Led by Aristotle
About this course
The third module of the Metaphysics paper answers the question the second left hanging: if change cannot come from nothing, how is it possible at all? It is led by Aristotle, whose analysis of substance is the classical solution.
Aristotle asks not merely which things are substances but what it is to be one — and answers with his most influential doctrine: every concrete thing is a compound of matter (what it is made of) and form (the structure and essence that make it the kind of thing it is). With the further pair of potentiality and actuality, he dissolves the Eleatic deadlock: a thing can be potentially what it is not yet actually, so coming-to-be is the actualising of a potential — real change that still honours "nothing from nothing." Along the way the module develops essence, definition, and the four causes, and presses the hard question of whether form, matter, or the composite is substance in the primary sense.
The student leaves able to wield hylomorphism, potentiality and actuality, and essence; to see how they answer the problem of change; and to feel the unresolved knot — is the substance-form universal or particular? — that opens directly onto the problem of universals. They read the Metaphysics (Books VII–IX) and the Physics (Books I–II) directly.
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Led by Aristotle
The question
What is it to be a substance — and what, exactly, happens when a thing comes to be or changes? Aristotle argues that every concrete thing is a unity of matter and form, that its form is its essence (the "what-it-was-to-be"), and that change is the actualisation of a potentiality — a thing becoming actually what it already was potentially. With this he answers the puzzle Parmenides made unanswerable, explains how things can change while still being themselves, and presses toward a verdict on what, in a thing, is substance most of all: its matter, its form, or the composite of both.