43. Matter, Form, and Privation: Distinguishing Three Principles of Change
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Lecture Notes
Main Topics #
The Three Principles of Change #
Aristotle identifies three necessary principles for understanding becoming:
- Matter (ὕλη): The underlying substrate; substance in potency; that which is capable of receiving form
- Form (μορφή): The actualizing principle; what makes matter actual and perfect; an act
- Privation (στέρησις): The lack or absence of form; non-being with respect to form; what precedes actualization
Plato recognizes three principles but conflates matter with privation, using “the large and the small” rather than properly distinguishing matter from lack of form.
Why Plato’s Distinction Fails #
When thinking of matter as distinct from form, one naturally conceives of matter as formless. This leads to identifying matter with its formlessness, confusing the subject (matter) with the privation (lack of form). This confusion has profound consequences for understanding evil and the goodness of being.
The Common Ground: Form as Godlike, Good, and Desirable #
Despite their disagreement, Aristotle and Plato share a common understanding of form:
- Godlike: Because form is an act, and God is pure act
- Good: Because form is the perfection and completion of things; perfection is the good of a thing
- Desirable: Because perfection, being good, is naturally desired
This shared understanding becomes the basis for Aristotle’s argument that matter and privation must be distinct.
Key Arguments #
The Argument from Opposed Relations to Form #
Premise 1: Form is the perfection of matter (matter desires form as its fulfillment and end).
Premise 2: Form is the destruction or elimination of privation (privation, if it could desire, would desire its own elimination).
Conclusion: Since the same thing cannot be both perfected and destroyed by form, matter and privation cannot be the same thing.
The Reductio: If privation desired form, it would be desiring its own destruction—an absurdity. But matter desiring form desires its own perfection. Therefore, they are fundamentally different.
The Argument from Nature (Per Se) vs. Accident (Per Accidens) #
Distinction 1: Nature of Non-Being
- Matter happens to lack form (per accidens): Matter can lack a particular form, but this is not the nature of matter as such
- Privation is, by its very nature, the non-being of form (per se): Privation as such is the absence of what it is capable of having
Distinction 2: Relationship to Substance
- Matter is near to being a substance; it is substance in potency
- Privation is in no way a substance; it cannot exist independently
Example: To be hard happens to butter (the butter is capable of being hard). But to be hard is not the nature of softness—softness as such cannot be hard. Similarly, to lack knowledge happens to the mind (the mind is capable of knowing). But ignorance as such is not capable of knowing.
The Fallacy of the Accidental in Plato’s Error #
When ignorance necessarily precedes knowledge (as it must), one is tempted to identify ignorance with the mind’s nature. This is the fallacy of the accidental: confusing what necessarily precedes something with its essential nature. The wise are especially prone to this fallacy when something necessarily accompanies another.
Important Definitions #
Privation (στέρησις / Privatio) #
Definition: The non-being of something that a subject is able to have and naturally should have.
Essential Characteristics:
- It is a non-being, not a positive being
- It requires a subject capable of possessing what is lacking
- It is distinct from absolute non-being (e.g., a chair is not blind, but blindness is a privation in a creature capable of sight)
- It always presupposes a substance as its subject
Examples from Lecture: Blindness (in a seeing creature), ignorance (in a mind capable of knowledge), hardness lacking from soft butter
Per Se (As Such) vs. Per Accidens (By Happening) #
- Per se: What belongs to something through its very nature; what something is by virtue of being what it is
- Per accidens: What belongs to something but is not essential to its nature; what merely happens to be the case
Application: Matter happens to lack form (per accidens), but privation is, as such, the lack of form (per se).
Examples & Illustrations #
The Butter Example #
Soft butter placed in a refrigerator becomes hard. One can say either “the soft becomes hard” or “the butter becomes hard.”
- One thing in number (the butter), yet the ability of butter to be hard is not the same as the ability of softness to be hard
- Softness, as such, cannot be hard; butter, as such, can be
- To confuse them is to commit the fallacy of the accidental
The Mind and Ignorance #
- Before learning, the mind is necessarily ignorant
- But the mind learns through its ability to know, not through its ignorance
- Ignorance is not the cause of learning; it merely precedes it
- The mind is “near to knowing” (capable of knowledge); ignorance is in no way near to knowing
- Conclusion: mind and ignorance cannot be the same thing
The Ugly and the Beautiful #
- The ugly (as a body) can desire to be beautiful because beauty is a perfection of the body
- But ugliness, as such, cannot desire beauty because beauty would be its elimination, not its perfection
- We speak of “the ugly wanting beauty,” but this is the body (which can be perfected), not ugliness itself
The Sick and the Healthy #
- The sick (as a body) desire health because health is the perfection of the body
- But sickness, as such, cannot desire health; health is its destruction
- Common speech: “the sick want to be healthy” refers to the body, not to sickness itself
The Birthday Card Paradox #
Berquist recounts a childhood memory of birthday cards with increasingly smaller pictures of postmen delivering cards. The analogy illustrates the infinite regress problem: if every elementary particle consisted of all other elementary particles, you would get infinitely smaller particles ad infinitum. Yet experimentally, particles have definite sizes and masses.
Questions Addressed #
How can matter and privation be distinguished if both precede form? #
Answer: By comparing both to form. Matter is perfected by form (matter desires form as its fulfillment); privation is destroyed by form (privation cannot desire its own elimination). What is perfected and what is destroyed cannot be the same. Therefore, they must be distinct.
Why does Plato confuse matter with privation? #
Answer: When trying to understand matter as distinct from form, one naturally thinks of matter as formless. This leads to identifying matter with its formlessness—confusing the subject (matter) with the privation (lack of form). The confusion arises because one thinks of matter precisely as the formless thing, rather than as something capable of form.
If the mind is ignorant before it learns, isn’t ignorance part of the mind’s nature? #
Answer: No. Ignorance happens to the mind (per accidens), but it is not of the mind’s nature (per se). The mind is capable of knowledge; ignorance is the non-being of knowledge. Before learning, ignorance is necessarily present, but learning occurs through the mind’s ability, not through ignorance. This is a case of the fallacy of the accidental.
Why is this distinction important for theology and natural philosophy? #
Answer: Understanding matter as good (capable of form) rather than bad (identified with privation) is crucial for understanding creation, evil as privation rather than a positive being, and the goodness of creation itself. This also prevents errors like Manichaeism, which treated matter as inherently evil.
Notable Quotes #
“Form is something godlike, good, and desirable.” — Aristotle (as expounded by Berquist)
“Every elementary particle consists of all other elementary particles.” — Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (quoted as a “well-known formula” among theoretical physicists studying elementary particles)
“[Heisenberg:] It would, in fact, scarcely be possible to find any good definition which could distinguish an elementary particle from a compound system.” — Werner Heisenberg, cited in lecture
“One of these is non-being by happening, the matter, but the lack to itself, or the lack as such.” — Aristotle, Metaphysics Book I (as read and interpreted in class)