the point of view
of the learner, that is, one actualization in relation to an agent and to a patient.
But if we try to treat matter as one in reality but two in λόγος, that is, as subject
and as potency, then we shall necessarily treat matter as itself a hylomorphic
composite, not, as Plotinus insists we must treat it, as unqualified unlimitedness
or absence of form.39 Stated otherwise, the only thing that is unqualified matter
is what Aristotle would call “prime matter” (πρώτη ὕλη).40 And if it is true that
38 See II 4 [12], 14.17–30. See Aristotle, Phys. III.3 202a31–36, where we are told that teaching and
learning are one in reality or in actuality but two in formula.
39 See Phys. I.7 191a7–8, where Aristotle says that the underlying nature, that is, matter, is know-
able by analogy (ἀναλογία). This is so precisely because matter is not form nor has form. Also,
Meta. Λ.2 1069a24–25, where Aristotle distinguishes a different kind of matter (ὕλην ἑτέραν)
for heavenly and earthly bodies. It is indeed difficult to see how there can be different kinds of
matter unless form is included, in which case we are no longer referring to matter. Cf. Phys. I.7
190b25–26 “countable matter” (ὕλη ἀριθμητή) which, Aristotle says, is rather like a “this some-
thing” (τόδε τι).
40 See Phys. I.9 192a25–b5. Cf. GC I.3 319a29–b4, I.4 320a2–5, I.5 320a2–3, I.6 322b11–21, II.1 329a24–
35, II.5 332a35–b1, II.7 334b2–7, II.9 335a32–b6. There is no space here to address the vexed questions
of whether Aristotle actually had a doctrine of prime matter and, if he did, whether or not Ploti-
nus interpreted it correctly. It is clear, however, that Plotinus criticism of Aristotle and defense of
Plato depends upon his understanding of what matter must be for Aristotle.
matter and privation are extensionally equivalent, then that is because they are
intensionally equivalent, too. The underlying subject (τὸ ὑποκείμενον) that Aris-
totle calls matter for the change is really not matter at all, but a composite of
matter and form.41 And the privation that this underlying subject has with respect
to the contrary of its contrary, is to be identified with the matter of the underlying
subject, as Plotinus argues; otherwise its relation to the matter is obscure since
there is no entailment either from the matter to the privation or vice versa. If the
privation not-f is extensionally equivalent to the matter and the privation not-g is
extensionally equivalent to the matter, then there is no formal difference between
the two.
As we saw at the beginning of this paper, Aristotle’s principles of change
are both ontological and epistemological principles. We also saw that the hylo-
morphism strengthens and is strengthened by non-representational scientific
realism. But if the epistemological principle falls apart from the ontological prin-
ciple, then the mutual support of hylomorphism in physical reality and scientific
realism is undermined. According to Plotinus’ argument, maintaining Aristotle’s
position is not possible since that would require that, epistemologically or scien-
tifically speaking, matter and privation are distinct principles but ontologically
they are one. As we have just seen, however, that option is closed if we take matter
unqualifiedly. If we do this, privation is not just identical in reality with matter,
but identical in meaning. So, the prospect for keeping them one in reality but two
in meaning as a necessary condition for understanding change is dashed.
As Plotinus knew full well, Aristotle wants to distinguish unqualified matter
from signate or proximate matter, matter “in a certain sense” (τρόπον τινα).42 So,
he would presumably deny Plotinus’ claim that matter is always unqualifiedly
unlimited. It might be granted that the distinction between prime matter and pri-
vation is nugatory, but this is not the case for proximate matter. Plotinus, though,
will reject this way of escape. For the putative proximate matter is just the underly-
ing subject, in which case, it is not matter but a hylomorphic composite, or else it
just is the matter of the underlying subject—as opposed to the underlying subject
itself—in which case its connection to the privation is once again obscured. For
this “matter” either has a form of its own or it does not: if it does, then it is not
41 See Phys.I.9 192a4 f., where Aristotle says that “matter is non-being incidentally” (οὐκ ὄν …
κατὰ συμβεβηκός), and II.1 193b6–8, where he says that matter is more properly named when it is
“in actuality” (ἐντελεχείᾳ) than when it is “in potency” (δυνάμει). Both of these claims invite the
sort of criticism that Plotinus levels.
42 See e. g., Phys. II.3 194b23–26, where the material cause of something is said to be a “constitu-
ent” (ἐνυπάρχοντος) of the composite, as for example, the bronze of a statue.
50 Lloyd P. Gerson
matter but another underlying subject; if it does not, then it begins to look like
nothing so much as the prime matter from which it is supposed to be distinct.43
The consequence, of course, of not being able to distinguish prime matter
from proximate matter is, for Peripatetics, disastrous. For the distinction between
essential change and accidental change depends on it. It is hardly surprising that
Aristotle’s hylomorphism is inextricably bound up with his essentialism. It is
perhaps somewhat more surprising that the challenge to the seemingly reason-
able distinction between matter and privation should have the disastrous con-
sequence of making unsustainable the basis for Aristotle’s natural philosophy.
Plotinus is most concerned to rebut Aristotle’s essentialism because this is
put forward by Aristotle as the basis for the refutation of Plato’s position.44 Aris-
totle thinks it absurd to separate the essence of Socrates from Socrates. Plotinus
thinks it is absurd not to separate the essence of Socrates from Socrates or from
any other substance.45 The essence of a human being is, according to Plotinus, a
perfectly intelligible Form, separate from its participants. So, Socrates is a human
being not because the essence of human being is in him in a way that Aristotle
thinks his essentialism requires, but because he participates in the essence that
is the Form of Humanity. If the essence of human being were in him, that is, iden-
tified with him, then there could be no other human beings. Since there can, of
course, be other human beings, the essence of a human being cannot be identi-
fied with any one human being. It must be separate from them all.46
Further, if, as Aristotle insists, the essence of things that exist in nature must
include the (proximate) matter, and if the proximate matter is matter only “in a
certain sense,” the inclusion of this matter in the definition of the essence can
only amount to the inclusion of additional intelligible form. So, for example, if
the definition of soul is “the first actuality (ἐντελέχεια) of a natural body with the
potentiality for life,” what is intelligible in “natural body with the potentiality for
43 See II 4 [12], 11.23–24, where Plotinus distinguishes ὕλη ἁπλῶς (“prime” matter) and ὕλη
τούτου (matter of “this something or other”). The latter phrase, appearing only here in the cor-
pus, is used in dialogue with Stoics and does not clearly indicate Plotinus’ acceptance of such
a thing as “proximate matter” where “matter” is used univocally with “matter” in the phrase
“prime matter”. Also, III 6 [26], 10.5: ποιὰ ὕλη, this time with reference to Peripatetic doctrine.
44 See esp. Meta. Ζ.6, which is a sustained critique of Plato’s position that the essence of a sub-
stance exists separately from that substance.
45 See VI 3[44], 5.18–23 with Meta. Ζ.17 1041a17–22.
46 Separation, of course, does not mean spatial separation. Since the intelligible world is eter-
nal, the Forms are everywhere because they are nowhere and present at every moment because
they are present at no moment.
life” is found precisely and primarily in the intelligible world, not in the sensible
world.47
Is there really such a big difference between saying that Socrates is essentially
a human being meaning that the essence of human being is in him and saying
that he is called a human being because he participates in the eternal Form of
Humanity? On the surface and pragmatically, perhaps there is not. But if we probe
beneath the surface, the consequential difference is between viewing the sensi-
ble world as being explanatorily self-contained and viewing it as an image of the
intelligible world where alone self-contained explanation is to be found.48 There
is nothing wrong with insisting that Socrates is a human being and not a cat and
that this is not an arbitrary use of names. But as we search for the right ontology
within which to explain this, it makes a considerable difference to say that the
explanation is found within nature itself and to say that the explanation can only
be found in the supernatural intelligible world. For Plotinus, treating images not
as images of the real but as parts of the real itself is not just the endemic flaw of
sophistry but practically ubiquitous among anti or non-Platonists.
4 Hylomorphic variations
How can a Platonist be a hylomorphist of any sort and still privilege the intelli-
gible world? The simple answer to this question is, according to Plotinus, that
no account of nature, whether in terms of hylomorphic composites or any other
putatively fundamental category, can be explanatorily adequate because explan-
atory adequacy is vested in that which is uniquely self-caused or self-explanato-
ry.49 Thus, localized explanations are not excluded, but folded into the larger met-
aphysical picture. To call upon a contemporary comparison, quantum mechanics
does not eliminate the explanatory power of Newtonian mechanics; rather, it cir-
47 See De anima II.1 412a27–28. Cf. b10–12. See Plotinus, IV 7 [2] 85, where Plotinus focuses on the
incoherence of a definition as including potency or matter. The establishment of this incoher-
ence does not entail that something could participate in, say, the Form of Soul without having
a body. Plotinus concludes the chapter by arguing that, since the sensible world is the world of
becoming, not being, real substantiality is to be found only in the intelligible world.
48 See Aristotle, Meta. Λ.7 1072b13–14: ἐκ τοιαύτης ἄρα ἀρχῆς ἤρτηται ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ ἡ φύσις
(therefore, it is on this [principle, that is, the unmoved mover] that heaven and nature depend).
Plotinus, III 2 [47] 3, 33, quotes this line and replaces “unmoved mover” with “the Good.”
49 See VI 8 [39], 14.41: αἴτιον ἑαυτοῦ (self-explanatory), in reference to the Good or One. Cf. 13,
55: πεποιηκέναι αὑτόν (has produced itself), 58–59: ὑποστήσας αὑτόν (brought itself into exist-
ence).
52 Lloyd P. Gerson
cumscribes its explanatory adequacy, folding it into the larger quantum physical
picture. To take a different sort of example, one perhaps more in line with ancient
Greek philosophy, literary analysis can give us insights into, say, the motivations
of characters in a play or novel, but literary characters are only images of real
persons and their complex motivational structures. The literary critic can cer-
tainly treat the characters in a play as if they were real human beings, but they
are not, after all, and it would be misleading to suppose otherwise. In roughly
the same way, sensible substances can be treated as the termini of explanations,
for example, within the framework of natural scientific questions, so long as
we do not mistake sensible substances as the basis for ultimate explanations.
For explanatory ultimacy can only be found in that which is self-explanatory.50
The Good or One is uniquely self-explanatory existentially. Forms and Intellect
are self-explanatory essentially, meaning that when we reach a Form there are
no further “what is it”? questions to be asked.51 But Forms and Intellect are not
unqualifiedly self-explanatory since the existence of these depends on the Good
or One, as does everything else. Soul is self-explanatory at the level of motion
since it is uniquely self-moved. But its explanatory adequacy is necessarily folded
into the broader explanatory ambit of Intellect and Forms, and finally, of the
Good or One.
Another way of expressing the difference between Aristotelian and Platonic
hylomorphism is by pointing out that the fourfold schema of causal analysis in
Aristotle could only ever be relatively adequate. This is so because when adduc-
ing efficient, formal, material, and final causes within the framework of the
explanation of any change, the existence of any of these is necessarily included.
To say that the existence of these may be assumed is to concede explanatory inad-
equacy. The force of this claim can best be seen if we recur to Socrates’ “autobi-
ography” in Phaedo. There he rejects the adequacy of the naturalistic explana-
tions of Anaxagoras in favor of his “simple hypothesis” of Forms. So, Helen is
not beautiful because of a naturalistic explanation of her body parts but because
she partakes of the Form of Beauty. But the search for an explanation for Helen’s
beauty or for the correct attribution of any property to anything here below must
proceed within the intelligible world until we reach “something adequate” (τι
ἱκανόν). Plotinus, as well as the entire Platonic tradition, had no doubt that the
“something adequate” was the unhypothetical first principle of all, the Idea of the
50 See Aristotle, Meta. α.2, where Aristotle argues that there cannot be infinite causal sequenc-
es. If there is not a first cause, then there is “no cause at all” (ὅλως αἴτιον οὐδὲν ἐστιν).
51 See VI 7 [38], 2.6–8 on the “that” (ὅτι) and the “why” (δ’ ὅτι) as identical for intelligibles. Cf.
VI 8 [39], 14.27–29.
Good in Republic.52 In order to be adequate explanatorily, this principle must be

“above essence” (ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας), thereby making it the explanation for the
existence and essence of Forms and, ultimately, of everything else.53
This unqualified explanatory “reach” of the Good is owing to its being beyond
essence, that is, unlimited by essence, which is a principle of limitation. It is eter-
nally “overflowing” (ἐπίρυττον), meaning that it is eternally providing being to
everything.54 If, per impossibile, explanatory adequacy could be achieved without
the Good, then this would amount to a limitation on its unlimited power. If, in the
sensible world, any substance or any property of a substance were the ultimate
terminus of a scientific explanation, then there would be, ex hypothesi, something
that could be done or produced that the Good does not do or produce or does not,
finally, explain. Such a limitation would be inherent in any limited thing, whose
productive power, that is, whose potency, is limited by the οὐσία whose potency
it is. Since the Good operates eternally, anything that it does could not be done by
anything else. If it could, then whatever did it would be another Good. But since
the Good is unqualifiedly simple, it is unqualified unique. So, that is not possible.
What the Good does, as Plato says, is provide being to the Forms, that is, it pro-
vides essence and existence to everything that could have these compositionally.
And since the Good does not “stop” its operation at the Forms (which would be
a limitation), it “continues” to produce, with the instrumentality of the Forms,
the being of whatever participates directly Forms and therefore indirectly in the
Good. So, it is not “adequate” to say that Helen is beautiful because she partakes
of Beauty, but that the existence of a beautiful Helen here and now is ultimately
explained by her participating in the Good, the source of the being of everything,
including beautiful Helen.
Plotinus rejects the primacy of sensible substance in the sensible world,
instead calling it a “bundle” (συμφόρησις) of qualities and quantity in matter.55
Developing this idea, he says,
We discussed how the quality, when mixed with other things, that is, matter and quan-
tity, produces the completion of sensible substance, and that probably what is called sub-
stance itself is this thing composed out of many things, and is not a ‘something’, but rather
52 See Rep. VI 511b5–6: τοῦ ἁνυπόθετου ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ἀρχὴν ἰών (going up to the unhypo-
thetical first principle of all). This is reached after the various hypotheses of Forms, which cannot
be the first principle of all because Forms cannot be unqualifiedly simple. Unqualified simplicity
is uniquely instantiable. See VI 7 [38], 36, 6–10, for the Good or One as explanatory terminus.
53 Rep. VI 509b5–9.
54 Rep. VI 508b6–7.
55 Enn. VI 3 [44], 8.20. Cf. II 7 [37], 3.5–6.
54 Lloyd P. Gerson
a quality. And the expressed principle, for example, of fire probably indicates more properly
a ‘something’, whereas the form it produces is more properly a quality.
The expressed principle of a human being is probably the ‘something’, whereas the thing
produced in body, being the image of the expressed principle, is more properly a quality, as
though one were to call the portrait of Socrates, Socrates, although he is a visible human
being, and the portrait consists of colors, that is, of the paints in the painting. In the same
way, then, since there is an expressed principle in accordance with which Socrates is, you
should not rightly say that the visible Socrates is Socrates; rather, you should say he is
‘colors and figures’, imitations of those in the expressed principle. And this expressed prin-
ciple is affected in the same way relative to the truest expressed principle. This, then, is how
these things are. (VI 3 [44], 15.24–38, trans. Gerson et al.)56
Plotinus denies the Aristotelian hallmark of a substance (οὐσία), namely, that

it is a “this something” (τόδε τι).57 The referent “this” should be used for the
expressed principle or λόγος, which, as we have seen, is the Form, virtually in the
One, cognitively in Intellect, and naturally in Soul and its images in the sensible
world. So, Socrates is not the “this,” but each of the qualities by which we refer to
him is. Just as we can call a picture of Socrates “Socrates,” so we can call an image
of a real substance by the name of that substance, a human being by the name of
the Form of Humanity.58
A natural Peripatetic objection arises. Aristotle scrupulously distinguishes
the science of nature from both mathematics and theology. The main point of the
distinction among these is that explanatory adequacy can be sought within each.
It is sought in the principles of the sciences, including the axioms and defini-
tions of each. It is, from the Peripatetic point of view, simply question-begging to
deny the “internal” explanatory adequacy of the science of nature. In reply to this
objection, Plotinus wants to say that the nature of explanatory adequacy cannot
be stipulated; rather, it must be discovered. The discovery of what explanation
requires is not unknown to Aristotle, who himself pronounces the universality
of first philosophy or theology, which he explicitly identifies with the science of
being qua being.59 He denies the primacy of the science of nature, not of course
within the framework of natural explanations, but within a universal, explanato-
56 Cf. 5.18–23; 9.23–30; II 7 [37], 3.5; VI 2 [43], 21.53–54. Plotinus perhaps has Meta. Ζ.17 1041a17–22
in mind in all these passages.
57 See e. g., Cat. 3b12, b14; Meta. Β.6 1003a9, Δ.8 1017b18, Ζ.1 1028a11–12.
58 This means that there is a Form of Socrates, which is his undescended intellect, and of which
the visible Socrates is only an image.
59 See Meta. Ε.1 1026a27–32. In addition, in Meta. α.2, Aristotle argues for explanatory ultimacy
along all four lines of explanation: formal, material, efficient, and final.
rily adequate framework. From the Platonic perspective, however, although Aris-
totle recognized the need for explanatory adequacy in what explains universally,
he was mistaken in identifying that explanation with the thinking of an unmoved
mover. For thinking does not in fact suffice as the explanation for the being of
everything there is.
5 Conclusion
Platonic and Aristotelian hylomorphism share the fundamental axiom of the
unique incompositeness of the first principle of all. Hence, compositeness
follows for everything else. That the compositeness is hylomorphic—at least for
things that exist in nature—follows from the self-evident encounter with nature
that is other than a merely physical encounter. Cognitive encounter, including
sense-perception, would not be possible if hylomorphism, broadly speaking,
were not true. That is, cognition of sensibles requires intelligibility in sensibles
plus an additional factor enabling what is intelligible to have natural or physical
interactions with other things. Further, for Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, intelli-
gibility means or is definable as the possibility of the non-physical presence of
the intelligible in the non-physical intellect. And intellection is the awareness of
this presence.
Plato and, against Aristotle, Plotinus reject the further assumption that the
intelligibility of the sensible world is, so to speak, self-standing. Rather, they see
it as derived or dependent and so not unqualifiedly intelligible on its own. The
intelligibility of instances of Forms is compromised by what Socrates in Phaedo
calls “that without which not” or the necessary conditions for instantiation.
Although Aristotle acknowledges the need for the inclusion of unintelligible matter
in natural science research, he is nevertheless prepared to allow natural science a
measure of autonomy that the Platonists do not think it deserves. Perhaps another
way of stating this is to point out that Aristotle himself recognizes that “matter is
only knowable by analogy.”60 If we add that the putative ultimate explanations
in the natural world are going to be of things that include matter, then we have to
maintain that at least some ultimate explanations are going to be of that which
is directly unknowable. If this were true, then the sharp division between the
objects of thinking (“intelligibles”) and the objects of sense-perception (“sensi-
60 See Phys. I.7 191a7–8. Cf. Meta. Γ.5 1010a3–4, where naturalists are excoriated for thinking that
only sensibles exist. In so thinking, they forego attaining the truth since sensibles contain the
indeterminate.
56 Lloyd P. Gerson
bles”) would be threatened. In other words, ultimate explanation could be sought

other than in that which is purely intelligible. Alternatively, natural science is not
the realm of ultimate explanation.61
In reply to such an objection, the Peripatetic would hold that even if the
Good or One provides the being of everything, assuming the being of the objects
of natural science does not preclude explanatory ultimacy. This is a reasonable
reply so long as we elide the “being” of things that exist by nature with their exist-
ence. It does not seem that the existence of things by nature occludes explanatory
ultimacy from being found within them. But the Platonist will respond that the
being of things that exist in nature includes more than existence. It indicates the
existence of something with an essence or οὐσία, that is, existence as such-and-
such rather than existence as a quantifier.62 And the existence of something with
an essence is, again, the existence of that which participates in a separate Form.
Understanding the essence of a natural existent requires understanding the Form
in which it partakes. And the ultimate explanation for that Form or for Being in
general is the Good or One. So, only qualified explanatory adequacy can be found
within the sensible world. If hylomorphism entails essentialism, it is not neces-
sarily an essentialism of the sensible world.63
Bibliography
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Gerson, Lloyd P., ed. (2018): Plotinus. The Enneads. Translated by George Boys-Stones, John
M. Dillon, Lloyd P. Gerson, R.A.H. King, Andrew Smith, and James Wilberding, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
Groff, R. and Greco, J., eds. (2013): Powers and Capacities in Philosophy, The New Aristote-
lianism, New York/London: Routledge.
61 In Meta. α.1 993b28–31, Aristotle says that “the principles of eternal things” (τὰς τῶν ἀεὶ
ὄντων αρχὰς) are the “explanation for the being” (αἴτιον τοῦ εἶναι) of other things, presumably
non-eternal things. In the following chapter, he goes on to argue that all causal series must have
a first, that is, that there must be an ultimate explanation for everything that is caused. Here,
Aristotle explicitly roots ultimacy in the eternal.
62 Although existence is not in antiquity a quantifier, Aristotle, for example, provides exam-
ples that are easily assimilated to existential quantification. See Post. An. II.1 89b32–33, where he
poses as a perfectly reasonable question, “does a centaur or a god exist or not exist.” He adds,
lest anyone be misled, that he means exists simpliciter, not exists as such-and-such.
63 I am grateful to Sean Kelsey and István Bodnár for their incisive comments on earlier drafts
of this paper.
Novotný, D. and Novák, L, eds. (2014): Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, New York/
London: Routledge.
Tahko, T., ed. (2012): Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Taylor, A. E. (1928): A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Platonic Hylomorphism

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Platonic Hylomorphism

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Rhizomata 2022; 10(1): 26–57

Abstract: Hylomorphism is almost universally claimed to be a staple doctrine

Keywords: hylomorphism, essentialism, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, universals,

3 The application of hylomorphism to essentialism is approached by Aristotle variously: as a

8 We should be careful not to impose anachronistic notions of individuation on the “particulari-

distinct from identity, goes the attempt to surmount representationalism. All we

its familiar Aristotelian scientific habitat and re-examine it as it is found in the

(1) Phaedo 102d6-103a2

(2) Theaetetus 179e1–183c3

In this passage, Socrates is examining Theaetetus’ proposal to define knowledge

I am not here concerned with the particular theory of sense-perception that

(3) Philebus 23c4–e2

The final passage in this group to be considered is introduced in Philebus as the

And the limiters include

In the pre-cosmic Receptacle, we find proto-elements, manifesting their phenom-

we have already seen, one important property of the intelligible, as opposed to

22 See Meta. Ζ.17 1041b11–33.

(4) Phaedo 79d1–7

(5) Phaedrus 247c6–d1

(6) Republic V 477e5–478a2

From the infallibility of knowledge, we can directly infer its non-representational

(7) Republic VI 511b2–c2

their logical connections. Although this procedure is generally assumed to be

(8) Symposium 207d5–e1

Plato argues that something is called “F” because it participates in F-ness.

term “matter” referring both to an underlying subject of change (τὸ ὑποκείμενον)

Good in Republic.52 In order to be adequate explanatorily, this principle must be

Plotinus denies the Aristotelian hallmark of a substance (οὐσία), namely, that

bles”) would be threatened. In other words, ultimate explanation could be sought

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