Metaphysics Z 17’s Ontological Deduction of the Εἶδος as Principle and Primary Substance through the Analysis of the Becoming

This research represents another of the various different versions of the Hylomorphism of the third millennium (some closer and some less close to the thought of Aristotle). Its aim is to find the most profound and basic intrinsic explanation of the being of the sense-perceptible substance, by means of a systematic approach to the theory of substance developed in the central books of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. The theory of substance is based on the hylomorphic conception of the sense-perceptible substance, and reaches its culmination in Chapter 17 of Metaphysics Book Zeta, where Aristotle develops the definitive deeper argument that demonstrates the essence of substance. The argument is developed through a rigorous analysis of the sense-perceptible thing and its elements during the existence of the thing and after its corruption. The result obtained by this analysis is that none of the material components of a sense-perceptible thing, nor the sum of all of them, explain the constitution of the sense-perceptible thing, or its nature. And the final conclusion is that there exists an entity distinct from all of the material components, which is the arrangement and the essence of the sense-perceptible thing, that is, its form. The form also emerges as the primary cause of the being of the sense-perceptible thing and the primary substance, because it acts as the cause of matter and of the hylomorphic compound, and possesses the characters of substantiality in the maximum degree, being separate (τὸ χωριστὸν) and being “a this” (τὸ τόδε τι). To take another angle, the soul is the form of biological organisms and man; and this investigation ends by establishing how the Aristotelian argument applies to a biological organism, and demonstrates that the soul is the first cause of this and the primary substance, by means of the distinction of the proximate matter and remote matter of the living being.