Stoic unformed substance and old academic ontology - UCL Discovery

generic intelligible matter which underlies all intelligible change without itself being a
particular, and there is no hint that it is a particular, then it seems likely that there
will be a parallel in the sensible world.
There are, thus, two ways to get to prime matter in Aristotle. The first is simply
through the positive evidence and realising that his system of elemental
transmutation just does not make much sense without it. The second is to see the
use he makes of intelligible matter and seeing that as a reasonable parallel to the
sensible world.
Aristotle himself says of prime matter that it has a good claim to being called
substance, good but not good enough. There is also the consistent and strong
suggestion throughout his work that if it does exist it does not do so separately.
Metaphysics 1042b9-11 clearly tells us that matter exists as substratum, and that
this is commonly recognized, but that this is to be understood as potentiality. It is
because of this potential nature that he rejects it as substance here. He informs us
that in the search for substance we must look for what is the matter in actuality of
sensible things. The account that Aristotle gives at De Generatione et Corruptione
329a23ff finalises the understanding of prime matter in an unambiguous and
common sense way: “Our own doctrine is that although there is a matter of the
perceptible bodies (a matter out of which the so-called elements come-to-be), it has
no separate existence, but is always bound up with a contrariety. 290 ” Here Aristotle
explains prime matter in a manner that strongly predicts the Stoic notion. We can
answer Cohen‟s question; “Why accuse Aristotle of holding to a bare stuff if he insists
that the stuff is always clothed? 291 ” by saying that we “accuse” Aristotle of belief in
prime matter because that is precisely what he says. Solmsen 292 responded to the
similar accusation by King, that it is unreasonable to believe Aristotle believed in
prime matter because it never exists qua prime matter, in a similar way: that to
believe in prime matter is not the same as believing it ever exists separately as
prime matter. Sandbach argued later 293 that there was no influence of Aristotle on
the Stoics. This claim, too strong to have complete credibility, was looked at in the
introduction. It is unlikely that the Stoics were completely ignorant of Aristotle‟s
290 Trans. Joachim. H.H.
291 Cohen 1984. pg 176.
292 Solmsen 1958, pg. 243.
293 Sandbach 1985.
105 Stoic Unformed Substance and Old Academic Ontology