Original scientific paper
What does the »Immanence of the Forms« in Aristotle mean?
Thomas Buchheim
Abstract
»Immanence of the forms« – the precise meaning of this very famous self-characterization of Aristotelian philosophy remained almost unexplored until recently. This article shows that the immanence means neither being contained, nor inherency, nor being spatially embraced, nor just and only inseparability from matter. Moreover, what is at stake is a special case of such inseparability, so that the Form – as something conceptually separated – nevertheless provides a full definition of the substantial object having that form. This account is justified – as Michael Frede and Robert Heinaman have proved in their analysis of Metaph. VII 11 – on the basis of the causal role that the form in these cases has to play for the substantial object. It is also clear that only living forms can be immanent in this sense, not the mathematical forms or the forms of the artificial. Immanent forms are therefore for Aristotle exclusively souls of material living beings. The immanence of a form can be described – also according to the paradigm from the De anima – as the living activity of the materially existing body.
Keywords
Aristotle’s Metaphysics; form and its causal relevance; substance; soul as activity; definition of material beings; living things
Hrčak ID:
318
URI
Publication date:
10.6.2002.
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