Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

But there is another understanding of the word form that gives us a very different perspective on things, as well as affording us a possible route into an understanding of essence and substrate. Form, in this second sense, means some kind of external pattern for the way things should be in the world. For Plato, ‘the forms’ are perfect — they are the ‘Realm of Being’, as opposed to our flawed world of imperfect substance — the ‘Realm of Becoming’ — the contingent world of everyday reality. More generally, this mysterian understanding of the word form has form residing in Heaven, or bestowed on us by God. For St. Augustine, substance is eternal, whilst form is created by the will of God. (This is similar to the difference between substance and form later espoused by Descartes.) Taking abstract things to be real is known by the term hypostatisation — or sometimes just reification. But the word also means the search for some verifying and comprehensive truth — such as an ‘ultimate substrate’ or essence — which may in fact be real. Form then, in this understanding, is a kind of magic ingredient that gives real existence to the world. In fact, this view of form could be a stand-in for substrate, if only science could cope with the magic! It also kind of relates to the notion that substrate might be an abstract thing, which I’ll discuss a bit further below, as well as later in the book.

We can reach an initial understanding of essence by a kind of intermediate step. There was, for the ancient Greeks, the idea of a ‘quintessence’ — a fifth element — that sat along with air, fire, earth and water. The quintessence was again a

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