Form, Matter, Substance

by Koslicki, Kathrin

• ISBN13: 9780198880684
• ISBN10: 0198880685
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2023-06-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In Form, Matter, Substance, Kathrin Koslicki develops a contemporary defence of the Aristotelian doctrine of hylomorphism. According to this approach, objects are compounds of matter (hule) and form (morphe or eidos) and a living organism is not exhausted by the body, cells, organs, tissue, and the like that compose it. Koslicki argues that a hylomorphic analysis of concrete particular objects is well equipped to compete with alternative approaches when measured against a wide range of criteria of success. However, a plausible application of the doctrine of hylomorphism to the special case of concrete particular objects hinges on how hylomorphists conceive of the matter composing a concrete particular object, its form, and the hylomorphic relations which hold between a matter-form compound, its matter and its form. Koslicki offers detailed answers to the questions surrounding this approach to the metaphysics of concrete particular objects. As a result, matter-form compounds emerge as occupying the privileged ontological status traditionally associated with substances, despite their metaphysical complexity, due to their high degree of unity.

Author Biography

Kathrin Koslicki, Professor of Theoretical Philosophy, University of Neuchâtel

Kathrin Koslicki is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Neuchâtel. Koslicki is originally from Munich, Germany, and moved to the United States when she was twenty. She completed her B.A. in philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook in 1990 and her Ph.D at MIT in 1995. Prior to returning to Europe in 2020 to join the University of Neuchâtel's Institute of Philosophy, she held faculty positions in many parts of the United States and in Canada. Most recently, she was Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Epistemology and Metaphysics at the University of Alberta. Koslicki's research interests in philosophy lie mainly in metaphysics, the philosophy of language and ancient Greek philosophy, particularly Aristotle. In her two books (The Structure of Objects, Oxford University Press, 2008; and Form, Matter, Substance, Oxford University Press, 2018), she defends a neo-Aristotelian analysis of concrete particular objects as compounds of matter (hule) and form (morphe).

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I: A Hylomorphic Analysis of Concrete Particular Objects
1. Concrete Particular Objects
2. Matter
3. Form
4. Hylomorphic Relations
Part II: Substance
5. Ontological Dependence
6. Independence Criteria of Substancehood
7. Unity
8. Artifacts
Conclusion
Bibliography