Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

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. But, of course, the Greeks had to grapple with the fact that there appears to be many forms, substances and phenomena. So a division of the universe into different substances began when the four elements of air, earth, fire and water were identified.

Eventually things seemed to settle out such that there is substance as particles in empty space. But the idea of ‘atoms’ or lumps of substance sat in ‘empty’ space was especially taxing for ancient philosophers. Conceiving of a ‘nothing’ rather than a category or a substance does not come about easily. If it should be settled that there are particles, what are the particles contained in? Particles in a void? But isn’t the void made of something?

It seems that we need to take a wider view of things in order to make sense of this. I am suggesting it helps to grapple with the meanings of the terms form, substance, substrate and

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