Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

are being explored here.

There are variations, of course, on all of these ideas. It could be said, for instance, that form can vary but matter remains unchanged, so it is this that constitutes the essence of a substance (as with Duns Scotus above). Analogies of melted-down statues (Aristotle) and melted wax (Descartes) seem to take this stance. This appears to contradict at least one of our earlier definitions, but perhaps it could be seen to be consistent if we consider quintessence as matter.

Please be aware that all of this is very much conjecture on my part, as to how things were understood by the ancients and how we might interpret them today. A simple way of putting all this is the Stoic view that there is an ordering principle in the universe. This ordering principle is what grounds reality — it gives essence to substance as well as to us — it rescues us from idealism. Thus, we have looked at some as yet undiscovered type of matter as the ground, mathematics and natural laws as the ground and consciousness as the ground. The foregoing paragraphs suggest there may be some essence or quintessence that grounds things. And going forward we will look at even more mysterian solutions for the question of what may constitute the ultimate substrate, such as God being the substrate. Well, you see the problem here. The substrate contenders all seem so different! A material thing, or just a set of abstract rules or something supernatural, or even just a deeper understanding of the meaning of relation — the very thing that drives us to seek a substrate in the first place.

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