Ryan, E E, Pure Form in Aristotle, 1973

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Pure Form in Aristotle

EUGENE E. RYAN

odern commentators often attribute to Aristotle a position in-

vl volvinga grave inconsistency in his metaphysics. This position,

which I will call "the paradoxical doctrine of pure form,"consists in holding two apparently irreconcilable theses:

A Since form is a correlate of matter (and a correlate of the sort that cannot

exist apart from its partner,)' it is impossible to divorce form from matter;it would be as absurd to say "x is a form but has no matter" as it wouldbe to say "Jones is a husband but has no wife.""

B Some things are pure forms; there exist entities which are not only intel-ligible through and through and entirely free from matter, but which alsomeet Aristotelian criteria for being counted (non-metaphorically)2 forms.

Cherniss for one has imputed this paradoxical doctrine of pure formto Aristotle.3 In commenting on Metaphysics Z 11 Cherniss asserts

that Aristotle, in trying both to attack the theory of ideas and toperfect and argue in favor of his own theory of definition, differentiatedthe materiate universal from the essential form of true (i.e. natural)substances. He continues: "Yet, apart from the epistemologicaldifficulty introduced by this differentiation, if the so-called pure formbe identified with the soul and the soul is the essence of a certain kindof body... this form itself cannot be defined without reference to the



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'3e which is pure form without matter..." (n. 261) Thus we get

beyond the realm of pure form as an abstraction to pure form as

existing (unless one gratuitously read into Cherniss' "eliminated"

a suggestion of abstraction.) Not surprisingly, then, when Chernissgoes back to the theme of Aristotle's God, he finds him to be a primaryand separate substance, "ouaia in the strictest sense" (n. 271), "an

immaterial essence" (458), "the transcendent form of the world ... a

kind of Platonic idea ... It is supposed to differ from the ideas in that

it is a living being ... but it is so only in a special sense of that homon-

ymous term ... for its activity is the activity of immobility, not of

motion ... and its life is simply the perpetual actualization of itself

as an object of thought ... It is at most, therefore, a self-consciousidea; and even so, it is final cause not qua thinking but qua being, that

is qua form ..."I 6

Like Cherniss, A. R. Lacey, in his article and Form in

Aristotle,"' has found the pure form doctrine as well as its inconsis-



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tency in Aristotle. First, Lacey asserts that there must be pure form

in Aristotle's philosophy because Aristotle takes the position that it

is "one of the roles of o£M« to be that which is most actual, and since

Aristotle equates potentiality with matter o6ci« in this role becomespure form" (66). But straightway arises the problem of inconsistency:"The fallacy in this development is of course that the notion of form

only makes sense in conjunction with that of matter" (67); therefore,"If there is any object which is simple in the sense of not being a

composite of form and matter it will not, if it is an object, be a form"

(68). Since Aristotle could have agreed with these last statements,

Lacey naturally raises the question about why he got into this in-

consistency with his doctrine of pure form, and tentatively finds themotivation in his demand for something unchanging, fully existent

and eternal. If these demands had motivated Aristotle to hold the

pure form doctrine, they would not have been satisfied by this doctrine,for as Lacey (rightly) concludes his paper, "Whatever answer there

may (be?) to these demands it does not lie in the direction of pureform" (69).

What can be said of this charge of inconsistency at the core of

Aristotle's metaphysics?There is no

questionbut that for Aristotle

form is a correlate of matter. Even those who have imputed the pureform doctrine to him have not cast that into doubt. Even if a doubt

were to arise, the weight of evidence from the Physics and the Meta-

physics would be too overwhelming for it to be taken seriously.88

The questionable part of the inconsistency, then, has to be the as-

sertion of pure form. One would have thought the fact that such a

grave inconsistency does arise from this assertion might deter com-



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mentators from attributing it to Aristotle or compel them to producesubstantial evidence for it.

So far as the direct textual evidence for the claim that Aristotle

asserted the existence of pure form goes, it is difficult to find any, oreven to know what to look for. Those who have found the paradoxicaldoctrine of pure form in Aristotle often give the impression they havediscovered him backsliding willy-nilly into Platonism. And it is truethat Aristotle tries to contrast his own theory with that of Plato bystressing the separability of the Platonic forms, yet he never avers

that Plato ever referred to "pure forms." Nor do the Platonic dialogues.Plato does use such words as elxixpwlq, and yovoe181q

when talking about the object of knowledge.9 In the Symposium,for example, he describes an experience as «6<O To xaaov

(211 e 1) and, a few lines below, «6<O TO xocaov ...

yovoi18£q x«m81iv (3, 4). But he is not attaching these qualifiers to

to speak of a el3oq would be pleonastic, as Timaeus

makes clear in the description of form (51 e-52 a): -To6-rcovSe

7COL16v, xTa. A form for Plato isnothing

other than thepure objectof knowledge. "Pure" is not a modifier of form, but when it qualifies

"beauty," for example, it makes the expression synonymous with"form."

Now Aristotle avoids this terminology. Where it might have seemed

required or useful, he uses instead a word that may well have been of his own coinage, He uses this word to signify either (1)the characteristic or ability of existing apart from other things, in-

dependently of them (e.g. To XCJPG6TOVxon TO UTCOCPxE6VSoxs?



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ouo?, 1vletaph. Z 3, 1029 a 27, 28, and compare A 5,1070 b 36-1071 a I) ; or (2) the ability not only to exist apart from

other things, but to exist apart from matter altogether (e.g.

EaT6T6C, ou<7Kx... Z 2 1028 b 30, 31 ) ; or (3) the capa-bility of being thought of or perceived apart from matter (e.g....

el8oq, A 8, 1017 b 24-26.)11 Only in the third of these senses does he

ever describe e'Laoq as being and even this usage is rare.

In A 5, for example, in describing the distinction of actuality and

potentiality in relation to form, privation and matter, he writes:

?'?PY??? 'yap To daoç, xmpic<6v (1071 a 8, 9); and this same

conditionof

separabilityis said to hold both

(1)for

privationand

(2)for the compound with matter of either the form or the privation

(so long as the privation or compound are actualized,) while the matter

as such does not enjoy this condition. This is obviously a very complex

passage, but one presenting no evidence for the claim that Aristotle

is attributing any sort of separability to form other than that in

thought or perception. Rather, the text becomes absurd upon the

supposition that he is thinking of a form's having separate existence.

Again, this separability in thought and perception is claimed for

form in other texts, as for example in de An. and Cael. In de An.

(424 a 17-19) since the is said to be To ae:X't'LXO\lda6J\I xvsu there can be no question of the form being separablein any way other than by perception. The same can be said for Cael.

(277 b 32, 33) where is contrasted with that

which is 6xqq, precisely to make the point that

since the former does not exist, while the latter does, it makes no sense

to talk about a plurality of worlds; there is no matter left over from



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is that Aristotle in these chapters avoids form language, and never

uses it to refer in any way to suprasensible being, but at the most to

raise the issue of whether many OÙpOC\lOL,if there were such, would have

to be one as men are.It might be argued that even though it would have been inconsistent

for Aristotle to have asserted the existence of pure form, and even

though the texts furnish no immediate evidence to support the claim

that he did, still he is committed to this position because of his other

tenets. I will describe and attempt to show the weakness of four argu-ments that might be used to attempt to prove that Aristotle is bound

to the thesis that pure form exists. The first of these arguments runs

as follows:1 If A is equated with B, then if C is a correlate of A, then C is a correlate

of B (Principle of Correlation)2 Ousia-as-most-actual is equated with actuality (A 6, 1071 b 19-20)3 Actuality is a correlate of potentiality4 Ousia-as-most-actual is a correlate of potentiality (from 1, 2 and 3)5 Being matter is equated with being potentiality (Z 7, 1032 a 22, 15,

1039 b 29)6 Ousia-as-most-actual is a correlate of matter (from 1, 5 and 4)

7 What is a correlate of matter is form (A 4, 1070 b 18, Ph. 190 b 17-20)8 Ousia-as-most-actual is form (from 6 and 7)9 Ousia-as-most-actual is free of matter (A 1, 1069 a 3-b 2)

10 A form free of matter is a pure form (definition)11 Ousia-as-most-actual is a pure form (from 8, 9 and 10)

Of the above eleven propositions, the first, which I have called a

"Principle of Correlation," can claim to be intuitively verifiable:

if being a husband is equated with being a married man, then if being

a wife is a correlate of being a husband, then being a wife is a correlateof being a married man. Though the expression "is equated with"

(which I take from Lacey) is ambiguous (one is not sure if it is to be

read as "is synonymous with," "is identical with," "is coextensive

with," etc.), the ambiguity does not make the principle useless,at least for this argument. Of the others, four (2, 5, 7 and 9) are rather

directly from Aristotle, one (10) is a definition, and four (4, 6, 8 and 11)are derived from the others in the ways suggested in the text of the

argument.The one

remaining (3)is

problematical, yetit cannot be



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"to some extent right" in objecting to the static "substance" as a

translation of ousia, he surely has shown that equating?ousia and form

strips ousia of any existential element, however minimal. Further,

Z 17 is not all that definitive, on any reading. The word ?'?805 appearsbut once in the whole comparatively long chapter not at all)and this in a phrase so awkward that at least one commentator (Christ)has rejected it as spurious, while Jaeger brackets it as a variant readingof the words at the end of the sentence. The sentence, More To

more ambiguous than Ross's translation would indicate: "Therefore,what we seek is the cause, i.e. the form, by reason of which the matter

is some definite thing; and this is the substance of the thing" (1041 b7-9). Further, it is clear from the whole context that Aristotle is treat-

ing of sensibles and there is no evidence that the argument can be

extended to suprasensibles. In other places in Z form is said to be

ousia par excellence in comparison with matter (1029 a 27-30) or

with the composite of form and matter (1035 b 14-16). But to saythis is simply to claim that forms are a subset of ousia, and this is

hardly to equate form and ousia. The proposition, "Form is ousia,"

Aristotle accepts, while rejecting its converse due to its unacceptableresults, results much the same as those discussed above in connection

with proposition 3 ("If ousia is form, and form is the correlate of

matter, then ousia is the correlate of matter," etc.)A third argument might be based on the premise that every

counts as form. Then since suprasensible being is and without

matter, such being would count not only as form but as pure form.

One might claim some evidence for this argument from a passage in

xon ovaia5 È\/e:pye:ï:8e (1072 b 19-23) Ross takes

v67)atq (1. 18), the topic being discussed in these lines, as

"thinking in itself as distinguished from human thinking which

depends on sense and imagination." But when he comes to

OÙ(jLOCÇ,he understands ousia here as "substance in the sense of

essence," and refers to de An. 429 a 15 where vou5 is said to be 81x<ixlv



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not o6ci«q but rou Now if this were an exact parallel, it

would follow that and d80q were equated since it would seem

impossible to find in Aristotle an instance of a that was not an

d80q if this were not such an instance. But in fact the two passagesare not parallel. The de An. passage does not deal with x«J'

at least as that was glossed above, but obviously deals with

human thinking, particularly with \/013Ç as the context makes

clear. Following 8cx<ixov ro5 the line continues: xod 8uv&yci-roLo5,rov &MOC and this latter description cannot be fitted

into Aristotle's treatment of vovS or either in A 7 or 9. So againit seems to me this argument falters. Not only does A 7 not establish

the equation between and but (as I have pointed out) itnotably avoids form language. Nor is it a valid objection to say this

leaves a that is amorphous and hence unintelligible. For if my

analysis is correct, suprasensible being would be ill described as

amorphous, since it has no relationship to form, and would be equallyill described as unintelligible, since its very o6ci« would be a

(though Aristotle never says what sort of for humans he thinks

it would be.)

A fourth argument might start from the fact that Aristotle assertsthe identity in natural things of the final and formal cause. Then,since the prime mover is the final cause of the universe, he must also

be the formal cause, and hence form and indeed pure form. This

seems to be the argument Cherniss is thinking of when he concludes

on the basis of the final causality of the prime mover that "he is the

transcendent form of the world" (n. 406, citing 1074 a 31-38, a passage,referred to above, about the uniqueness of the universe but with

no hint of theprime

mover'sbeing

the form of theunique o6p«vlq,and citing 1075 a 11-15, the beginning of A 10, with the problem of

"how the nature of the whole has the good and the best"). Now

Aristotle does assert the identity of the three active causes in compari-son with the inactive material cause (Ph. 198 a 24); specifically, he

identifies the final and the formal cause (H 1044 a 35-b 1, with GC

335 b 6, and the note by Joachim on 333 b 16.)19 But he does so when



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the end is intrinsic to the being undergoing the change. The distinction in

A 7 of the two senses of o6 £vex« (1072 b 1-3) points to another sense

in which something can be an end, as extrinsic and itself unchanging.

In the latter sense, the prime mover is the end of the universe, andconsequently as extrinsic rather than as form, not even as the "trans-

cendent" form. This argument fails, then, just as the argument to

prove that God is an efficient cause fails (and Cherniss himself rec-

ognized that failure, n. 409) ; at times the active causes are identified,but at other times they are contrasted, and it is risky at best to stake

anything on their supposed identity.These four arguments fail to prove what they set out to prove;

they fail whether they use as the starting premise (1) the correspon-dence between actuality and potentiality, (2) the equation of ousia

and form, (3) the identity of vo-1,70'vand form, or (4) the identity of

the final and formal cause. Their failure, together with the absence

of any direct textual evidence, indicates what shaky ground those

stand on who attribute the pure form doctrine to Aristotle.

Yet the question arises whether attributing this doctrine to Aris-

totle will make any difference so far as interpretation goes. If we could

believewhat Ross writes in his Aristotle the difference would be

slight,nothing more than verbal: "Form and matter being correlative terms,there is a difficulty in Aristotle's view that form sometimes exists

pure. This is in fact only a way of saying that there sometimes exists

alone something which, like the formal element in concrete things,is intelligible through and through. "2° By the time he had come to

write his commentary on the Metaphysics Ross had either forgottenhow he had dismissed the problem earlier or else had changed his

mind about the status of pure form. It seems he had done the latter,since in the introduction to his commentary he writes that "form and

matter exist only in union and are separable only in thought. Of this

we might say that Aristotle was well aware, were it not for his doctrine

of the existence of certain pure forms, God and the beings that move

the spheres; we should perhaps add the human reason, but it would

be rash to embark here on that disputed question of interpretation"

(cxix). That the problem of interpreting the meaning of "pure form"

continued to vex Ross is indicated by the frequent allusions he makes



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to the problem (including the one given above in the quotation from

Cherniss, n. 236,) even in contexts where the issue seemingly neednot have been referred to.21

The paradoxical doctrine of pure form obviously does make a funda-mental difference for the interpretation of Cherniss. He sees Aristotle's

attempt to get along without pure form as utterly unsuccessful, sounsuccessful that he ends his metaphysical investigations with a primemover which is simply a worked-over Platonic pure form, and ends

his epistemological investigations with other forms that must, too,in the end be Platonic pure forms if the ruin of knowledge is to beavoided. Lacey's account of the thrust of Aristotle's thought does

not differ appreciably from that of Cherniss, as my earlier discussionof his article makes clear. Nor does that of Haring, who concludesher study, which actually centered around the notion of pure form in

Aristotle, with the statement that "Pure form, of all the entities

considered, is closest to the kind of eternal being which Plato positedfor Ideas and which Aristotle will posit for God."22 Yet another com-

mentator, Joseph Owens, is basically in accord with this approach

(though he demurs from stressing the separateness of the form relative

to the individualobject

as doHaring

andCherniss.)23

His well-known

book aims to make it possible for one to see the vast difference between

Aristotle's metaphysics, with its utter dependence on form, and

the metaphysics of the medieval thinkers who had the added insight of

belief in a supreme being whose most intimate characteristic was

existence. Thus we read in Owens:

Having established immobile Entity as form that is free from any kind of matter, the Stagirite proceeds to draw conclusions about its nature (443).Perfection is

equatedwith

finitude,act coincides with form

(468).What

is not form or reducible to form has no interest for the Primary Philosophy... The highest instance of being is form.... An act like that of existence,which is irreducible to form, has no place in the Primary Philosophy or in

any other science (467).

It is no surprise, then, that at the end of his book Owens comes to the

conclusion that "The 'ontological' conception of the science ... is



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nowhere to be found in the Metaphysics" (471). This conclusion and

what leads up to it derive in great part from Owens' attributing the

pure form doctrine to Aristotle, as the lines above indicate.

If as I have argued in this paper we cannot foist the paradoxicaldoctrine of pure form on Aristotle, then these well-known interpre-tations are misleading in important ways, mainly because they locate

the problems in Aristotelian interpretation in the wrong places and

overlook the original insights he contributed to epistemology and

ontology. This is a complex topic, one I will merely indicate by wayof conclusion. In his epistemology, Aristotle need not be concerned

with stuffing pure forms into material envelopes, the material objects

of our experience, to get them to be intelligible, but must insteadexplain how form, the source of understanding, can be abstracted

from existent material individuals (which are, after all, the only sorts

of things that exist in our experience.) He has little or no problemwith the pure form of circle - it simply does not exist. But he has a

problem about how mathematics as a science is possible when our

knowledge is dependent upon existing circles.? It was this problem. that led Aristotle to his theory of abstraction, with the related theoryof the two

aspectsof mind, both theories

utterlyalien to Plato's

philosophy. In his ontology, far from being hemmed in by the con-

fines of form (as Cherniss, Lacey and others claim,) he breaks out of

those confines, particularly with his theory of the prime mover which

turns out to be all the good things Aristotle can list: not only ousia and

suprasensible, but separate, free from matter, free from potentialityand change, actuality, alive, well, happy, eternal, mind, a principleand cause, but never form. But as eluding Plato's problems in episte-

mology brought Aristotle others of his own, so did eluding them in

ontology. Now he apparently has to face the choice of a first moverwho is either a mere form without matter, or a formless and indefinite

being. He tried to get around this by his theory of an ousia that is



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complete actuality with no need for a reason to be what it is, no reason,that is, like form. He did not complete his theory, but he led the wayfor later theorists to develop similar theories that were more complete.

Yet even with its incompleteness, the aim of Aristotle's investiga-tions is clear, and it surely is not the objectivization of pure form.

There are difficulties and inconsistencies in Aristotle's account of

form and ousia, .but the paradoxical doctrine of pure form as formulat-

ed by his commentators is not, I think, one of them.

East Carolina University

Ryan, E E, Pure Form in Aristotle, 1973

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