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On Some of Aristotle’s First Thoughts About Substances (With Reference and Additions
from Russell Dancy’s paper: On Some of Aristotle’s Second Thoughts About Substances).
It will be the aim of this paper, to critically analyze and summarize Dancy’s
text on Aristotle’s conception of the idea of Substances. For the purpose of capturing
the intention behind the text, one can look at Dancy as being concerned, primarily,
with one or two overbearing questions – from which – smaller enquiries are to
emerge. In this case, the primary concern, reveals itself to be with Aristotle’s notion
of substance and realities. Eventually, this question will be streamlined into the form
of how Aristotle conceives subjects as possessing an independent claim to reality
and finally, what is Aristotle’s means of identifying a true subject.
Dancy begins his text with an explanation of how Aristotle possibly evolved
his formulation of reality and substance, as a reply to Platonic theory – and how
large parts of it had its origins in argument against the same. His intentions,
however, are to keep banter pertaining to Platonic theory in the background and
directly confronting the question (and how Aristotle answers it) “What are
substances” in the fore. The idea of substance and reality for Aristotle has
undergone some evolution – changes and adaptations have been made – and these
become evident when one compares the version found in Organon – which contains
no reference to matter ‐ and as found in the Metaphysics1 – where it has gone
suitable alteration to accommodate that same concept. Dancy works under the
assumption that the reason why there is no mention of matter in the Organon –
when in his view, there very will should be, is because the notion was simply not
available to Aristotle.i According to the former, substances are equated with
subjects, of which other things are predicated – these have the strongest claim to an
independent reality2. However, once the idea of matter is introduced, the same
notion begins to look unwieldy. As mentioned earlier, Dancy engages himself with
the same notion of substance, are subjects upon which things are predicated as
possessing the strongest claim to an independent reality.
The next step for Dancy then naturally becomes to ask the question, what was
in Aristotle, the legitimate manner to identify a true subject. Aristotle’s conception
of a subject was not as a grammatical subject ii. The sense in which he used it,
involved – to some extent – an implied feel. In the sentence “The pale thing is a stick”
– ‘Stick’ provides the subject – however, in the statement ‘The educated thing is pale’
does not provide a true subject – as that is a man. However, Dancy feels that there is
no need to overcomplicate matters and a simple reason for why Aristotle’s idea of a
true subject does not refer to a grammatical subject can be found in the fact that
they are not words, but things signified by words‐things signified by the
1 Metaphysics Zeta θ
It is also worth noting that this is a tool that is critical in it’s role as a rejection of Platonic theory.
2
grammatical subjects of straightforward predications. That is to say, true subjects
are the grammatical subjects of straightforward predications.iii
Aristotle’s concern however, is neither with words nor with semantics – but
instead with “things that are” – and this notion gives as much importance to
predicates as it does to the subjects involved. Dancy here delves into the categories,
in order to comprehend better, Aristotle’s method, by analyzing Homonyms,
Synonyms and Paronyms3.iv The reason he does this is stated by Dancy, as follows:
This sort of phenomenon, especially as it turns up among paronyms, will occupy us later; the
point for now is that Aristotle may well want to classify the things expressions signify, but still
give the expressions that signify them a role, sometimes an essential one, in classifying them. And
I think the situation is about the same with the distinctions we are trying to draw among subjects
and predicates: the fact that Aristotle wants to classify the "things that are," which are signified
by the subjects and predicates of simple sentences, does not make it irrelevant to look at the
sentences, their grammatical subjects, and their grammatical predicates.
In order to better understand what is implied by Aristotle’s notions of Substance, he
refers to the source that first states that substances and independent realities are
actually subjects. This is in Categories 5 – and the definition found implies a number
of things – but most notably the distinction that is found between something that is
said of a subject and that something, which is in a subject. According to the
definition in Categories 5 – a substance is something that is neither said of any
subject nor in any subject – and not every subject is a substance. The section that
follows at this juncture is an elaborate explanation of the same definition. Dancy
spends a considerable amount of time and energy on it, for it eventually delivers
some insight into sorting ‘things that are’. v
The general requirement, as per the definition, for qualification of something being a
substance, is quite simply that it not be in any subject. Categories 2 contains the
demarcation of being said of a subject and being in a subject. It involves things that
are being separated into four groups: some things are said of a subject, but not said
of any; some are both; and some are neither. With this quarter part separation one
reaches a clearer idea of what are primary substances: those that are neither – and
secondary substances are said of them, but in nothing. It becomes more than evident
at this point that a great deal of clarification is required in terms of distinctions
between various concepts – especially the difference between ‘being said of’ and
‘being in’ – however in Dancy’s view, Aristotle has left this need unattended to and
he spends the next few sections attempting to shed light upon what it means to “be
in” a subject. Dancy does this by highlighting various features of the categories that
may, with some analysis, serve as features or definitions of the aforementioned.
The first of these being Inseparability as the mark of being in – which involves the
3 Paronyms are [things] that derive the word by which they are called from something, differing in
syntactic form from it; for example, the literate [person derives] from literacy, the courageous from
courage.
idea that a subject denotes that which belongs in something not as a part but (as)
incapable of being apart from that in which it is. Dancy claims this to be a circular
argument and he attempts to shift the focus solely on the inability of that to exist
apart from that within which it is. However, the problem hasn’t been solved, as it
does not shed any light on the distinction between being in and being said of. The
reason this emerges as a point of contention, is because Aristotle claims that
everything else is either said of or in primary substances that in the absence of primary
substances there would be nothing at all. In Dancy’s view, where he adds Owens’s
agreement, when Aristotle concludes this, he is motivated by something that is
objectionable to a Platonist. What the Platonist finds objectionable is not the idea
that without Primary substances, there would be nothing – but instead the thesis
that primary substances are things such that everything else is either said of them
or in them. In the concluding parts of this section, Dancy commits himself to the
idea that, for the moment at least, the concept of ‘being in’ as a heuristic and
classificatory device – “an indication of the sort of thing Aristotle means”.
Dancy now aims to provide an alternative account of being in. He asks the reader to
analyze of Aristotle’s examples, flowing from the idea that man is said of particular
men. “Socrates is a man” and “Callias is a man.” – Knowledge and Literacy are in men
‐ or are predicated to their souls – however these statements cannot clearly be
equated with “Socrates is Knowledge” or “Callias is Literacy”. However, statements
of the form “Callias is Literate” and “Socrates knows something” – and these
examples, according to Dancy, clearly conform with the idea of straightforward
predication (as found in the analytics). His alternative thesis involves the idea that
the predicate of any simple sentence is something that is said of its subject. What is
in the subject is the abstraction associated with that predicate. In the sentence,
“Socrates is literate”, what is meant by ‘Literate’ is said of Socrates. What one can
also say is that the predicable of Socrates is said in that sentence. “Literacy is the
abstraction or property correlated with the predicate “literate”; it is in Socrates if it
is true that Socrates is literate. Dancy proceeds in this section, with the feeling that
his formulation involves the same difficulties Aristotle faced – and hopes to gain
better insight into the same. He claims that each category is a classificatory tree –
the lower members are subjects of which the higher ones are said – and as
mentioned before – the category of substance is the only tree, which has
nothing/neither – and primary substances are the lowest members of the tree.
Secondary substances are said of them.
It is useful at this juncture to briefly mention the conventional understanding of this
system. Dancy here mentions, Ackrill’s, which claims that one thing cannot be said of
another unless both are in the same category, so that secondary substances are said
of primary ones. Dancy, however, is suggesting that many non‐substances beyond
differentiac are said of a subject. He concludes his section with the idea that the
confusion that arises from predicates being equated with a subject arise from
misconstruing what are really paronyms.
This brings the reader to the concluding section of Dancy’s paper, which involves a
final and total elaboration on the Category of Substance. He understands Substances
to never be in things what is in a thing is the abstraction correlated with the
predicate of a simple sentence that has that thing for its object and in most cases,
but not without exception, that abstraction will be the root of a list of paronyms, one
of which will be predicable signified by the predicate in that sentence – and as
mentioned before Secondary substances are the predicables represented by the
predicates of simple sentences that may be used to answer simple questions asked
pertaining to primary substances like “what is that?”
What is different and other from substance show a duality that allows abstraction as
well as predictability that is marked by paronymy. That is to say, from one stand
point, the category of quality is a classification of abstractions such as ‘whiteness,
literacy and justice’ and from another, it is a classification of a number of things a
subject might be: white, literate, just. This being the difference between qualities
and qualia. What truly separates this category then, is that within it, there are no
abstractions; no substance is in a subject; there is no root‐paronym distinction in
that category; the predicable in “Socrates is a man” is not derivative, paronymously
or from any abstraction. That is to said: Socrates is a man, though he is not a man
because he has in him what makes things men.
i Organon – On Aristotle’s Second Thoughts About Substances – R.Dancy
ii
Posterior Analytics A22 83a4‐7
iii
“II “Subjects” and Sentences – On Aristotle’s First Thoughts About Substances ‐ R.Dancy
iv
Categories I : Homonyms are things that share a name under different definitions (I .I ai ‐2); synonyms share a name
under the same definition (ia6‐7; compare 5. 3b7‐8).5
v
“III Being In and Being Said Of” – On Aristotle’s First Thoughts About Substances – R.Dancy
Sahil Warsi
M.A Philosophy (I)