Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

worthwhile.

Ancient Greek philosophers grappled with the idea of ‘categories’ of things of which the world is composed. Unfortunately, different philosophers came up with different lists! For instance, there are ten categories, according to Aristotle, and these are: Substance, Quantity, Quality, Relations, Place, Time, State, Action and Affection (being acted upon). Note, for Aristotle, form is not a category — a reflection of his rejection of the Platonic forms (of which more later). One of the most interesting categories is substance.

I’ve used the term substance rather loosely in the foregoing paragraphs (and we noted that, rather confusingly, Descartes included mind as a substance) but here we need to sharpen up its meaning. The ancient Greeks were often insistent on there being ultimately only one substance. Parmenides of Elea is one such thinker, who we will be meeting later in the work. Anaximenes of Miletus saw the primary substance as air. Diogenes of Appolonia (reverting to the belief of Anaximenes) again saw air as the one substance, which he further identified with soul. Meanwhile for Thales (and Babylonian myths) the primary substance is water. Anaximander saw ultimate substance as unknown, although he regarded it as infinite, eternal and ageless. He termed it ‘the boundless’. It is interesting to note that he saw some kind of cosmic justice being played out in the way the physical world is constructed.

But of course the Greeks had to grapple with the fact that there appears to be many forms,

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