Content

The content of the course changes from year to year. In academic year 2024-2025 the topic will be:

Hylomorphism – the theory that every physical object is composed of structurable “matter” (“hyle”) and structuring “form” (“morphe”) – has a 2500-year history from its Aristotelian beginnings to today’s metaphysics. This year's Research Seminar will look at developments in hylomorphic theory from the ancient world (first semester) through the later Middle Ages (second semester). Hylomorphism was first and foremost a metaphysical theory on which the most basic type of matter ("prime matter") underlies episodes of substantial change, i.e. the coming to be and passing away of primary substances (through the coming and going of "substantial form"). Behind hylomorphism lies Aristotle's foundational distinction between potency and actuality: in broad strokes, the prime matter is potency that is structured by the actualizing substantial form. Moreover, hylomorphism was put to use in describing the way accidents inhere in their subject, in theory of cognition, in logic, in ethics, even in theology. Hylomorphism as a theory gets tested and stretched and utilized from soon after Aristotle proposed it in scattered and cryptic remarks right through to the end of medieval scholasticism in the early seventeenth century.

During the first semester the course will look at hylomorphism in the ancient world, beginning with Aristotle's suggestions in esp. The Physics and On Generation and Corruption – where we will also be looking at the debate about whether Aristotle really had a conception of prime matter – and continuing with Alexander of Aphrodisias' reinterpretation and systematisation of the doctrine. After that we turn to the Platonic tradition, looking at Plotinus' criticism of hylomorphism and the hylomorphic interpretation of Platonic physics by later commentators, such as Proclus and Simplicius. These later Platonists engaged in lively debates about the ontological status of the forms of physical bodies, on the one hand, and on the material substrate, on the other, more specifically on the metaphysical analysis of such notions as extension, bulk, and quantity. Plotinus, who was and still is considered as the founding father of Neoplatonism, actually held a view that deviated from that of later Platonists, in that he rejected Aristotle's hylomorphism as an analysis of physical bodies. From Porphyry onwards, however, some form of hylomorphism was part and parcel of the Platonic philosophy of nature.

In the second semester, after looking at aspects of the Arabic discussion of hylomorphism, especially in Averroes (e.g. his De substantia orbis), we'll turn to the thirteenth- to sixteenth-century university discussion of various hylomorphic themes. These themes might include the discussion of the potentiality (and the actuality) of prime matter; the discussion of the Stoic and Augustinian notion of "seminal reasons", form-like seeds present in prime matter that secondary agents coax into their fullness; the discussion of "universal hylomorphism", on which even spiritual beings like angels and the human soul have a hylomorphic composition involving a special sort of "spiritual matter"; the discussion over whether prime matter must be intrinsically extended according to so-called indeterminate dimensions. Among the authors we may read are: Thomas Aquinas, Peter John Olivi, Giles of Rome, John Duns Scotus, William Ockham, Francesco Suarez.

Course material

The course material includes:

• primary source texts;
• secondary literature (articles, book chapters, and monographs on the texts that are discussed).

A detailed list of primary and secondary literature will be communicated to the students in the first weeks of the semester.

These texts will be made available to the students, e.g., by being put on reserve in the library or through Toledo.

Format: more information

Students must:

• read in advance the texts and secondary literature to be discussed in class;
• be present in class and participate in discussion there;
• read extra secondary literature while preparing their own paper(s);
• present in the seminar the research they are doing that will lead to their written paper(s), including discussion of controversial passages or arguments in the text as well as relevant secondary literature.

Attendance is required for this course. A student who is repeatedly and without proper reason (illness, emergency) absent can be denied further access to class by the teacher(s) of the course.