SEPARATENESS AND INDIVIDUALITY IN ARISTOTLE:

PART ONE

By David Braine

My design in this article is both philosophical and exegetical. To consider first the
exegetical content: I aim in the first place to establish what Aristotle meant by the term choriston or
“separate” (Sections I-III), reserving to the end (Section VI.4) discussion of Harold Cherniss'
reasons for taking an opposite view. In Section IV, I work out some detailed consequences of my
view, in particular for the sense in which things can be “in” substances and not exist “separately
from” or “apart from” them (IV.2, 3), relating these consequences to certain recent controversies.
This brings me to show at the same time (IV.3) how Aristotle flouts the conventional modern
distinction between class-membership and class-inclusion (though he continues to make a firm
distinction between individuals and universals), and does this without any contradiction resulting.
Secondly, having taken the view that “is separate” in Aristotle can be regarded as meaning “is an
individual” or “is an independent basic thing” in a sense which I explain, I examine and compare
the other notions of individual and particular to be found in Aristotle's writings (Section V).
Thirdly, in a final section (Section VI), I explain what appears to me, as a result of these studies of
the notions of “separate thing,” “individual,” and “particular” as found in Aristotle, to be the
relation of the thought of Aristotle to that of Plato, and describe the apparently very different course
of development followed by the thought of each, in the course of this having to give some account
(VI.3, 4) of what is going on in Metaphysics, Z.
I give a detailed account of how Aristotle uses a number of terms besides the term
choriston, including particularly the following terms (for which I give references in lieu of an
index): ta kath 'hecasta (“particulars”), treated in IV.3 and V.2; tode ti (“individual” or “ostensible
thing”), treated in V.2 and VI.4, and referred to in VI.1; atomon (“indivisible”), together with the
expression “numerically one,” discussed in V.2 and V.4; eidos (“form” or “species”), discussed in
IV.3, VI.1, and VI.2; kath 'hauto (“of itself” or, in Latin, per se, in one of the uses of this technical
term, the one in which Ross translates it “self-subsistent”), discussed in VI.3; and ousia (“thing,”
“nature” or “substance”), discussed briefly in V.2, VI.1, and VI.4, and also in Philosophical
Introduction.
I will now indicate the philosophical content of the article: this lies almost wholly in its
Philosophical Introduction and in Section V. In the Philosophical Introduction, my aim is to show
the significance of Aristotle's taking “separateness,” a concept not derived from logic or
epistemology, as a criterion of substancehood, a move which differentiates him from both Plato
(q.v., Section VI.1) and Bertrand Russell. In order to do this, I draw attention to elements in
Aristotle's views on which I do not elaborate later, and put forward as concisely as possible
considerations which suggest to me that the approach he offers to what he calls the problem of
substance is worthy of respect and careful development. My general view is that Aristotle has ideas
about what sorts of relation exist between the different “logical types” or “widest sorts” of things,
of the ways in which some may be more fundamental than others, of how these questions should be
approached, and of what enquiry they belong to; that his views on these questions constitute his
views on what he calls the problem of substance; and that although his actual views may be crudely
stated—for instance, the term “separate” is amongst the crudest of philosophical tools—and little
developed, they embody a starting point or approach not represented explicitly in modern authors,
with some advantages over its rivals, forming (one might say) a missing contribution to
contemporary discussion.
One particular suggestion which I make is that this approach might provide a rationale for
some otherwise illicit moves made by recent defenders of physicalism. However, although the
Editor’s note: Internal references have not all been verified, and some notes refer to sections no longer included. All
parentheticals are Braine’s, unless identified as an editor’s note.
philosophical ideas I present as Aristotle's, or as intimately related to his, need development, my
aim is not here to provide that development; that would be foreign to an article said to be about
Aristotle.
Then, in Section V, I discuss the philosophical relation of various notions of “individual”
and “particular” (V.2), and raise the question of how, if these notions are ones belonging to logic, it
can be possible for certain non-logical criteria to provide either necessary or sufficient conditions of
their application, and of how, conversely, if either these notions or those of “substance” and
“ultimate constituent of the world” are non-logical ones, logical criteria can be relevant to their
application (V.3); in the course of my discussion of this question, I compare Aristotle's ideas with
certain more recent ones, including some expressed by Mr. Strawson in his book Individuals. In the
Appended Note to Section V, I have made some observations about how the notion of "particular"
might be defined in terms solely of the concepts of logic.
It is fair to say that all the assumptions and prejudices about “separate existence” and “being
particular” which are to be found in Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, are to be found in Aristotle, and
he treats them as expansively and as well or better than they do. Since I think the prejudices both
common today and reasonable, it seemed worthwhile to give a careful enumeration of them as they
are represented in Aristotle: this I have attempted in V.3.
I will indicate the importance of understanding the term “separate” for understanding
Aristotle in two ways, firstly by enumerating the main Aristotelian theses whose statement involves
the use of the term, and secondly by referring to a certain current controversy. These theses whose
sense depends on the meaning of the term “separate” can be conveniently presented under four
heads.
First, the term “separate” is the key one in what Aristotle says about the sciences and their
objects. His attack on the Ideas consists in denying that the forms exist as separate things. The
views of mathematics which he rejects are the ones which make its objects actually separate.
Second, the term encapsulates what he thinks is special in his views about the explanation
of natural things. The elements or matter of natural substances are, he says, not separate; hence, it is
an error to seek to explain things chiefly in terms of their elements (for the nature of what is not
separate depends on that of what is separate). In particular, in natural things, the form or nature is
not present as an element but as an arch or “principle” and so need not be able to exist separately.
Third, the question concerning nous or mind is whether it can exist separately; about the
other kinds of soul and the other mental faculties, it is certain that they cannot.
And fourth, Aristotle speaks of separateness as a mark of substance-hood, and the things in
the non-substance categories are, he says, not separate.
The centrality and importance of these theses will be apparent without elaboration. In
Sections I-III, I hope to make their meaning clear.
A certain current controversy is also affected by the view one takes as to the meaning of
separateness. This is the controversy as to whether Aristotle takes the most particular things in the
non-substance categories to be things which, like this piece of chalk's being white and Caesar's
death correspond to the values of propositional functions or whether he takes them to be things
which, like white and death, correspond to the functions themselves. The design of Section IV.1 is
to show how my interpretation of “separate” rules out certain arguments for the first view, namely
ones appealing to Aristotle's thinking that non-substances do not exist separately from the
substances they are in and that they are unlike substances in lacking separate existence. In
developing my interpretation of “separate,” I find (IV.2, 3) I have to give a more elaborate
explanation of certain passages to which Professor Ackrill appeals, in support of the first view, than
Professor Owen, holding the second view, offers. To rule out certain arguments for the first view is
not to establish the second, but in this article I take the second view, following Owen, mentioning
just one additional argument in favor of it. My intention is to treat this question more fully in a
second article entitled “The priority of substance in Aristotle: some difficulties”; the two articles
began as one.

Philosophical Introduction

1. A theory of types or system of ontology might belong to logic in two ways. It might belong
in the sense that what a type is should be explained in terms of logical notions; or, secondly, it
might belong to logic in the further sense that the relations between types should be explained using
the concepts of logic. Russell supposed it to belong in both these ways, and in addition considered
there to be a logical criterion of being more fundamental in type. However these assumptions seem
in no way necessary, and I believe it important, whether in the case of the notion of type or in those
of somewhat parallel notions, such as subject-matter, category, universe of discourse, or “widest
sort,” not to make them; in each case the notion (e.g., of “category”) may be explained in logical
terms—I leave it open, in what terms—but then the question of the nature of the relations between
the types or “categories” and the question of the ways in which some may be more fundamental
than others lie open and demand inquiry.
On these two questions Aristotle takes up a stance precisely opposite to that of Russell.
What is parallel in Aristotle to being of the same logical type is, I believe (and plan to elaborate
elsewhere), existing and having a nature or definition in the same sense. However, where Russell
allows only the single relation of class-membership, a relation which can be asserted to obtain in
connection with subject-matters both concrete and “abstract,” Aristotle has also the relation “is
matter to” which is not in that way a logical notion—I mean, not a notion carrying no reference to
one kind of subject-matter rather than another. Further, whereas Aristotle is willing to apply the
terms genus, differentia, and species, and to distinguish essential from accidental properties (i.e.,
ones external to the definition, even if demonstrable) in connection with things in any category, he
does not at all envisage tertiary categories, e.g., of quality or quantity, related to the non-substance
categories he enumerates in the way the latter are related to substance. The Categories, unlike the
Analytics, is not a topic-neutral study, and Aristotle has no concern that the relations between the
categories should be logical ones, fit for a topic-neutral study. Likewise the properties and notions
which provide criteria of being fundamental in type need not belong to a topic-neutral study: in
particular, “separateness” does not.

2. Because Aristotle brings considerations which are not logical—that is, which do not arise
from the study of principles which apply in discussing subject-matters as radically diverse as
numbers and physical things—to bear on the question of what things are of the most fundamental
kind, i.e., “substances,” he is able, more than those who rely only on the resources of the various
modern logicians’ theories of types, to limit the variety of things in the fundamental type. This is
important because, if all types must be related somehow and if one can only explain these relations
in terms of class-membership or attribution, one cannot avoid having but one fundamental type, in
which one will have a proper desire to include anything which one would call both an individual
and a particular; then, one will be liable to find in one's fundamental type an extraordinary
assortment of particulars, including people, arms, molecules, electrons, pains, and after-images.
Most notably, Aristotle is able to some extent to deal with the problem of the relations of parts and
wholes. This is useful because there are good reasons in some cases for differentiating in logical
type parts and wholes. Thus the parts of stones may be sensibly said to have the same colors as the
stones, but the bodily parts of living things do not have the same intentions, or do the same actions
(unless in an equivocal, if related sense of “do”), let alone have the same beliefs as the living things
under consideration and, in fact, they may scarcely sensibly be said to have intentions or beliefs. It
is worth noting in addition that this impedes the analysis of propositions about wholes into
propositions about parts and their relations and therefore tells against the idea that facts about parts
are more fundamental than facts about wholes, and suggests that sometimes wholes may be more
fundamental in logical type. In whatever way one regards these arguments, it is clear that Aristotle
has a view that does differentiate wholes from parts in their mode of definition or “logical type,”
and does in some cases make the whole more fundamental, because, (a) its nature is prior in
definition (a necessary condition) and (b) the parts cannot, without a change of nature, exist
separately from the whole (a sufficient condition).
What Aristotle has, in effect, allowed is the existence of particulars not in the fundamental
logical type. A second case where this would be useful to do is, for example, that of after-images;
these are clearly particulars, but appear to be of different logical type from any bodily things. The
logical type and nature of after-images appears to be that they are objects of sight in a certain use of
the verb “to see”; that is, after-images form part of the range of significance of the verb “to see” in
a certain use, and their nature is to be understood from understanding the sense of propositions in
which “see” is used in this way and how this sense contrasts with that of propositions in which
“see” is used in other ways—I mean, in part, “after-image” is not to be assigned a meaning by
itself, but only in such contexts as “see an after-image.” To explain the relation of logical types in
this case, one needs to utilize a concept foreign to logic, namely that of sight.
I mention this because I believe it to be a disadvantage, not a virtue, in Russell's views of
l9l8 that he has to treat things whose esse is percipi, images of various kinds, “phantoms” and
hallucinations as individuals and ultimate constituents of the world, as well as particulars—and no
less a disadvantage if this is merely a consequence of the fact that for him every particular is a
sense-datum whose esse is percipi.
There are a host of other cases where it seems impossible to specify the relation of two
ultimate sorts of thing except in terms foreign to logic.

3. The Russellian conception seems to have little to commend it, except simplicity. In the first
place, propositions concerning the relations of things of different ultimate sorts or logical types will
commonly refer to logical types of whose existence logic, as the study of principles applying in any
subject-matter, takes no cognizance. Thus, logic may take cognizance of the natural numbers, but it
takes none of the colors, for we count collections of things of any kind, concrete or abstract, but
assign colors only to colored things.
In the second place, as indicated above, it seems necessary to use non-logical concepts to
specify the relations between certain logical types of thing. Certainly, the concept of class-
membership is inadequate to the task. It seems otiose to identify even all formal relations—ones
which could be expressed by a species of copula—with class-membership; I mean such relations as
those between a point and a line, an event and the time at which it occurs, a collection of things and
the number of its members, a colored thing and its color, or an object as existing at a time and an
object as existing for a period. In particular, it appears clear that an object cannot be identified with
the set of those values of propositional functions which have it as argument and are true. Hence
there are at least two types of particular, particular objects and particular facts (the latter including,
we may take it, “unit-properties,” things like events, and actions) which cannot be reduced to each
other, and which are not related as member to class—the opposite view has arisen partly from
confusing facts or (unit-) properties with Berkeleian ideas or Humean impressions at the same time
as making objects into sets of these ideas or impressions.
In the third place, concepts like “substance,” “primary existent,” “ultimate constituent of the
world” and “(logical) fiction” do not appear to be logical or epistemological ones. I mean: “Classes
are logical fictions” is presumably meant to go beyond the proposition of logical theory “In a
certain sense of ‘define,’ classes are definable in terms of propositional functions”; similarly,
“Material objects are not ultimate constituents of the world” was surely not meant to be merely
repetitious of “Material objects are not immediately experienced.” Hence, not only does discussion
of which things are most fundamental in type not belong to logic or epistemology, but also any
employment of logical or epistemological criteria as necessary or sufficient conditions of being of a
fundamental kind need discussion. It is no good proceeding as Russell does by explaining
“individual” in merely logical terms, and then allowing oneself to be moved by non-logical
considerations in deciding what to call an individual and giving “individual” some connotations
foreign to logic, without commenting on this. Russell would agree that these concepts, ultimate
constituent, “fiction,” etc., belong to what he calls metaphysics, but never offers any account of
why it is legitimate to offer logical criteria as necessary or sufficient conditions of the possession of
a metaphysical property, or, on the other hand, non-logical criteria (e.g., being in only one place at
a time) as necessary and sufficient conditions of having the supposedly logical property of being a
universal. The legitimacy of these things I discuss below, partly in this introduction, and partly in
Section V.3.
The Russellian conception arose mainly as a result of dwelling predominantly on those
subjects or theories which are such as to be applied in subject-matters as diverse as numbers and
(say) sheep. Where these theories include mention of definite objects, such as numbers, we find that
in each application of the theory these objects have the same relation (so far as relations between
logical types are concerned) to the things to which the theory is applied in a parallel way. Thus it
was just those cases in which type relationships do come within the purview of a subject-matter
independent study that Russell dwelt on and in the first place fashioned his theories to
accommodate.1
The Russellian conception arose, secondarily, because so many formal relations can be
treated as having the same logical properties as the membership relation.

4. Aristotle's view about what study these questions belong to underwent a development—the
questions, that is, what ultimate sorts or types of thing there are, what relations exist between them,
and which are more fundamental than others.
His early view seems to have been that remarks on these questions did not belong to
science, but merely arose in the explaining of certain dialectical arts (as I hope to explain in more
detail in a later article). From the start he associated existence with logical subjecthood (a view I
believe philosophically correct but from which he may later have diverged, coming to associate it
rather with being able to be truly predicated), and it seems to be because of this that he gave the
title “substance” (ousia, a verbal noun derived from the verb “to be”) to the things which were not
attributes but only subjects. The doctrine that substance is prior in nature, traceable in the
Categories, could belong to no science satisfying the canons the Posterior Analytics I layed down.
If asked, Aristotle could only have said that these questions were dialectical or logical (“logical”

1 Strictly speaking the subject-matter independent study should here take cognizance not of the relation of a type to a
type, but of a type (e.g., that of the natural numbers) to a formal concept (such as “set,” or “member of a set”) covering
objects of different logical types. This is because the things falling under such formal concepts do not form a totality,
i.e., cannot be quantified over all at once, and cannot be considered to fall under or constitute a single type, but must be
considered to fall under or constitute many types. In applying a theory with application to many subject-matters, we
apply it to one subject-matter at a time, in the present example either to one totality of sets at a time or to one totality of
members of sets at a time. If there existed a union of all such totalities, there would not be necessarily many subject-
matters, but [conceivably there could be regarded as being] only one, which is not the case; therefore, a formal concept
of this kind does not have a totality or type for its extension, but rather what happens is that things of different types fall
under it. Something of this point of view about logic is traceable in Principia wherever Russell takes the sentences of
logic to be typically ambiguous and omits to remark that this makes them strictly meaningless, and whenever he speaks
of hierarchies of types in the plural. However, Russell's official doctrine is that where the propositions of Principia are
meaningful (i.e., have truth-values) and are not in the formal mode of speech (perhaps with this disguised) they are
type-restricted; accordingly they will not belong to a subject-matter independent theory.
meant for him “having to do with logoi,” not “having to do with the common principles that apply
in any subject-matter”), as distinct from physical or ethical (l05b l9-29).
His late view, made possible for him by his development of the notion of focal meaning,
was that these questions belonged to the science “of first principles and explanations” (archai and
aitiai), also called “first philosophy.” At this stage, the term ousia came to have a meaning whereby
it definitely belonged to this wider study, which was later also called “metaphysics.” The difference
between “first philosophy” and logic in the restricted modern sense may be brought out by
remarking that, whereas logic has to do with principles which apply in any subject-matter, and in a
sense deals with no subject-matter (see footnote above), first philosophy in contrast would be
appropriately described as dealing with all subject-matters, taking cognizance of things peculiar to
particular subject-matters or limited groups of them—though this may not suffice to show exactly
what “first philosophy” is, since the same would be true of an epistemology which tried to describe
the relations between all the sciences or branches of knowledge.

5. What I want to insist on is the correctness of this late view of Aristotle, at least in regard to
the questions about one type's being more fundamental or basic than others, if these questions are
legitimate at all. That is, if concepts like “substance,” “ultimate constituent of the world,” primary
existent,” or “fiction” are indeed well-formed or intelligible concepts, then it seems clear that the
propositions using them will belong to something justly called a “science of first principles and
explanations”; these concepts and propositions could arise only in connection with our considering
what explains what, and what is most fundamental in explanation, raising these questions in ways
as general as possible. To do this Aristotle and we ourselves need to use the word “explain” in such
a way as to have a wider application than it has within any one study, whether logical theory,
epistemology, or natural science, while leaving it a meaning akin to the one it has in natural
science.
Being more fundamental in explanation is, as I have suggested in the last paragraph, the
only way of being prior or more fundamental which might merit being treated as a being
fundamental without qualification or (which amounts to the same) as a being more fundamental in
“being” (ousia) or “nature.” Otherwise any being more “fundamental”—unless some sort of ethical
judgment or the expression of some attitude is concerned, which would not be our concern—must
be qualified as a being more “fundamental” in definition or knowledge or in a hierarchy of sets or
in some other explicitly stated respect.
I discuss below (para.6.e) the question whether there is or can be any one kind of thing
which is “fundamental in explanation” in such a generalized or undetermined sense of explanation,
pointing out that in Aristotle's late philosophy he comes in effect to say that there is not.
What I want now to point out is that this identification of any unqualified fundamentalness
with being fundamental in explanation represents a recurrent tendency in philosophical history. It
needs elaborate argument to make out that merely because one sort of thing (e.g., bodies
discriminable by the senses) are prior in knowledge to another (e.g., molecules), they are of an
unqualifiedly more fundamental kind. The fundamentalness associated with particular ideas or
impressions has arisen not from their epistemological priority alone, but from the assumption that
they are the sole data for our thought and that the constructions we make out of them exist only in
the sense that we can make true assertions about them, so that somehow they do not exist
independently of our thought. The existence of Socrates logically depends on there being facts and
true propositions about him, but hardly consists in this; the existence of a pain or after-image seems
in contrast to consist in a certain fact, namely its being had, but again not to consist in there being
true propositions about it, which is rather a consequence of this fact and so of its existence. On the
other hand, it seems natural to say that the existence of, for instance, a number consists in there
being true propositions about it (general propositions, if the number cannot be picked out by a
description): hence it arises that in general universals or attributes seem most of all to exist
dependently on thought, in the sense that their existence consists in the possibility of certain things
being truly thought.
Our notions of what forms our thought and has “independent” existence, rather than is
formed by it, are shaped in other ways by what we consider explanatory. For instance, it is the
sense in which the motions of one billiard ball affect and explain the motions of another, over and
above the weaker, philosopher's, sense of “explain” in which the perception of the one “explains”
the perception of the other, which makes us incline to make billiard balls and not perceptions,
primary, objective, and independent. The primary reason why we must hold there to be an external
world is not in order that our perceptions may have a cause but in order that a distinction be
possible between causal relations between perceptions and causal relations between objects
perceived.
It is incredible to us that what is present in many places, because it has the nature of
something predicated, i.e., a universal, should cause or bring about anything, and it is incredible to
us, as it was to Aristotle, that numbers should be supposed to explain anything in the realm of
pragmata, phenomena, or empeiria; but these are what principally call for explanation. When we
have a complex of independent things, e.g., of bricks, an explanation is needed of its “accidental”
(this does not mean “chance,” but is a term from Aristotle's theory of definition) unity, and this
explanation (e.g., in terms of the art and will of one man) must bring us to some single particular
(here, a man)—or else there will be a regress either to “chance” or to other things needing
explanation. Thus always, particulars play some part in the explaining of particulars, and this
Aristotle tells us in Metaphysics, L. (l07la l9-24).
Materialist philosophical doctrines seem to rely particularly heavily on assuming a
connection between ontology and considerations about explanation. Roughly, it would be held that,
if it were true that any physically describable fact about people and animals, e.g., about their
physical movements or the sounds they utter or aspects of these, which might have been predicted
from psychologically described happenings relying on psychological concepts would be in
principle predictable from physically described happenings relying on physical concepts alone, then
it should be concluded that “physical things and facts are alone fundamental.” Moreover, it is
noteworthy that the motives for an assertion like “Lightning is nothing else but a discharge of
electricity” which Smart considers while supporting such a doctrine derive solely from
considerations about explanation—thus, here the motive is surely that from the standpoint of a
certain interest, everything which we want explained about a particular flash of lightning is to be
explained by regarding it as a discharge of electricity.
Whereas “The Morning Star is the Evening Star” implies that all questions about the
Morning Star which it is proper to raise may properly be raised about the Evening Star, the motives
for asserting “Flash of lightning, A, was discharge of electricity A1” give no warrant for supposing
all proper questions about flashes of lightning to be proper or sensible about electrical discharges,
or vice-versa. In general, assertions of the kind “A's are nothing else but B's,” although seeming to
assert the identity of each A with some B, and to deny the existence of any A which is not amongst
the B's, are unlike genuine class-inclusion statements or any statements implying identity in any
strict sense (which would involve sameness of logical type in the things identified; rather they are
statements to the effect that “when the B's have been explained, the A's have been already and
thereby explained,” so that they mean that the A's are not distinct as objects for explanation from
the B's—i.e., not further things to be explained.
My contention is then that there are two different kinds of ontological statements or of
statements with an ontological import (like the one just considered) and that one must distinguish
the ontological study which has to do with the one, namely “first philosophy” (relying on ideas
about explanation) which explores explanatory priorities, from the one dealing with the other,
namely what we might call “formal ontology,” which is or would be a piece of applied logic.
 I would observe further that a critical eye needs to be turned upon the ideas about
explanation relied upon in the former. The tendency has been to say that the A's are nothing over
and above the B's, or can be reduced to the B's, only if any information conveyed by propositions
about A's could be conveyed by propositions about B's. Quine chooses such a criterion largely
because in the context of the study of mathematical logic the significant differences of ontology are
not between formal languages adequate to the same tasks but between ones not adequate to the
same tasks. But it is questionable whether the criteria for what is a significant increase in ontology
from the point of view of a mathematical logician, namely that the increase should be unavoidable,
if the language concerned is to be adequate to certain tasks, ought to be criteria of fundamentalness
in first philosophy. When we explain lightning in terms of electrical discharges we do nothing
which makes the language (in which we describe our experience, a language which uses words like
“lightning” and terms for secondary qualities), eliminable in favor of a language using concepts of
physics alone. Now, the notion of explanatoriness appropriate to first philosophy would, I am
suggesting, be one more akin to the notion used when we say that physical theory is explanatory
than to the notion of explanatoriness appropriate in mathematical logic. Aristotle conducts his
discussion of first philosophy without resorting to reductive analyses. He makes the existence of a
quality consist in the existence of something with the quality, but is here explaining a sense of
“exists,” not explaining away a type of existent: he has no preference for propositional functions
above entities.
I mean these remarks to be suggestive rather than demonstrative. It is a mistake to infer
from the philosophical obscurity of the notion of explanation that it must be possible to characterize
or conduct certain philosophical enquiries without using it.

6. I will now point out the respects in which Aristotle's doctrines in this field seem to me of
particular interest or worthiness.
a) He excludes what is common or universal, i.e., attributes, from being fundamental. To be
individual or tode ti is a necessary condition of substancehood (c.f., V.3, below). He thus allows a
logical condition as a necessary condition of substancehood.
b) He offers non-logical criteria of substancehood, namely separateness, and the ability to exist
“without” other things which means here the same as “separately from” other things. Moreover,
although priority in definition turns out to be a necessary condition of substancehood in the first
place, it is not a sufficient condition (until Metaphysics, Z.5, where non-substances are for the first
time removed from being prior in definition), and in the second place, in any case, definition for
Aristotle is not in a modern sense a purely logical notion since it is concerned not merely with the
giving of the meaning of a term but also with giving an aition or cause of a certain kind. Hence, he
never treats a logical condition as a sufficient condition of substancehood (c.f., V.3 below).
c) He never proffers epistemological criteria of substancehood or of being more fundamental
or prior in nature. More accurately: although he makes substance prior in knowledge in a sense
(Metaphysics, Z.l), he does not require that it be more knowable or first known to us (Z.3). Nor is it
important to him that substances should be the first objects of acquaintance (though he does take
them to be ostensible things, although not ideas or impressions)—nor that they should be things by
means of reference to which other things are to be identified. I believe this to be a merit, since the
connection of these things with being fundamental from the point of view of explanation is very
obscure. This does not mean that it is illegitimate to inquire what is fundamental in other respects,
such as in definition, in the hierarchy of sets, in knowledge, or from the point of view of identifying
reference, but that things must not be said to be fundamental in one of these respects without the
respect being stated.
d) In general, parts or elements are not basic in explaining things. Thus he takes certain wholes
to be more fundamental in explanation than their parts, namely people, other animals, and plants.
Further, he denies the existence of any kind of matter which persists remaining the same kind (i.e.,
certain characteristics remaining constant), though all natural changes, in terms of whose properties
(we might say, in terms of the laws governing whose behavior) the behavior of the non-persistent
perceptible stuffs and bodies might be explained. Roughly speaking, the significance of the
seventeenth century rejection of substantial forms lay in scientists taking up the opposite view of
matter. Nonetheless, in the case of living things his view has much to commend it. However, he
himself states what gives rise to the main difficulty in his view, when he constantly reiterates
“substances cannot be composed of substances present in complete actuality”: this appears to be the
key difficulty in non-materialist views, namely how both people and animals as wholes and their
material parts can be fundamental in explanation—a difficulty arising in modern times with the
development of the modern concept of matter.
e) In his late philosophy Aristotle ceases to give a single answer to the question what is prior
or more fundamental in nature or what is to be called substance (I describe this development in
VI.4 below). In Metaphysics, Z, the title ousia or “substance” is accorded, not only to the
individuals or separate things, but also to “forms,” which are universals. This is partly because of
his continued desire to make what is fundamental in definition fundamental without qualification.
Yet in connection with this we need to remember that for Aristotle a definition is a type of
explanation; he has always held that the explanatoriness of an explanation which states that one
particular causes another depends on some nature, that is, on something universal—thus in the
Posterior Analytics the aition or “explanation” is supposed always to be expressed by the middle
term of a syllogism. It is worth observing that wherever there is explanation, some things have to
be attributed to “nature,” and that in explanation certain concepts, such as “person,” play a crucial
role in relation to what counts as an explanation. In regard to the second observation, for instance, it
is because sometimes statements of a personal identity explain things or allow the introduction of a
certain type of explanation, that it is inconvenient to suppose that questions of personal identity can
sometimes be settled merely by the setting down of conventions by free choice—for the sense in
which we can set down conventions about explanation, as distinct from conventions about the
meaning of certain sounds, is rather limited.
SECTION I: Spatial Separateness in Aristotle's Metaphysics

In ordinary Greek, choriston has to do firstly with spatial separateness. Naturally, in

Aristotle, there are uses of the terms of this ordinary sort, e.g., at ll6lb 29, 998a 18, and 354a 3,
besides numerous places in the biological works. Again, if an attribute, F, is found in an object, C,
and not in a spatially separate object, D, and another attribute, G, is found in D and not in C, idiom
is willing to say that the two attributes occur separately, cf., 1121b 19, 1175b 35, and 413b 20 (and
it cannot be excluded that this should be meant to express the independence it implies). This could
be rationalized by adverting to the secondary use of “in” whereby an attribute is in what has it
(210a 20f). We may note that the uses of “separate” are always associated with uses of “in.”
One of Aristotle's main philosophical uses of the term is readily construed as close to its
purely spatial use, namely the one whereby matter is said not to be separate; for an arm of a living
man, if cut off, remains an arm in Aristotle's view only in an equivocal sense, and so, as what it is,
it cannot be spatially separated or exist in spatial separation. In On Generation and Corruption
(320b 24), Aristotle calls the separateness which the matter or corporeal substance lacks
“separateness by place.” Another philosophical use of the term, whose closeness to the purely
spatial use is evident, is the one in Physics IV.8 (214b 12f, 24-28), where the separate existence of
the void or of place appears to be conceived of as a separateness from bodies and their places.
Again when Aristotle says that the infinite cannot exist separately (1048b 17), it is natural to
construe this as meaning that there exists no spatially separate, actually infinite spatial thing or
body, and no collection consisting of an infinite number of actually separate or discrete distances or
bodies.
What we need to ask is whether in his other philosophically important applications of the
term Aristotle understands by “separate” anything which he would distinguish from separateness in
place. If he does then this would make numerous of his arguments equivocal.
Thus the argument of Zeta of the Metaphysics according to which matter is not substance or
primary because it is not separate depends on the absence of equivocation between separateness as
attributed to substance and as denied to matter. Again, in Eta. 1042a 29-30, Aristotle contrasts the
composite of matter and form with both the matter and the form, saying that it alone is always
(haplos) capable of separate existence (cf., Physics IV 209b 23). Accordingly, if it is a spatial
separateness which matter lacks, it should be a spatial separateness that form also lacks and that
substances possess. Further, Aristotle takes it that a universal cannot exist para ton kath 'hecasta
choris, separately, beside the individuals, partly because what so existed would have to exist in a
single spatial place, which universals do not (1040b 25-27).
When Aristotle lists, albeit in an aside (1016b 1), kinds of separateness—the separateness of
two things having here as its opposite their unity—we find only separateness in place, time and
definition. We find no metaphysical separateness—such as might consist, for example, in an ability
to exist without other things—listed alongside the others as if it were as distinct from them as they
from each other. In fact, it appears elsewhere that Aristotle does not distinguish between a
metaphysical separateness and separateness in space and time. Thus if any part of the soul were
separated in place it would have no placement relative to bodies, and so could hardly literally, but
only metaphorically, have place; yet in De Anima (413b 14, 26, 29) and elsewhere this appears as a
“separateness by magnitude” (429a 11, 432a 20). The separateness lacking both to matter and to the
non-theoretical faculties is called separateness in place in contrast with the “separateness in
definition” which, it is said, they have. “Separate in definition” is clearly a secondary locution, got
either by weakening “separate” to mean only “distinct”—cf., 411b 28-31—or by considering that
different definitions have to be written separately, and is a locution of no importance; even the
forms and things in non-substance categories are separate in definition. This separateness in
definition may be associated with the mental separating of what is not separate referred to in 1078a
21ff, and is referred to as separateness by form at 194b 12-13.
 Someone might say that Aristotle was using the term “separate” not in a special,
metaphysical, sense but merely metaphorically; certainly Plato, who used it of the soul (Phaedo 64)
was willing to use other spatial terms (e.g., in Phaedo 80), terms whose use seems more obviously
metaphorical; moreover any use of terms like “in” or “separate” is likely to carry more definitely
spatial language with it, so that the line between metaphor and non-metaphor is difficult to draw
(compare “the form is in the soul” with “the soul is a place of forms”). However in the context this
would support the view that Aristotle's notion of separateness was neither independent nor
distinguished in his mind from that of spatial separateness: for he never notes the metaphor and
never offers any distinct definition of or non-spatial criteria for the separateness he speaks of.
Anyway, it is only asserting or allowing the possibility of separateness in the case of non-spatial
things that gives proof of the non-literal use of “separate”; except for nous, Aristotle denies the
separateness of non-spatial things. True, he accords to separateness in his philosophy a more
weighty significance than it seems reasonable to accord to mere spatial separateness (a significance
I explain in Section III), but it is only the case of nous that ought to have made the presence of
metaphor obvious. Either it did not, or else Aristotle thought his uncritical extending of the
application of the term left what he wanted to say clear and cogent enough.
SECTION II: The Separateness which the forms lack

1. This appearance that the separateness which has metaphysical interest is not distinguished
in Aristotle's mind from spatial separateness is confirmed by [a consideration of] his denial of
separateness to the forms. If the separateness he denies to the forms is understood by analogy with
the spatial separateness of bodily things, the theory he is attacking will indeed be a very crude one,
or else will be being attacked in crude caricature, for it will be being represented as crediting a
mode of existence analogous to that of bodily things not only to the things from which the forms
are separate but also to the forms themselves. Now, the evidence confirms that what Aristotle
attacks he supposes to be crude in just this way.
Socrates' successors, Aristotle tells us erred in giving separate existence to the 'universally
predicated substances (ousias tas katholou legomenas), so that it followed that universals and ta
kath 'hecasta were almost the same sort of thing' (1086b 4-5, 8-12). Ta kath 'hecasta is the opposite
of ta katholou, so that being a universal excluded being amongst ta kath 'hecasta; but being a
universal did not exclude being an individual in much the way ta kath 'hecasta were individuals. In
effect, crediting the forms with separateness was crediting them with all the connotations of the
term kath 'hecasta except non-universality. So in Mu.10 (1086b 16-18, cf. 1086a 33-34) of the
Metaphysics, Aristotle says "If we do not suppose substances to be separate, and in the way ta kath
'hecasta are said to be separate, we shall destroy substance in the sense in which we understand
substance". The same correspondence of the terms choriston and kath 'hecasta recurs in Zeta,
1040a 5-9, 1040b 25-30.
To re-express the matter: what Aristotle is saying is that the successors of Socrates,
knowing that substances, to be such, had to be separate, and wanting there to be persisting and non-
sensible substances, could only find the latter by representing the universals as separate (1086b 8-
10); and since there is no separateness other than of the sort ta kath 'hecasta have (1086b 16-18),
this made the universals almost the same sort of thing as E"ta kath 'hecasta. He says almost the
same again in 1040b 30-6. It is this that Aristotle opposes when he attacks the separateness of the
forms. To deny that the forms are separate is practically the same as to deny their existence para ton
kath 'hecasta; the closeness of the significance of choriston to that of para p.37 in this common
Aristotelian expression appears often (e.g. 1077b 4-9, 1040b 27 cf. 25-30).Thus, what Aristotle
opposes is the treatment of the forms as individual things on a level with or analogous to the men,
animals or white things of which they are the forms. What it is to treat them in this way appears
from his arguments.
Firstly, they are so treated when they are taken as causes or elements, whether particulars or
universals, going to make up - or, when 'shared', parts of them going to make up - the things having
the forms. Here we find a metaphysical chemistry of mixing and being shared or participated in
which the forms would pre-exist and survive what is made of them as bricks may pre-exist and
survive a house, as if Animal-Itself were part of Man-Himself as my pen-top is part of my pen.
Indeed the forms can pre-exist and survive any particular instantiation, in having other
instantiations, but they are not matter from which things are composed; the non-substances which
are present in a subject are denied to be present as parts (1a 24-25). So when Aristotle speaks of
white as entering the composition of white things (by being in them), he can at the same time deny
that it is a cause (991a 13-18). It is an objection to the ideas, that even if they did exist they would
have nothing to do with comings-to-be or with natural substances (Metaphysics, Z 8-9 and 17,
1041b 30-33, 1033b 28: [?Aristotle means natural substances here?]). So the usual reasons for
making them ousiai kath'autus or self-subsistent substances are no reasons (1033b 29). In 1077b 1-
8, he seems to argue that to leukon is not an element out of which a white man is made; in 1077b a
33-6, he argues that we cannot make bodies out of lines. Further, in 327b 18-23, he explains how
things which are not separate things cannot be 'combined' (mixis).
 This denial that the forms are components and ones which can, unlike the matter of natural
substances, exist separately, that is, the denial that they are elements is part of Aristotle's general
doctrine that the ultimate causes and principles (aitiai and archai) are not elements (stoicheia); if
the forms are fundamental in explanation, it is not as elements (1041b 30-33).
Secondly, for a thing to be on a level with or analogous to the men, animals or white things
of which it is the form makes it something of which one may sensibly ask whether it is itself a man,
or an animal or white, and some of the main motives for the theory of forms lead tone to answer
this question affirmatively. For instance, this could be suggested if we said emptily, "Man is a man"
in a parallel sense to the intelligible proposition "Man is a biped", and, again the affirmative answer
is required if the form is regarded as a paradeigma of which ta kath'hecasta are copies. In fact,
even when it is the notion of the forms as elements that he is attacking, Aristotle seems to construe
their names as common names rather than as grammatically abstract nouns, i.e. for him their names
occur as "the (a) horse" occurs in "The (a) horse is a quadruped", and not as "horseness" occurs in
"Horseness involves fourleggedness". Thus Aristotle's opposition to the separateness of the forms is
an opposition to regarding them as at once not identical with the things to which they apply and so
on a level with them as to be liable to sensible self-predication - non-identity with true self-
predication being what opens the way to the Third Man objection.
If what Aristotle denied in denying separate existence to the forms was not crude in such
ways as these, it would be impossible to divide (?split off?) between what he allows in allowing
that man exists or health exists and in general that the eide exist (2b 3-7, [?and, since the things in
the categories exist, also 1034b 8-10) and that the terms for them signify something one (77a 5-9),]
and (?from?) what he denies in denying separateness. He says that the form white (to inai leuko) is
other than what is white (to leukon kai ho huparchei) in the same sentence as denying its
separateness (186a 30-32), and only what exists can be other. Thus a denial of separateness is never
a denial of existence. Except when separateness is supposed to enter the meaning, of the term for
that whose existence is denied, e.g. 'void' could be defined as 'place separate from bodies and their
places'. This is particularly evident when we find that, after he has, in order to show that they lack
separate existence, shown that the solids which mathematics studies are not some solids similar to
the sensible solids, although numerically other than them(?y?) (1076b 13-39), he becomes content
to concede them existence 'in some way' (1077b 14-17) and even 'without qualification' (1077b 32-
4). In sum, Aristotle would never deny that the colour white exists or that whiteness exists, but only
that there is a separate white thing which is the white itself, or, more generally, if by to leukon were
meant some separate thing, i.e. something analogous to the ordinary white things, alongside them,
then he would deny that to leukon in this sense existed. The theories he objects to are ones that
separate the forms (e.g. 1039a 25, 1040a 8, 1086b 4-5, 77a 5), not ones that merely assert their
existence, unless the term eidos of which existence is predicated is being used in a special way
precisely to mean something separate.

2. A comparison of the notion of separateness in Plato's Parmenides with that of Aristotle.

Vlastos has reproached the argument of the Parmenides 130E-131E with crudity of expression,
and, in particular, with the 'intolerable crudity' of confusing a 'physical' with a 'metaphysical'
separation at 131B 1-2. Yet it seems certain (Section I) that Aristotle no more makes this
distinction than does Plato. If either had made the distinction here, he would have had to explain
some content for "separate" in its metaphysical sense: otherwise no assumptions could be made,
and no natural conjectures would have arisen whence paradox might arise. In the Timaeus the
forms or what truly is are said not to be involved in restrictions of place (52 B-C) or time (37E-
38A): but, in the Parmenides, Plato no more than Aristotle operates with a sense of the word
"separate" whose paradigm use would be in connection with what is non-spatial. What both find
leads to paradox is not some independently understood metaphysical separateness in the forms, but
the attribution of anything like physical separateness to things signified by predicate terms.
Plato's arguments, as Geach as argued, are made to seem more crude when his
commentators refer to the forms as 'attributes' and take their designations to be well translatable in
the form "F-ness" rather than "F", "the F", or "the F thing"; thus, in this case, it seems obvious that,
in regard to 'attributes' and any attribute designable in English in the form "F-ness", the question of
anything like physical separateness does not arise. In general, Plato's expressions for forms ought
not to be translated by abstract nouns, but by common names or by adjectives coupled with "thing"
- at least when these terms are being assumed to denote something, and not merely being used to
talk about their sense or what they signify in some less strict sense of signify than "denote." (I
mean, "White" denotes the colour white, but it might be supposed to 'signify' whiteness, since,
where predicated, its being predicated tells or 'signifies' the whiteness of what it is predicated of).
Thus at least in the Sophist 337-46, to on should be translated, not as if it had been a gerund or
infinitive, but "the being" or "a being", or "the (a) thing which is (something or other)", - and to me
on as "the thing which is not a being" or "the thing which is not (something or other)".
To review Plato's argument in the Parmenides 131B-C; the argument assumes that the only
way a Form could be present in many places would be by having, in a way similar to that in which
a bodily thing might have, a different part in each different place. That is, it is assumed to be a
consequence of regarding the forms as separate that, at least if they are in place at all (and their
being called separate appears to exclude this from being nonsense), they must have a mode of
existence in space like that which bodies have. Thus, Plato appears to use "separate" with the same
effect as I have represented Aristotle as using it. Moreover, it appears that precisely the
considerations drawn on in this argument in the Parmenides underly Aristotle's argument in 1040b
25-27, that universals cannot exist 'beside the particulars, separately'.
Two asides seem worth making at this point. Firstly, seeing the closeness of Aristotle's
thought to that of the Parmenides Part I at this point, it would be worth seeking in Aristotle
arguments which Plato might have used to back up the view expressed in 133A and C that being an
Idea or being kath 'hauto was incompatible with being in us, ?qua? as thinking beings. I mention
this because in fact there is, hidden in the Topics, 113a 24-33, a collection of just such arguments -
arguments relying on the spatial connotations of "in" as frankly as the Parmenides relies on those
of "separate."

Secondly, it is worth noting that Plato by these arguments is led to regard being separate as
in general incompatible with being in something, and is not content as in the Timaeus to say that
the forms, understood as non-spatial entities, are somehow in the 'Receptacle'. Thus, by refusing
entirely non-spatial senses to "separate" and "in", he has come nearer to making being in something
and being a separate thing uniformly exclusive of each other. We can then observe in passing the
general tendency in Aristotle to think - or else on occasion to speak as if - being in something or
other, whether in one or in many, and being a separate thing to be the exclusive and exhaustive
alternatives open to things.

The exclusiveness appears often, e.g. at 1077b 13-16, although strictly 1a 24-25 does allow
of there being things in something, and yet separable, though not separated, and so presumably
having the status of separate things - one could offer nous in man, a brick in a house, and
conceivably water in a vessel as possible examples. As to the exhaustiveness, the opposition is
exhaustive if we ignore the attributes belonging to a thing by definition. This is because Aristotle
sees no way in which an attribute can exist, unless as a separate thing, except by being actually
instantiated; and for an attribute in the non-substance categories to be instantiated by a substance,
e.g. by Socrates or body, is precisely for it to be in that substance, i.e. in Socrates, and in body, - 2a
34-2b7. He uses the common idiom whereby the existence of an attribute depends on its
instantiation, not observing the alternative idiom whereby it depends only on possible instantiation.
SECTION III: Separateness as Individuality or Objecthood

To exclude the ways of thinking of the forms which he wishes to exclude, Aristotle needs to
exclude not just that they are sensible or spatial or bodily but also that they are in any way further
distinct individuals alongside bodies, that is, separate objects, separate as it is supposed that bodies,
nous and God may well be separate.

The usefulness of the term 'separate' to encapsulate what the forms are not therefore
depends on its signifying the propriety of ways of thinking appropriate to bodily things yet without
actually entailing bodiliness or spatial position relative to bodies. Its serviceability depends on the
one hand on its implying a parallel or analogy with things that are spatially separate, and, on the
other hand, on our dropping the criterion of spatial separateness or spatial separability in applying it
- although this leaves us to rely in an unsatisfactory way on seeing analogies to judge what has it.
While not in his Metaphysics giving "separate" any explanation of meaning that makes it
independent of spatial separateness or separability, or that distinguishes it from these, Aristotle has
extended its use roughly to cover all the connotations of being amongst ta kath 'hecasta except non-
universality. Separateness may, at least in the case of the substances of natural bodies, imply non-
universality, but this is not what "separate" says or means. In addition "separate" signifies a
separability from other separate things lacking to the material parts of natural substances, that is a
'self-subsistence' or the ability to “stand on their own.”
In this way, ta chorista comes to mean something like 'self-subsistence particulars' or
'individuals'; getting this meaning not from logical considerations, as do ta kath 'hecasta, by its
oppoosition to ta katholou, and ta tode ti, by its relation to making a demonstratio, but from the
parallel it introduces with typical spatially separate things. When Frege uses similar vocabulary -
speaking of something's completeness, saturatedness, self-sufficiency, or standing on its own - to
explain how objects differ from concepts, his concern is only to make a logical distinction and not
to require of all objects that they be analogous to natural substances. In contrast Aristotle's concern
is precisely to import this requirement, if only indirectly, since separateness is not defined in terms
of 'natural substance'. For, incidentally, what is separate and so primary Aristotle requires to be
primary not just logically, e.g. in definition, but also in explanation, i.e. from the point of view of
the study of causes and principles - as appears in his contempt for the view that the numbers are
primary (Metaphysics, N.6). As a criterion of primary existence, separateness has the advantages of
excluding things in the non-substance categories from being primary, while setting up animals,
plants and stones - typical subjects of predication and so typical things in the category labelled
"substance"—as paradigms of what satisfies the criterion.
As a criterion of primary existence, separateness serves other purposes which could not be
served by a purely logical criterion, such as being a subject and being not said of or not being in a
subject. These logical criteria would leave together substances and parts of substances, as indeed
Aristotle himself left them together in the period before he developed his notion of matter (3a 28-
32). They should leave with these complexes of substances, accidentally joined, e.g. by contact or
glue, of which, for Aristotle, the products of art normally constitute examples. Non-logical criteria
are needed if redundancy is to be avoided in enumerating what primarily is, and Aristotle believes
that there are such criteria, so that how (?which spare us from ???? in) redundancy in enumerating
what exists [is to be avoided need not be arbitrary]. In particular, (I) the parts of natural substances
do not retain their definitions or natures (definition here Aristotle assumes to be of a nature, not of
the meaning of a word) if separated, and so are only potentially, not 'in-actuality', separate things
and substances, and (II), inasmuch as to be a separate thing is to be separate from other separate
things and so from other things already admitted amongst separate things, a separate thing cannot
be composed of things already actually separate, and therefore what is only accidentally one
because composed of substances would not be separate or exist separately.(NOTE AGAINST THIS
SENTENCE - AT LEAST FOUR SENTENCES OUT OF THIS)

A Note. It is common for philosophers to fix the meaning of a term by means of examples to which
it is commonly supposed to apply, and then to deny that it applies to them. My argument does not
require that Aristotle be excluded from the company of those who do this, but, not believing him to
do this with "separate", I have ignored this possibility in my explanations. I take it that Aristotle to
the end holds that animals, plants and stones are separate things and indeed paradigm cases of these
(1042a 29-30). The complaint against Socrates' successors was not just that they made the forms
separate, but that they made them separate in the way the sensible substances are separate (1086b
8-12). Accordingly, so far as 'substance' means 'second substance', substance would be separate
only in the sense that one could say, given any second substance term "A", "A is separate",
meaning the A's are separate - or in the sense of being separate in definition (cf. 1042a 29). Of eide,
only ones not including reference to matter, like the contemplative soul, might be separate. Species
terms for natural objects normally refer to matter (universally, 1035b 28-21), like "man", or else are
like terms for the objects of mathematics such as "ring" (="circle"), and in neither case signify
anything separable. [I discuss Cherniss' opposite view in VI.4 below.]
SECTION IV: Corollaries of the present account of separateness for the exegesis of Aristotle

The present account of the meaning of 'being separate' [in the last three sections] has certain
consequences and corollaries which require careful and in places intricate explanation.

IV. 1. What the separate things or individuals are separate from.

One feature of 'separateness' in Aristotle's treatment deserves particular note. I have said
that the separateness which substances have is the separateness which the ta kath 'hecasta have
(1086b 16-18); accordingly, it will consist in a separateness from each other rather than a
separateness from qualities and other attributes. The relevant separateness is not from all subjects
of discourse, even including qualities—i.e. things which, being in a separate thing, would not be
separate from it—but only from other actually separate things, especially ones already accepted as
separate.
Separateness, we might say, is membership of a certain totality whose members are separate
from another; and this totality is not of all things but consists of (a) the set of paradigm cases of
what is separate and (b) what can be got recursively from this set in a certain way.
Or, to present the matter in a slightly different way, we can express it as follows.
Aristotle makes being separate, when this is said simpliciter as a one-place-predicate, not a
relation, term consist in being separate from such things as bodies, in a way analogous to that in
which bodies are separate from each other. Accordingly, to be able to exist without qualities or to
be able to change qualities will be irrelevant to separateness, since qualities are not amongst the
separate (simpliciter) things from which other things, if they too are to be separate (simpliciter),
need to be separate: when the non-separateness of A's e.g. qualities, has been established, it thereby
becomes beside the point in inquiring whether B's, e.g. substances, are separate to ask whether the
B's are separate from the A's. Indeed this very question misleadingly suggests that the A's are things
of a sort to have other things separate from them, and others not separate from them.
This has a consequence for a current controversy.
When Aristotle says in 1028a 32-35 that 'none of the things in the categories, but only
substance, is separate', this does not assert the priority of substance in the sense of 1019a 2-4: that
is, it does not mean "substances can be without things in the other categories but they cannot be
without substances". In what sense Aristotle could think that 'substances can be without quality' is
problematic. Perhaps, it would be in the sense that they can cease to have the qualities they have,
coming to have different ones. But then a quality could be in different substance from those which
it happened to be in; and then, it would seem that, in the parallel way, 'quality can be without
substance'. Thus, if the passage had had this meaning, it would have suggested either i) that the
substances envisaged were ones without accidental attributes, or ii) that Aristotle thought of the
things in the non-substance categories as corresponding to the true values of propositional
functions, and not to the functions, so that each was peculiar to one substance (I will call attributes
in the sense 'particular facts' - examples are Caesar's death, this lump of stuff's being soluble, or this
light's being red). However, on my account of 'separateness', at least the passages which assert
either that substance is separate, or that other things are not, or both, do not support either of these
interpretations. The disanalogy between universals and spatially separate bodies entirely suffices to
explain why qualities are not separate.
In divorcing separateness and priority in this way, I am in fact only putting forward the
same view as Ross, albeit not for his reasons. He did not consider the possibility that the analysis of
separateness in terms of 'ability to exist without' might be salvaged by supposing Aristotle to be
speaking of 'particular facts' when he says that things in the non-substance categories lack separate
existence.

IV. 2. The relation of other things to the separate things or individuals.

In Aristotle's thought, all the things which are not separate stand in one of three relations to the
separate things, relations in virtue of which they are not separate.
(1) There are the attributes which belong (huparkein) accidentally to a subject - "accidentally"
meaning here 'not belonging to it by definition'. These as I would argue elsewhere are what
Aristotle calls things 'in' their subjects, in the idiom of the Categories, or, to use his later idiom,
they are things which 'inhere' in (enuparkein) other subjects.
(2) There are the attributes which belong to a subject from its definition ("essentially" in the sense
of 73a 35-37, not of 73b 10-16). These are said not to be in the subject (Categories and also 1038b
32) but only 'said of' the subject; they do not (1038b 17) 'inhere' in substance, even in the sense of
essence (ti en einai).
(3) There are the material parts of things, again said to be in them, and in later writings to inhere in
them. Their relation to the separate things is that of being their matter.

Aristotle not only speaks of these things as being not separate (simpliciter), but also—naturally
enough, it might seem—implies that they are not separate from substances, i.e. what they are in or
said of. This second proposition involves a certain difficulty in the case of attributes, a difficulty
which makes it important to see how this proposition is not meant to tell us anything different in
kind from what the first one tells us. Saying that attributes - i.e. the forms and their kinds - were not
separate simpliciter was meant just to exclude their having a mode of existence analogous to that of
bodies and their material parts, while saying that they are not separate from substances just
excludes their being “separate—simpliciter things, separate from other separate-simpliciter things,
including substances.” Likewise to deny the separateness of, e.g. colour from body would be just to
exclude colours from existing as separate coloured things alongside the perceived and changeable
coloured bodies. Aristotle could have expressed this lack of 'separateness-from' equally well by
saying that the attribute did not exist 'apart from' or 'besides' (para) the particulars to which it
belonged—i.e. it did not have any other, super-sensible, instantiation or part to its extension besides
these particulars (whether this part were, if we take the case of white as an example, itself a white
thing namely, the white itself, or whether it were—say—whiteness in some sense leaving it still a
separate element in things although not a white thing).
Accordingly, despite the fact that 'separate from' is a symmetrical relation, the proposition
that the attributes of substances are not separate from the substances does not imply the
sensibleness of asking whether the substances are separate from their attributes - which I denied in
IV.1. Rather, it is intended precisely to exclude any attribute x from being the object of any
significant inquiry "Are the substances A, B, C etc. separate from x?" or "Is x separate from A, B,
C etc.?" The answer "No" to the second question expresses not mere negation but the presence of
absurdity.

IV.3. What universals are not separate from.

We are now in a position to appreciate one very peculiar feature of Aristotle's thought about
separateness. Take [for instance,] the case of an attribute which is 'in a subject, and cannot exist
separately from what it is in' (1a 24-25). In such a case, there must be something which the attribute
is in and cannot exist separately from. Following Owen's account, such a 'something' (I mean
anything which makes the proposition true) will not be a first substance but a second substance.
The subjects (hupokeimena), which things are said of or present in, need not be particular first
substances. Accordingly, the being-in and the non-separateness of the attribute which is 'in a
subject' are in regard to a second substance. Presumably, Aristotle would need to say the same in
the case of kinds of stuff or matter; for instance, what flesh and wood should be said to be in and
not-separate from might be body.
This peculiarity is connected with another, namely Aristotle's specifying what certain things
are not separate from by a term which seems to be not for an individual or set of individuals but for
a species or set of species. Our picture of his account should be like this: animal does not exist
apart, from is not separate since it is not separate from its sub-genera and these do not exist apart
from their infimae species, while these in turn do not exist apart from the individual men, horses
etc. which alone have separate existence. Similarly, colour does not exist apart from the particular
colours, and these do not exist apart from their particular shades (which, let us suppose, are infimae
species in the category of quality, in the way 'three' or trias is an infimae species in the category of
quantity, Post. An. II.13), which in turn do not exist apart from the separate things which have them
or 'in' which they are.
This second peculiarity appears in the places where for some genus term "A", Aristotle says
"no A exists apart from the particulars" (para ta tina or para ta kath 'hecasta) and means by "the
particulars" the particular species or sub-genera of A, not the particular individual A's. Here
"particulars" does not mean 'ultimate particular' in the sense of things not predicated of other things
or not common to many subjects. Such a place is 1038b 30-34. In fact, Aristotle expects parallel
arguments to tell against the possibility of genera existing apart from their sub-genera, even
supposing these to exist separately, to the arguments telling against possibility of species existing
apart from their individuals (1038b 34-35). In the key passage occupied with these things,
Metaphysics, Z. 13-14, he argues explicitly only against the first possibility, revealing his concern
with the second possibility only in his calling the 'third man' argument "the third man" (and not 'the
third animal') and in the summaries in Z.13 (1038b 34-1039b 2, 1039b 15-23), on whose
conclusions he relies in Z. 15. Exactly the form of argument found in the Parmenides, explained in
Section II above, which he appeals to in 1040b 25-27 before concluding 'no universal exists apart
from its particulars', is used by him in 1039 34-b2 with animal as the universal and horse and man
corresponding to the particulars. He mostly uses the preposition para for 'apart from', but is willing
also to use the word choris ('separately' or 'separately from') whence choriston derives (e.g. 1038b
32, 1040b 27, cf. 1a 24-25 in Owen's interpretation).
To make my remarks credible, I must make it plain that it is very often in Aristotle that ta
kath 'hecasta, and ta tina mean 'particulars' only in a relative sense, relative to 'genus' - i.e. they
mean 'the particular species, kinds, branches or shades of the genus', so that what count as the
particulars are not 'ultimate particulars' but certain universals, in the sense of things common to
many subjects. In English, we say that man is a particular form, kind or type of animal, grammar a
particular branch or form of knowledge and crimson a particular kind or shade of red.
Correspondingly, in Aristotle, the ta kath 'hecasta are kinds or branches of knowledge in 11a 20-39
(cf. 1a 23b 8), species of geometrical figure or of soul in De Anima II 3, species of animal in many
places in the biological works, and particular numbers (e.g. 'three') in Posterior Analytics II 13. The
ta kath 'hecasta need not be even infimae species or eide: thus triangle (De Anima II 3) is not, and
probably grammar is not (cf. 1a 24-29, b 5-9).
These peculiarities in view, we can now more nearly identify the meaning of what Aristotle
says when he reiterates that no universal can exist apart from the particulars. For him, animal does
not exist apart from the species of animals, man, horse, etc., while these do not exist apart from the
individual men, horses, etc., which alone are separate things. What I say this means is that animal
does not have other, perhaps super-sensible, instantiations additional to its instantiations by its
species (sic) - these instantiations by its species include its instantiations by the individuals. These
species do not have other instantiations than their instantiations by the individual animals. I have
here deliberately allowed and included kind or class as well as a 'contained' individual to be said to
instantiate a wider kind or class, since Aristotle speaks of both as particulars of the wider kind. He
not only uses "particular" as a noun to signify particular sub-genera, but even when he uses it as an
adjective we may find that "the particular A's" means "the particular kinds of A", just as "each A"
may mean "each kind of A"; and, in 144b 2-3, he tells us (and to this there are numerous parallels)
"Every animal is either a species or an individual (atomon)". Thus, he standardly thinks of species-
names and individual-names as equally marking out part of the extension of a genus, marking out
what instantiates the genus. Similarly, the name of a particular colour, say, red, will mark out for
him part of the extension of the genus colour: it instantiates colour because its extension is included
in that of colour. I make this use of the word 'extension' more precise below. My account, then, is
this: animal 'does not exist apart from its species' signifies that necessarily it does not have any part
of its extension separate, spatially or in any analogous way, from its species, man, horse, etc., i.e.
from their extensions; similarly, 'colour does not exist apart from body' signifies that the extension
of the predicate 'has colour' is necessarily no wider than, but included in, the extension of body.
Thus when a universal A is said to be not apart from B or from the C's, it is extensions in a
special sense that are spoken of; by the extension of X, I mean the set of things, or else the single
thing, from amongst the separate things which X may be said of, or is present in, or is identical
with. One cannot say in general that terms for universals in Aristotle denote sets, of substances or
separate things, any more than one can say that "Australia" always denotes a cricket-team.
However, as in the context "I saw Australia win the Test" it is clear that a cricket team is being
spoken of; so, in the present case, the lack of apartness is between sets of separate things and sets of
separate things or separate things.
Note: I may be accused of making Aristotle 'confuse' class-inclusion and class-membership.
This depends on which kind of 'confusion' is being alleged. Certainly, he never confuses a kind or
attribute common to many things, corresponding to a class with more than one member, with
something not capable of being common to many things, corresponding to an individual. Hence, he
cannot regard inclusion and membership as identical. The confusion, if any, which I allow him, is
that of failing to make inclusion and membership exclusive. However, holding that they are so
depends on distinguishing the individual which is a member of the class-as-one which contains it
from the unit-class which contains that individual and is included in any such class-as-one; and one
need not attribute the notions of class-as-one or unit-class to Aristotle. I mean by "set" in my main
discussion above a class-as-many, and in the sense in which one class-as-many of individuals may
be included in another class-as-many of individuals, an individual may also be included; an
individual is just a degenerate class-as-many of individuals. One can, like Aristotle, deny that
singular propositions are universal propositions, and, not precisely following Aristotle, refuse to
allow names of individuals as predicate terms - see p.74 fn.1 below - without appealing to a
distinction between individuals and their unit-classes.

IV.4. The separate material things can change quality.

One importance of the denial of separate existence both to the forms and to matter, which I have
not touched on, lies in its expressing the rejection of the view whereby the forms were kinds of
unchanging stuff - the view that the material world is composed, not of some things or stuff
susceptible of contrary qualifications at different times, but the cold-(stuff), the hot-(stuff) etc.,
these stuffs changing only in their external relations, i.e. in the proportions in which they are mixed
at particular places, mingling but not combining. The Aristotelian view, on the contrary, excluded
the cold from being a distinct thing present as a material element, whether continuous or composed
of atoms, in the particular things he called first substances and separable from them without change
of nature, and made these 'particular things', instead of the qualities, the separate things. Aristotle
thus allowed there to be true change of quality in substances or separate things, as opposed to mere
change in external relations.

IV.5. A Note on how the infinite lacks separate existence.

Aristotle's denial of the existence of a separate infinite body presents no problem, but his denial of
the separate existence of infinite collections is more problematic. Prima facie, if a continuous finite
body existed, it would seem that its first half, third quarter, seventh, eighth, and in general its 2n-
1th 1/2nth part would exist also, all in different places. Each member of the collection and the
amalgamation of the whole would be in some sense separate. Moreover, in one passage, it is not
from other separate things but from the process of bisection that this collection is said to be not
separate (207b 13f), and the meaning of this is not pellucidly clear.
However, in Aristotle's view the parts of a magnitude got at by the process of successive
bisection do not have separate and actual existence until the bisection in the series of bisections has
been accomplished in some act, even if only an act of enumeration. Prior to actual bisection in this
sense, the parts to be got by bisection lack separate and actual existence (cf. 263a 23-29). (THIS
NEXT SENTENCE IS QUERIED)Hence 207b 13f means 'the infinity of parts which can be got'
(literally "this number", meaning a certain collection, not a common predicate) 'is not separate but
exists only in the sense that in the process of bisection always more parts may be taken' (literally,
"is not separate from the process of bisection", in the meaning indicated by the rest of the sentence
and lines 10-13), 'and this infinite collection'("the infinity") 'does not have permanent existence, but
is in process of coming to be' (we might say 'in process of enumeration' or 'of being reached by
bisection'), 'like a period or its measure' (i.e. like a day which exists now in the sense that the
present moment is contained by it, and exists just in the sense that it is being passed through).
An infinite collection lacks separate existence in this sense - that there is no time at which all its
members have come to enjoy separate and actual existence.

NOTES-------------

1. Cherniss, Aristotle's Criticism of Plato and the Academy (l944), pp. 366ff. What he says
about the evidence I appeal to in Section I appears on pp. 367-8.
2. Typographical Note. I have adopted the device of underlining words and expressions where
I want it open whether a term or its reference is being spoken of. [Editor’s note: whether in
transcribing or revision, the underlining mentioned was not in the paper as we found it in
David’s files.] This seems necessary to avoid foisting on Aristotle distinctions he does not
make. Thus I would say that Socrates is a particular and that man, round, and three are
universals, in order, i) to allow an interpretation whereby man, round and three are
universals, in order, i) to allow an interpretation whereby man, round and three are terms in
some sense in which terms are interlinguistic entities, and ii) to avoid excluding taking
Socrates to be a particular man and in some strong sense an 'Object', or three to be a
particular number. I need to adopt such a device because when Aristotle speaks of things in
the categories, of things which exist 'of themselves' and things which exist 'accidentally', of
genera, species and differentiae, of particulars and universals, and of things to be defined,
he is liable to speak of them indifferently as things said (legomena) and things which are
(onta).
Three things are clear, i) that he has some notion of Object whereby no universal (e.g. no
genus or species) would be an Object, ii) that, although he does occasionally refer even to
primary substances as legomena and as things signifying, nonetheless by "substances" and
"particulars" what he commonly means is the Objects or individuals signified, iii) that
Aristotle never means by legomena, at least on the occasions listed in my last paragraph,
linguistic entities or terms in the sense in which "horse" would be a different term from
"cheval".
3. In Aristotle's Categories and De Interpretatione, l963, pp. 74-76.
4. "Inherence", Phronesis, l965.
5. For instance, the best account of these notions seems to identify a type or widest sort with
the range of significance of a certain group of predicates; but this leaves it open in what way
"significance" is understood - e.g. whether for "Fa" to lack significance, "-Fa" must lack
significance as well, or whether a weaker condition will suffice.
6. qv. para.6 of this introduction.
7. qv. para.6 of this introduction.
8. pp.256-8 and 274-6 in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (l9l8) as reprinted in Logic and
Knowledge, ed. R.C. Marsh (l956).
9. I mean the one represented in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (l9l8).
10. "On the Relations of Universals and Particulars", Arist. Soc. Proc. l9ll-l2 and Logic and
Knowledge.
11. However it is worth noting that none of Aristotle's physics or ethics satisfies the canons of
the Analytics for scientific knowledge (episteme) - not being demonstrative in method - and
in the Analytics he does not anticipate the existence of any science as wide as that of
physics.
12. G.E.L. Owen. "Logic and Metaphysics in some earlier works of Aristotle" in Aristotle and
Plato in the Mid-Fourth Century (l960) ed. During and Owen.
13. I mean to argue this in the article "Priority of Substance in Aristotle", referred to on p. ?
above.
14. For instance, at all 18 references listed in Bonitz between 728b 32 and 754b 22; e.g. male
and female are said to be separate or not separate in eight places.
15. See, for instance, Parmenides 159B-C, where Parmenides is made to argue that 'the one'
must be separate from 'the others' (ton allon) because they can never be in the same (159B-
C).
16. Sometimes 'purely spatial' separateness will consist in difference of place (cf. 226b 22f.)
and sometimes in non-contiguity of place.
17. I offer a further explanation of the non-separate existence of the infinite in IV.5
18. I translate (haplos) as "always" (meaning "in every case") instead of "without qualification"
(1042a 31-2) because line 31 shows that Aristotle thinks some forms have separate
existence; I argue in VI.4 below that he has in mind here gods or nous.
19. This view of what Aristotle and (see p.41ff. below) Plato are attacking when they criticise
the Theory of Forms is quite compatible with the thesis, which I also hold, that, when "in
the course of other discussions" Plato and Aristotle use the term "form" (eidos), they mean
something expressed by a logos, rather than an Object denoted by a name - that is, for the
most part they mean the former rather than the latter. I urge this thesis in regard to Plato in
VI.2 below, following Professor Cross ("Logos and Forms in Plato", Mind, l954, reprinted
in Studies in Plato's Metaphysics). That the thesis is true in regard to Aristotle is more
certain - thus he uses the term, eidos, to mean species and also to mean the correlate of
matter, in neither case meaning something denoted rather than expressed (cf. p. 6 above, for
some obscurities here), and in Metaphysics, Z. l5, substance in the sense of form is even
called substance in the sense of logos.
20. I discuss this closeness further, in IV.3 below.
21. qv. Parmenides: 133C
22. A weak consideration in favour of this tendency to view explanatory principles as separable
individuals and analogous to spatially separate things is Aristotle's argument that if two
plants with separate life are got by dividing one, the soul of the original must have had two
parts (cf 413b 20, 411b 19-24). The view he takes seems to be that the souls of the two
resulting plants and their faculties nutritive, perceptive, etc., are got from the original soul
and its faculties, not by separating already distinct parts of that soul and of each of its
faculties, but by simply dividing the soul (411b 24-27) - i.e. making a single thing two,
without following the line of any previous internal differentiation. The 'separating' whose
occurrence is denied (lines 26-7) is conceived analogously to the separating of material
parts of things.
23. Studies in Plato's Metaphysics, p.255f.
24. Ibid., p.256 n.2.
25. Cf. Cherniss, op.cit., p.2l2.
26. Studies in Plato's Metaphysics, pp.266-71.
27. Physics IV.4 at 211 b 1ff treats water in a cask not merely as separable but as being in fact
divided off from the cask (dieremenon, which the Oxford translation translates 'separate',
and which evidently means 'not continuous with' - 211a 34-36).
28. That is ta kath 'hecasta, used to refer to particulars, not to particular species or other
universals. I discuss and contrast the two uses of the term in IV.3 and V.2 below.
29. A difficulty arises because Aristotle takes a certain state, and the health of a person, to be
the same state at different times (though perhaps not if the person becomes ill and recovers
in the intervening period, cf. 71, n.1 below) - 228a 10-20. So states in this sense (whether or
not this is the sense of hexis in the Categories) will have a correspondence, one-one or
many-one, with the corresponding values of propositional functions, only if these be
'propositions' in a sense allowing change of truth-value through time.
30. Aristotle, p.165, and Aristotle's Metaphysics, p.xci. Ross bases his argument that substances
could not be without things in the other categories on the supposition that the other
categories contain the differentiae of species of substance, which is unlikely or, anyway,
doubtful.
31. The arguments I have for this view would take up too much space to present here: yet the
point is a controversial one.
32. Aristotle does in the logical works, sometimes speak, presumably in the formal mode, of
genus and differentiae as inhering in the substance in the sense of definition or essence.
33. "Inherence", Phronesis, 1965.
34. Aristotle never adequately distinguishes bits of stuff of a certain kind from the kind of stuff
or matter from which things are made or into which they decay - the concept bit of flesh
from the concept flesh - though Topics I.7 shows he is aware of the existence of stuff
concepts. In 130b 35-38, he defines a liquid as 'a body adaptable to every shape'.
35. A perfect reference is 97b 27. References for ta tina are 85a 34-35, 1038b 32-33 and 147a
26. Also, 144b 2-3 is instructive.
36. Both senses of ta kath 'hecasta occur often in Aristotle; its sense of 'ultimate particulars' I
will discuss in Section V. Neither sense has anything to do with the sense of "particular"
whereby I and O propositions are called particular; Aristotle's expressions for these are
different, en merei or kata meros (in, or by, part). In all three cases, the opposite in Greek is
katholou or 'universal'.
37. I owe the following references to Mr. T.E. Penner: De Part. An. 639a 18, 642 b5, 26, 37,
643b 27, 29, 644a 29-31, b7 cf. 644a 24, 645b 11; also De Anima 402b 7.
38. Or else particular kinds of collection, classed according to number (e.g. 'trio').
39. The word eidos seems limited to the infimae species - otherwise it would have entirely the
coverage of the English 'kind', 'type', 'branch', 'form', 'shade' etc.
40. Or, strictly, 'from amongst the separate things and their material parts', i.e. from amongst the
first substances of the Categories.
41. Cf. Baldry: "Plato's Technical Terms", Classical Quarterly, 1937.
42. My explanation of how the infinite lacks per se existence is different - see VI. 3 below.
SECTION V: A philosophical comparison of the notion of separateness with other notions of
individuality in Aristotle

To get some philosophical insight into the point of having a non-formal, non-logical, notion
of individuality, we must consider its relation to that of another notion, the supposedly logical
notion of particular. Then, in turn (in V.4), we will be in a position to compare the two notions with
a third notion Aristotle has, what I will call the notion of categorial particular.
The relevant notion of 'particular' is easy to explain roughly, less easy to make precise.
Roughly, being a particular is the opposite of being something capable of being common to
different things, in the way in which what predicates attribute (?ascribe?) can be common to more
than one subject - the opposite, we might say, to 'being a universal'. A particular is a logical subject
which is not a universal. The notion is that of what I called ultimate particular in IV.3. To take a
plain example: the distinction must be so made that red socks are particulars while sock and red are
universals.
This sense of "particular" is one figuring prominently in Aristotle; his explanations of it and
different terms he uses for it I consider in V.2. It is also the sense relied upon by Locke, Berkeley
and Hume. In this article, I must proceed upon the assumption of its intelligibility, despite the
absence of any satisfactory account of the notion, as a logical one, in modern times. In an appended
note to this Section, I indicate how the notion might be made precise. The difficulty is that what
Russell calls the distinction of substantives and verbs is very difficult to make.

V.1. I shall first consider these notions of particular and universal directly, not as they occur in
Aristotle, indicating certain kinds of particular which one might be reluctant to call 'individuals'. I
observe how the use of the criterion of separateness for individuality effects the desirable pruning,
whether or not this is a satisfactory way to achieve it, and note what pruning Aristotle conceives it
to achieve.
Amongst ultimate particulars, that is, particulars in the sense I have indicated, there appear
to be ranked a strange medley of things: particular places and times, animals and their bodily parts,
shoes and other artefacts, groups of animals, pairs of shoes and other collections, the things I called
above 'particular facts', including actions and events, and lastly 'perceptual objects', such as after-
images, rainbows and the sky. Now, the desire and instinct of philosophers has been to limit the
term "individual" to a sub-class of these things. There is no philosophical usage whereby all these
things are to be called individuals without qualification as opposed to adjectivally or with a
substantive understood. The problem is to find an appropriate rationale for a usage whereby there
are no individuals which are not particulars, while some particulars are not individuals. The use of
"individual" in logic to mean the opposite of "set" - derived from its ordinary use in opposition to
collections of more than one thing - seems of little importance either in the exposition of Aristotle
or in explaining philosophers' motives for excluding various sorts of particular from being called
individuals. There seem to be no sound arguments which show that the relations between a number
and a set of numbers or a shoe and a collection of shoes are the same as those between a point and a
line, an event and the time at which it happens, an object and an attribute or property it has, or a
collection of things and the number of things in the collection. Sameness of relation is unnecessary
to justify economy in symbolism.
It is natural (I think) to have the pre-critical thought that what debars some of these
particulars from being individuals is that they, e.g. a human arm or other parts of animals, are not
'separate objects' or 'complete natures', and hence natural to want to limit the term "individual" to
things which are one, in the sense of having parts naturally united into a whole in terms of whose
nature their nature or function is to be understood, and to analogously existing things. It is not easy
to say whether this thought explains or is a consequence of the tendency in non-philosophical
English to use the noun "individual" only of persons. I am not now going to give an account of
what such pre-critical thoughts may possibly mean, but only to remark that it is to pick out just
those things which we are inclined to rank as 'individuals', 'separate objects' and 'complete natures'
that Aristotle uses the term choriston or 'separate'.
Thus, of the types of ultimate particular I gave examples of, it seems clear, firstly, that parts
of natural substances and groups or aggregations of natural substances, whether arising by chance
or contrived by art, are not to be accounted separate things. Secondly, the particular facts plainly
lack separate existence, being inseparable from the substances they are facts about. Thirdly, what is
separate from other separate things seems plainly to belong to the content of space and time, and
not to include particular places and times; for these separate existence means for Aristotle only
separateness from the places of bodies, i.e. emptiness, and this he holds to be impossible. The case
of perceptual objects is more problematic, and Aristotle does not advert it. Plainly, after-images are
not things into whose spatial relations with bodies it is sensible to inquire. In the case of rainbows
and shadows, one can only remark the extreme oddity of speaking of them as 'things separate from
other separate things', since to use such an expression of them would strongly suggest that they
were material things, movable independently of other material things.
The value of finding some such criterion as this one of 'being separate', enabling one to
prune down the ultimate particulars and single out certain basic ones ought to be more apparent to
us than it was to Aristotle, because, of the above four classes of things, the last three were not, for
him, ranked amongst ultimate particulars. What he says about these three, I will briefly indicate.
In the first place, the particular places and times, whether points and instants (spoken of as
'indivisibles' or atoma) or regions and periods (which he does not allow to be composed of atoma),
will fall alike, as things predicated of more than one thing, under the heading of universals - for
each falls into one of the non-substance categories of place and time. A time is common to different
things at different places, and a place to different things at different times. We tend to think that a
place's being common to more than one thing at different times is more analogous to an object's
continuing to exist despite change in it (i.e. despite its existing at different times), than to the way
of quality, such as redness, can be common to different things. Aristotle does not share this
tendency.
Secondly, Aristotle simply ignores in his classifications both the 'particular facts' (what
Geach calls 'individualized forms') and the non-substantial perceptual objects. When he says the
objects of perception are particulars, nothing suggests that he has these things in mind as amongst
the particulars. So far as 'particular facts' are concerned, the telling textual argument is from l78b
37-179 a 10, which leaves no alternative to being either (1) something common to more than one
thing (which he implies means being a quality or something in one of the non-substance categories)
or (2) being a tode ti. (Other arguments need the space of another article to treat adequately—qv.
p.8, above). For Aristotle, particular facts would, I believe, be neither logical subjects in a strict
sense (qv. 83a l-l8, 8lb 23-29) nor objects of definition in the sense in which universal terms in the
categories are such, but accidental unities like 'white man' or 'night-hidden celestial body';
accordingly, they have no place in a classification of logical subjects.
Accordingly, we may sum up Aristotle's position by making the following three
observations:
a) The range of significance of the predicate 'X is separate' comprises first substances with
their parts and aggregations [(this was indicated in Section IV)]. This means, in effect, that for
Aristotle the concept ultimate particular marks out the range of significance of the predicate 'x is
separate' - while separate thing marks out its extension. Of other things, all assumed to be
universals, to deny their separateness was to imply not just the falsity of the assertion of their
separateness, but its absurdity. These denials have significance, but in a different way from
ordinary denials, just as logicians suppose propositions obeying type restrictions.
b) The only pruning amongst the ultimate particulars which the criterion of separateness
achieves, according to Aristotle's own conceptions is of the parts and aggregations of natural
substances.
c) However, Aristotle does take separateness as a distinct criterion of being fundamental in
some non-logical sense - i.e. of being a substance - separate from the criterion of being an
(ultimate) particular. Accordingly, non-particulars are debarred from being substances not merely,
or even chiefly, on the logical ground of their not being particulars, but on the non-logical ground
of their not being separate.

V.2. I turn now to consider in more detail what Aristotle has to say of this second notion of
individuality, that of ultimate particular. In this sub-section, I consider the account he gives of the
notion, and the terms he uses for it. Then in V.3, I state the philosophical positions which he holds
in regard to particulars in this sense, positions whose historical importance it is not easy to
exaggerate.
As examples of what is not common to, or predicable of, more than one subject, that is, in my
phrase, of ultimate particulars, he gives Callias (l7a 39-b2) with Cleon (43a 26ff) and Socrates (l0
l8a 3-4). The term he uses in these passages is the term ta kath 'hecasta, and he often uses this term
in this meaning - notably in Metaphysics, Z.15 and M.9-l0, which I cited in Section II. This is the
term most naturally translated 'ultimate particulars', although it has the other uses which I studied in
IV.3 above. However, he also uses three other terms, with different origins and associations or
meaning, to refer to these same ultimate particulars in order to make the same contrast with what is
universal or common to many subjects. I will detail the evidence which, it seems to me, makes it
certain that he uses these terms to this effect, whether or not he sometimes uses them otherwise.
Firstly, they are each 'a tode ti', which means literally 'a particular this' or 'a this of some
sort'. The Third Man absurdity, Aristotle tells us in l78b 37-l79a l0 arises from wrongly supposing
something common to, or predicated of more than one thing to be a tode ti (also in l038b 36f); the
alternatives which he mentions to being a tode ti are being a quality (the passage ranks man here, as
well as musical), a relation or quantity or 'something of that kind'. Tode ti appears with the same
meaning when Aristotle says that form is not a tode and does not come to be or perish, but is a
'such' or kind, in contrast to the tode ti which comes to be (l033b 2l-25). These passages, together
with 87b 28-30, are the ones which make it certain that Aristotle sometimes uses tode ti to delimit
the ultimate particulars: whether he may sometimes use the term otherwise I discuss in VI.4 below.
Secondly, in the Categories, Aristotle appears to use the term "first substance" to pick out
ultimate particulars (qv. l0l7b l3-l5). For, first substance is said to be what is neither said of, nor
present in any subject. Now, I believe that the underlined technical phrases are intended to provide
an exhaustive classification of the attributes of a subject - what is said of a particular subject
including just what belongs to it by its definition, and what is in it including whatever attributes are
not included in its definition. Accordingly, first substance will be what is not universal in the two
possible ways of being universal, and as might be expected Aristotle thinks it to be strictly tode ti,
unlike its species and genera (3b l0-l7), which he calls second substances, or their differentiae (l44a
20f).
Thirdly, in making the contrast between first and second substance, in respect of being tode
ti, Aristotle says that first substances are 'indivisible and numerically one', whereas second
substances, being kinds, are not one but predicable of many (3b l0-l7). Atomon or "indivisible" is
the third term which Aristotle is wont to use to refer to what is not universal; if the extension of a
general term is called its reference, and the reference of a singular term its extension, the relevant
sense of divisibility is divisibility of reference or extension. This use of the term atomon occurs
often; salient examples are 3a 34f, 38, l44b 2-3, 995b 29 and 998b l6f. Like ta kath 'hecasta,
atomon is a term with other uses besides this one.
V.3. I now consider the philosophical positions Aristotle takes up in regard to the ultimate
particulars, the things these terms pick out.
Concerning ultimate particulars, Aristotle makes three important logical remarks.
p.76
(a) It is improper to apply the words "every" and "some" to the terms for ultimate particulars
(l0l8a 2-4). Aristotle explains this in the course of remarking that accidents can be attributed
without qualification to particulars, Socrates and musical Socrates being the same, whereas
accidents cannot be truly attributed without qualification to universals since man and musical man
are not the same, only some men, not every man, being musical (l0l7b 30 - l8a 2). Further it is
redundant or absurd to prefix "this" or "one" to terms for ultimate particulars, like "Coriscus" (l75b
l8-28).
Aristotle connects the impropriety in applying the words "every" and "some" to terms for
ultimate particulars with his view of the law of excluded middle. Where names of ultimate
particulars stand as subject-terms, the law of the excluded middle applies directly; either Coriscus
is musical or he is not, and it is because there is thus? no indeterminacy of truth-conditions,
delaying the application of the excluded middle that there is no place for what Geach following
W.E Johnson calls applicatives, like "every" or "some", or for terms like "this" and "one" (l75b
l6ff). "Every", Aristotle says, does not signify a universal - it is words like "man" which do that -
but only how the universal is taken, namely, that it is taken universally (l7b l2). The subjects of
propositions are what Aristotle calls the pragmata (l7a 39-40), onta or legomena, and are some of
them universals such as man and others of them particulars such as Callias (l7a 39-bl). The
peculiarity of subjects which are universals is that a word like "every" or "some" has to be
introduced before the truth-conditions are definite (20a l0-l5) - "this" and "one" in fact serve the
same function of making truth-conditions definite. In these ways, one may trace in Aristotle
important elements of the view expounded by Geach in Reference and Generality, Chapter VIII.
(b) The ultimate particulars lack definitions (Z.l5). That is: although definitions of their species
express the essential attributes of these particulars, these definitions are not convertible with the
terms for the particulars, but only with the terms for their species.
(c) They are numerically one (3b l2).
Moreover, at least according to Metaphysics, ?.6 (l0l6b 33f) which makes the numerically one
coincide with what is one in matter, they alone are numerically one - unless we allow the existence
of things which are one in intelligible matter. However, in 1b 6ff tis grammatike - meaning, in
Owen's view, "an item of grammatical knowledge" - is treated as numerically one, and in general
Aristotle treats points and instants as atomic and numerically one, contrary to ?.6
These remarks are tailored to the case of sensible substances. Indeed, Aristotle seems to
think all the ta kath 'hecasta are sensible (43a 27, l75b l6ff), though he does not definitely assert
this. Aristotle would not have said that a unique God lacked a definition or was numerically one in
the sense of having matter. He would not have spoken of such a God as one of the ta kath 'hecasta,
since there would be no contrast to be made with the extensions of genus and species terms.
However, clearly a unique God would rank as an ultimate particular in the sense explained, and be
called tode ti, indivisible and a first substance, as being a logical subject and not common to more
than one subject. The same remarks would apply to a single separately existing nous or active
intellect, if Aristotle believes them to exist, a matter which is subject to dispute.
Aristotle's non-logical remarks about ultimate particulars are, if possible, more important.
By 'non-logical' I mean not belonging to a study whose propositions ?apply as well to numbers as
to animals? are applicable as much in treating numbers as in treating animals and which is in this
sense radically topic-neutral. (I give references only where these have not been already assembled
above).
(d) There are no separate things which are common to more than one subject. Separate things
are amongst the ultimate particulars.
(e) The originative principles (archai) of particulars are particulars, e.g. Peleus is the arche of
Achilles, and this letter-token b of the syllable-token ba, and, although it is true that man is the
arche of man universally, universal causes do not exist, e.g. there is no universal man -
Metaphysics, L.5 l07la l9-24.
(f) It is only particulars which are subject to change, come to be or perish. The forms (eide or
species) and their genera are not, and do not.
(g) ?Moreover?, since only separate things can combine (327b l9) and there is no point in
seeking elements from which a thing has been formed except in the case of substances (992b l8-
23), ultimate particulars alone can ever be elements in another thing or have elements themselves.
(h) The objects of perception are ta kath 'hecasta (l00a l6f, l7a 39f), or, as he puts it elsewhere
(87b 28-30), perception is of 'a tode ti at a definite place and instant'. Sensible things are not
attributes (43a 27, cf. l75b l6ff where the term "visible" is used).
(i) Particulars, if present in more than one place at the same time are so, not in the way
universals are (i.e. by being wholly present wherever present at all), but by having different parts in
the different places.
It should not be necessary to dwell on the importance of these, and I will not.
What requires observation here is that these non-logical theses are all ones asserting the
inclusion of the things with a certain non-logical property amongst the ultimate particulars, or the
consequent absence of these things from amongst universals, so that universals lack the property
concerned; they are never ones asserting the inclusion of ultimate particulars amongst things with a
certain non-logical property. Now, theses of this kind appear to be in general legitimate and
relatively unproblematic.
We can even say that there is some absurdity in wanting it explained why what they assert
obtains. For instance, asking why separate things are amongst ultimate particulars, i.e. amongst
things not attributed to subjects in predications, is a bit like asking why things of a certain logical
type are of that type, or why [individuals in the sense in which the term is understood in] ?the
individuals of set theory? set theory (i.e. things without members, other than the null-class), lack
members. It should be quite tolerable to take the logical property of being a particular as a
necessary condition of having these various non-logical properties, and these non-logical properties
as sufficient conditions of the having of this logical property.
What Aristotle never asserts is the converses of these propositions. He never says that all
ultimate particulars have a certain non-logical property, i.e. are included amongst the things with
the property (which might have been, for instance, the property of having one of a certain group of
other properties). He never explicitly takes a non-logical property to be a necessary condition for
the having of the logical property of being ultimate particulars, or this logical property to be a
sufficient condition for the having of a non-logical property. This is noteworthy because these
converse propositions are much more problematic than the others. It is worth making a few
observations about this second kind of proposition, because despite their problematic character, we
are inclined to accept them no less than the others—and to accept them for reasons we can find in
Aristotle, even though he never asserts them. I mean that we are wont to take it that what is not of
one of certain listed kinds, specified in non-logical, subject-matter limited, ways, cannot be a
particular. This seems legitimate for the reasons:
l) that we can only gain the concept of a type or kind of thing if things of this kind bear some
relation to natural substances, which is certainly Aristotle's view, and
2) that at least in the case of concepts of kinds of particular, the kinds of relation possible are
specifiable, if at all, in only non-topic-neutral terms. In addition, it may well be that individual
particulars can only be picked out from others of the same kind by means of reference to individual
natural substances - this is what Strawson argues.
In fact, we are very inclined to assume propositions of this second kind and to give a non-
logical characterisation of the notion of particular, that is one utilising concepts other than ones
which are radically topic-neutral. For instance, Russell did this in l9ll, when he brought mention of
space and time into his characterisations of particulars and universals. Again, although Plato in the
Sophist, when he says that what exists is what acts or is acted upon may well mean merely "is the
subject of active and passive predications", the interpretation which makes him mean "efficiently
causes, or is caused to suffer, affects" suggests a not unattractive account of the notion of particular,
as opposed to that of existent. Again, it is tempting to define a particular as something either which
is at a place or a time, or which could be an efficient cause [vide remark (e) above], or which is
distributed in space or direction [vide remark (i) above], the last two conditions being interpreted so
that, if there be a creator God, he be a particular, and so that things such as after-images be
particulars. At least, remarks (e) and (i) of Aristotle - one might choose (h) in place of (i) - could be
plausibly supposed to provide the main elements in an extensionally correct disjunctive definition
of being a particular in terms of non-logical concepts, a definition requiring only (!) more precise
formulation. One feels intuitively more certain that objects distributed in space and efficient causes
ought to be classed as particulars than of the correctness of any definition of particular in terms
solely of logical concepts yet proposed. Lastly, one may note that Strawson offers non-logical
criteria of being a particular, chiefly the one that the assertion of the existence of the particular is an
empirical proposition. To this, besides inquiring how 'empirical' is to be understood, one could
object that it is because certain things are contingent in some non-logical, non-epistemological
sense that we need particular experience in order to know of them, so that the property of being
contingent might be more fundamental to being a particular than that of being a matter for
empirical knowledge. Anyway, all these characterisations of particulars in terms of non-logical
concepts involve the second kind of proposition; i.e. they include particulars amongst some class
characterised in non-logical, and probably non-epistemological, terms.
I do not propose to develop these thoughts, or make them more precise, but only to observe
1) that Aristotle himself happens never to assert any of this second kind of proposition, which is a
large part of Strawson's concern, and 2) that if he had, as would have been natural, he would have
needed to offer some justification of this, whereas the opposite things do not need such general
justification. What Aristotle does instead is to take the non-logical property of being separate, not
as a necessary condition of some logical property, but rather, together with the logical property of
being tode ti (i.e. an ultimate particular), as a necessary condition of being fundamental in some
non-logical sense - of being substances, substance not being a concept drawn from topic-neutral
studies. His concern is not with the necessary conditions of being an ultimate particular, but with
the necessary conditions of being a substance.

V.4. Thus far, I have left out of account Aristotle's pre-occupation with definition. Yet he never
frees himself from a tendency to use primacy in definition as well as separateness as a criterion of
substancehood, and this is the source of his main obscurities, obscurities which extend even to the
significance of the terminology which I have already discussed. These obscurities I will discuss in
Section VI in discussing the development of Aristotle's thought. However, for this purpose, it will
be useful beforehand to make clear a third notion of individuality which can be traced in Aristotle,
existing alongside those of ultimate particular and separate thing, and to observe the terms he uses
for it.
Roughly speaking, individuals in this third sense, are the things in each category the terms
for which have the least extension - these I call 'categorial particulars'. More precisely, of each kind
of term (e.g. colour terms), some have extensions properly including the extensions of others, as the
extension of red includes that of crimson; accordingly a categorial particular is something the term
for which does not have an extension including the extensions of other terms of the same kind. In
the category of substance, the categorial particulars will be the first substances, which alone are, for
Aristotle, ultimate particulars, while in the non-substance categories they will be the infimae
species, that is, in Aristotle's phrases, the 'indivisible' or 'simple' forms (eide), in those categories,
such as the number three. They appear to be what Aristotle means when he speaks, in the
Categories, in a technical sense, of 'things not said of any subject', his examples being, it seems,
shades of colour within which further colour discriminations cannot be made, particular forms or
else, items of grammatical knowledge (1a 26-9), together with the first substances (1b 2-4); and,
since he says that what exists kath 'hauto is what is not said of any subject (73b 6-9), they seem to
be the kath 'hauto or per se existents in each category referred to in Metaphysics, ?, l0l7a 23-4. He
calls first substances, together with points and instants and the particular forms or items of
grammatical knowledge, all 'indivisible' (atomon) and “numerically one,” and seems to mean this to
be true of all things not 'said of any subject'. Since what is numerically one in some stronger sense
than that of being a subject of identity propositions must be in some sense an individual, one can
reasonably call Aristotle's notion of categorial particular, a notion of individuality, the third we
have found in him.

Appended Note to Section V

The distinction between particular (i.e. ultimate particular) and universal is difficult to give a
precise account of. It does not correspond to the distinction between singular terms and others,
since "red" is a singular term. Hence, it cannot be made in terms of the adjectival use of
"particular", as if, whenever "x is a particular y" were well-formed, x would be a particular and y a
universal - thus, red is a particular colour but not a particular, and moreover "red" cannot, in its
normal mode of occurrence as a singular term, be quantified as in "a particular red". Further, if the
distinction is not merely between singular terms and others, it will have little point if redness is
counted as a particular. Accordingly, the relation of belonging to, or 'attributed by a predicate', must
be understood to include the formal relation which redness has to red things as well as those which
red and red things have to red things, despite the fact that in "x has redness", "has" is not a mere
copula.
In the light of these difficulties, two series of observations on how the relevant distinction
between particular and universal is to be made seem apposite.
(a) The distinction will depend on the possibility of distinguishing absolutely (as opposed to
merely relatively to one of different alternative possible analyses of a proposition considered)
between subject and predicate terms in singular propositions, or at least in some, including those in
which terms for particulars are supposed to occur. That is, if the distinction is a logical one, it will
have to be possible to explain within logic a meaning for "object" and "relation" whereby in "This
ball is red" and "Brutus killed Caesar", "red" and "killed" do not occur as terms for objects and
these propositions assert, not binary and ternary relations respectively, but respectively a property
and a binary relation; and whereby in "Each ball is some colour or other" - roughly expressible"
(Vx)[x is a ball - 3c (x is c)]" - the quantification over colours is not a quantification over objects. I
note further (1) that if the absolute sense of "particular", i.e. meaning 'ultimate particular', were
made derivative from a relative sense, for instance from one whereby red were called a particular
relative to colour and redness to quality, the distinction would still rest on the possibility of
distinguishing subject and predicate terms in singular propositions, and (2) that if, like Aristotle, we
were to call species particulars relative to their genera as universals (or if we were to call the
species term the more particular and less general term), we would be presupposing the same
distinction - for we would judge this because the species is truly predicable of fewer particulars,
and would ignore the fact that the genus has fewer things truly predicable of it.
(b) The distinction must be so made as not to separate logically cognate terms. I mean by this,
that if red and red thing are universals, redness must be so also, despite its not being predicable,
either as an adjective or as a common noun, of the particular red things. Being logically cognate
will have to be explained in some such way as this: terms are logically cognate if there are
propositions containing the one which differ only in logical form and in the formal terms occurring
in them from propositions in which the other occurs (and not, for instance, in truth-conditions).
Thus, the relational proposition "Redness belongs to X", like the one, "X has the colour red",
differs only in its logical form and formal terms from the non-relational propositions "X is red" and
"X is a red thing". In contrast, "cricketer" is not a logical cognate of "cricket" because the
corresponding propositions will contain the expression "person who plays cricket", and "play" is
not a formal term.
Note: In "That meat's redness shows that it is not overcooked", the underlined singular
term is no less particular than the meat referred to; again, "The redness of A differs from the
redness of B" might mean that A and B are of different shades of red, and then it seems natural to
say that the underlined singular terms are of the same particularity as terms for shades of red; it is
important that in speaking of redness as logically cognate to red, and of the same generality and
degree of particularity, one is not speaking of these other singular terms.

SECTION VI: The relation of Plato and Aristotle, and the character of their separate
developments.

The heart of the advance which Aristotle made upon the Plato he describes consisted in this: that he
divided the notion of what is most properly called a being and has separate existence from that of
what is logically primary (the forms). In this section, my aim is to describe this advance more
precisely, at the same time observing two very peculiar features of the case: the first, the feature
that Plato himself seems to have come to reject the separateness of the Forms but that this rejection
had for him a significance entirely different from that which it had for Aristotle; and the second, the
feature that Aristotle in his later thought appears in some degree to go back upon his initial
rejection of 'Platonism'. In connection with the latter I will discuss the objections to the exegesis of
Aristotle proposed in this article, objections of which I have hitherto avoided giving an
account.These contentions are in no way new, but I believe I can explain and support them in ways
in certain respects fresh. In most of what one says in this field there must be a speculative element,
but whatever appears to me more speculative than the rest I carefully advertise as such.

VI.1. For Plato the Forms are always things thought or understood (noiesthai) and not seen or in
any other way sensible (507B); they are for him, we might say, the primary objects of
understanding. What have the corresponding 'logical' primacy in Aristotle are the infimae species in
all the categories - since, although genus terms also figure amongst things said without combination
and are prior in definition to their species, he nonetheless regards the species as the primary objects
of definition and as the basic natures (ousiai) to be understood, here opposing them to both to
accidental things, like 'white man', and to genera. Like Plato, Aristotle calls what is logically
primary eide, or forms - refusing the term to genera - though we do not know whether logical
primacy was for him part of the very meaning of this much used Academic term.
However, for Plato in his 'Platonic phases', these logically primary things or Forms were, in
addition to being logically primary, also the things most properly said to exist, or most real, the
things which exist separately and 'of themselves' (kath 'hauta and the only such things. Now, the
appearance is that, in his 'Platonic phase', Plato thought that all these properties were pretty much
the same (252c), regarding them, together with the property of being unchanging, as necessary for a
thing to have if it was to be an object of knowledge. What Aristotle did was to give the terms for
these various properties different uses and applications.
In the first place, Aristotle, instead of evacuating the term "separate" of its ordinary spatial
meaning so that no assumptions might be made about what its meaning involves, relies, like Plato
in the Parmenides, on assumptions drawn from its ordinary meaning in order to show that the forms
or species or logically primary things (eide) lack separate existence.
Secondly, Aristotle regards the separate things, and not just the forms which are, for him,
the primary objects of definition, as objects of knowledge in a strict sense - for he takes it that a
definition of a species of separate things, despite not being convertible with the terms for each
separate thing, still expresses something necessary about each separate thing. Indeed, his most
radical criticism of the doctrine of separate Forms was that they would add nothing to the
knowledge of the particulars - most radical because it was mainly considerations about knowledge
that lay behind the 'Platonic' doctrine. Aristotle's conception that there must be knowledge in the
strict sense of particulars (ta kath 'hecasta) stands in violent contrast with the conceptions exposed
to view in the Republic. Indeed, the term ta kath 'hecasta which he devised or took over from the
Academy seems specially designed to pick out just those things which Plato in the Republic refers
to under such descriptions as ta polla hecasta (494A) and denies to be objects of knowledge.
Thirdly, Aristotle associated the property of being most properly said to exist and most
properly called 'substance', 'thing' or 'being', (ousia) with that of being a logical subject and in no
way an attribute (2a 11-13), and as a result made the separate things and their parts, instead of the
logically primary things, the forms, bear the title 'substance' "in the most important, first and
preferable sense of the word" (2a 11 f). In this way, Aristotle permanently debarred certain of the
forms or primary definables still regarded as objects of knowledge, e.g. of mathematical
knowledge, from the title "substance" - namely the things in the non-substance categories. Thus
also, he came to use criteria of 'basic individuality' other than those drawn from epistemology and
the theory of definition, and, unlike Russell, to get into a position to offer the non-logical criterion
of separateness alongside logical ones (being an ultimate particular) for a 'metaphysical' - i.e. non-
logical and non-epistemological - fundamentalness (being a substance).
Fourthly, Aristotle appropriated the expressions tode and tode ti which Plato was using, at
probably much the same time, to mean something like matter or space or the subject of change, and
anyway to pick out something distinct from the forms - perhaps a kind of receptacle for the forms
to be in (Timaeus 49D-50A, cf. Theaetetus 157B).
It is worth noting that when Aristotle developed his notion of place as a non-substance
category and so, by reserving the term tode for substances, debarred places from being called tode,
he appears to have been not yet even conscious of the existence of the theories of the Timaeus - or
at least not yet aware of the theory there represented which does not distinguish place from matter
and seems to rank place as a tode, a theory he vigorously attacks in the Physics. One may note that
in one respect here modern sympathies would be with Plato; one's instinct is to regard identity
statements about places as more like those about bodily things than like those about colours or
numbers, and not to take names of places as predicate-terms.
How Aristotle handles the term kath 'hauto, used by Plato of the forms, I shall discuss
below in VI.3.

VI.2. Plato, no less than Aristotle, passed beyond the stage of thought represented in Aristotle's
descriptions of his views, the stage of belief in separate forms. This has been questioned because
the Timaeus has been supposed late and because elsewhere Plato continues to think of the forms in
some of the same ways as before and in ways unlike Aristotle. Yet the evidence that there is a stage
in Plato's thought later than those described by Aristotle is weighty. Aristotle describes Plato as
holding Heraclitean views 'even in his later years' (987a 32-34), but in the Theaetetus these are
rejected (cf. Cratylus, 439E). Aristotle makes him allow there to be forms of sensible things only in
the case of the natural kinds (1070a 18-21, cf. 1043b 18-23) - a view which in Plato's own works
the gradation in Parmenides 130 B-D alone may suggest he once held - but at 130E, Parmenides is
made to reject this view and to take forms of hair and mud to be as acceptable as those of man, fire
and water. More notably, the Parmenides and the Sophist suggest or imply a rejection of the
separateness of the forms, and the Theaetetus shows little sympathy for, let alone acceptance of, the
assumptions about knowledge which Aristotle represents as underlying the theory of Forms. I
assume in the discussion below that Owen and more recently Ryle are right in placing the Timaeus
earlier.
 The reason why Plato continues to speak of the forms in ways suggesting a less radical
rejection of his former doctrine than we find in Aristotle is, I suggest, that the significance for him
of the rejection of the separateness of the forms was quite different from its significance for
Aristotle. For Plato the rejection of the separateness of the forms meant that the discussion of the
forms ceased to be a discussion of what ought to be accepted as primary in reality or in definition,
or most real, but became instead a discussion of how meaningful terms may be woven together to
form discourse (Sophist 259 C-E, 252E - 253A). Because of his "hair" could be taken to signify a
form as well as "man" (130E), for the reason that both, and with them the most general terms, such
as "being" and the others referred to as forms in the Sophist and the Parmenides, terms which in
most of Aristotle's works are officially regarded as equivocal, are meaningful terms. The thesis that
the forms are not separate meant for Plato that for a thing to be a form, or for its meaning to be
worth establishing, the term for it need not be supposed to function as a name, proper or common,
as if it could only be explained by grammatically predicating a definition of the term treated as a
subject - expression, otherwise being inexplicable, or as if knowledge depended, at least partly, on
such definitions of the important terms. Moreover, though this might be disputed, in the Sophist he
appears to argue that there are some terms whose function is not to name, and which are therefore,
unlike some terms, not to be called onomata or 'names', but something different, rhemata or 'things
said' - these words are usually translated 'nouns' and 'verbs' respectively, as if Plato could be
assumed to be talking about grammatically distinguished types of word, but this assumption has no
evidence to back it.
Of these developments in Plato's thought Aristotle took only the very limited cognizance
represented in De Interpretatione, 1-4. He distinguishes noun and verb only grammatically and
semantically (e.g. verbs bear tense-inflexions and signify actions), and not in terms of different
functions or modes of occurrence in a proposition. Moreover, and this is less disputably significant,
Aristotle observes no connection between the distinction of noun and verb and the theory of Forms,
and makes no connection between it and his theory of categories. Aristotle intended the categories
to contain things the terms for which 'were said without combination', and recognized that truth and
falsity arose only with the combination or composition of terms, but this is the extreme limit of the
connection between the theory of the categories and the discussions of the Sophist.
At the same time Aristotle took little advantage of the other developments in Plato's thought
which attended his ceasing to separate the forms, namely his questioning of assumptions about
knowledge and its difference from opinion. In the latter part of the Theaetetus (195D—196C, 200E
—201C, and 208C—210A) questions are raised whose following up would undermine not only
assumptions which Aristotle also rejected in rejecting the theory of Forms, but also ones which he
relies on throughout his writings, first seen in the Posterior Analytics I. 33 and never advanced
upon by him.
It may well be that the properties of being separate things, being most real and being
imitated by other things were never part of the core of the meaning of the term "form", and that in
the Academy this always meant primarily something more like 'meaningful term', predicate' or
'sayable' - primarily, something expressed by a logos, rather than something denoted by name. In
this case, we should say rather, that the former properties were associated with the forms only as
propria, and this only for a confined middle period in Plato's writing life - a period when he did
hold the views about knowledge and about the Forms which are normally referred to as "Plato's
Theory of Ideas". This period was probably relatively short - Ryle (roughly speaking) offers us the
period 369-362 B.C., and his reasons are mostly independent of his theory that it is a prosecution of
Plato not of Socrates that occasioned and inspired the Phaedo and the Apology.
Plato was rather a temporarily eloquent than a longstanding and long convinced expositor
and defender of the doctrines traditionally called Platonic, and the significance of his coming to an
exclusive preference of words like 'participation' to ones like 'imitation' was lost on Aristotle.
Whereas what was imitated had to be separate, what was participated in could not be separate
(since Plato came to think that a separate thing could not be present in things, nor the whole of a
separate thing present in things at different places at the same time). Aristotle's ignorance of the
development in Plato's thought about the forms and about knowledge after the time when he,
Aristotle, was a student is only ill-explained, not, I think, uncertain.
The period when these developments in Plato's thought took place might be supposed to be
the period of some of Aristotle's longest labours and ?biggest? achievements, those of the Peri
Ideon, the logical works, the Rhetoric, and the Eudemian Ethics, together possibly with most of the
physical works.
We might suppose this period one in which Aristotle's views on the Forms early on became
relatively set and that he only started thinking on the topic again at some time after he developed
the conceptions of form found in Physics I. It would then appear curious and intriguing that, when
he did return to inquiries wider than the merely physical into substance, its causes and principles, as
he does in Metaphysics, L and Z (respectively before and after the development of his ideas about
focal meaning), he represents himself as resuming these inquiries at a point where he remembers,
presumably from long before, Plato as having left them off, as if thereby to honour Plato - at least
this is a possible construction of the evidence. The evidence for this is that he mentions Plato as,
like himself, giving pre-eminence to the natural kinds in allowing there to be Forms (at least where
sensible things were concerned) only in connection with these (1070a 18-21, cf. 1043b 18-23, cf.
1028b 18ff)—and even, it seems, as allowing the title substance to the sensible things themselves
(the third kind mentioned at 1028b 20).

VI.3. In certain respects Aristotle's rejection of 'Platonism' was less radical than Plato's own. I do
not now refer to the partial reversion in his thought towards Platonism which I will come to later
(VI.4), but to the fact that whereas Plato ceased to be occupied with the forms as objects of
knowledge in some strict sense, Aristotle remained so, taking the infimae species to be objects of
knowledge of a strict kind (partly intuitive, e.g. by induction, and partly demonstrative). Further, I
believe Aristotle took over one important bit of Plato's terminology, namely the term kath 'hauto,
making an important change by differentiating it in meaning and application from the word
"separate," but retaining significant parts of its Platonic meaning.
The use or uses of the term kath 'hauto (in Latin, per se) with which I am here concerned -
the ones where it occurs as a complement to the verb "to be" - are rather rarely exemplified in
Aristotle's text, unlike the three very common adverbial or quasi-modal uses of the term which he
explains in 73a 35-b5, 73b 10-24.
In 73b5-9, Aristotle says that what is kath 'hauto is "not said of a subject". The expression
"said of" I take to be used here in the same way as it is in the Categories; there I believe it is used
technically so that for A to be said of B means that A belongs essentially to B, that is [in the sense])
of being in the definition of B, or, if B is a first substance, in the definition of B's species. Hence,
the things which are kath 'hauto will be the 'categorial particulars' which I described in V.4. They
are, then, the primary subjects of essential predications - thus, "crimson" would refer in something
'not said of a subject' and 'existing kath 'hauto' in sentences like "Crimson is a colour" (but not in
ones like "Crimson is walking" or even "This walking thing is crimson"), and so would a term for a
first substance like "Socrates.”
However, in Zeta of the Metaphysics, Aristotle appears to identify what is kath 'hauto with
what is in the strictest sense an 'essence' (ti en einai) or form in the sense of essence; he takes it that
essence is not always kath 'hauto (1037a 22), presumably having in mind the essences of non-
substances and of accidental unities discussed in Z.4; and he takes it that nothing with parts is kath
'hauto, Semi-circles are parts of individual circles, not of the universal, circle, which [we seem
meant to take it] is presumably an essence and an eidos auto kath 'hauto (1037a 1-4).
In Z.6, at 1032a 5-6, Aristotle tells us that 'the things said kath 'hauto' are all one and the
same as their 'essences' (we might say, the same as 'what each is by definition', or as 'the definable
nature of each'), and he takes the converse to be true also. Hence, circle and human soul but not
man will be kath 'hauto existents.
In contrast, Plato, except sometimes when he uses the term to mean the opposite of
'relative', seems to mean by "existing kath 'hauto" something like existing independently - the term
literally means "according to itself" and is normally translated 'self-subsistent' - or much the same
as "separate" means when used of the Forms from 133A & C, it appears that what exists kath
'hauto could not exist in something.
The connection between these three uses of the term kath 'hauto seems to me a matter on
which one can only offer speculation.
My surmise is that, for both Aristotle and Plato, the kath 'hauto things existed 'though
themselves' in the sense that somehow, they were their natures or essences and did not depend for
existence on, or exist through any other nature.
This is what I meant when I spoke of Aristotle's retaining significant parts of the term's
Platonic meaning. Only, we must say that for Aristotle the identity between the kath 'hauto thing
and its nature is understood in a peculiar way, a way on which Miss Anscombe has sought to throw
some light. Initially, what I believe this meant for Aristotle is that for X to be its nature was for the
definition of the species of X to be predicable of it in just the way in which the definition of white
is not predicable of the white thing (Categories, 2a l9-33). Thus Socrates and white will each be
kath 'hauto, but white thing will not on this initial or earlier view of Aristotle's.
In contrast to what exists 'through itself' in this sense, there are in Aristotle's view, not only
accidental unities such as white thing existing through other things, e.g. though man where the
white things are men, but also matter and material parts. Matter and material parts will not exist
kath 'hauto but always through some eidos (species or form); Socrates' arm and even Socrates'
whole body or matter will only exist through Socrates' eidos. Notably, a magnitude such as M/2 +
M/22 + M/23 + M/24 and so on unendingly, that is, an infinity by division, does not exist through
itself (206b 15) but will only exist through a containing form, here the finite magnitude M (206b 5-
15, 207a 35-36).
Metaphysics, Z, is designed to bring together Aristotle's ideas about matter and form as
derived from physical studies with his new ideas about focal meaning and the views about
definition which he had developed in the period of his logical works and of the Peri Ideon.
Accordingly, there is no reason to suppose Z.6 to include any ideas about definition which do not
originate in the period of the logical works - rather its content and the presence of the technical
terms which it employs in the logical works also suggest that its ideas do derive from that period.
For this reason I have not hesitated to connect Z.6, and the meaning of kath 'hauto there, with the
doctrine of the Categories 2a 19ff. What happens in Zeta which is new, is that the doctrine that
each kath 'hauto thing is its essence is given a new application, because the numerically diverse
substances with parts which make of the natural kinds or species and are called tode ti are no longer
ranked amongst things existing kath 'hauto, and the terms for the natural kinds, unlike those for the
mathematical objects, are no longer taken to signify essences in the strictest sense. The reason he
gives is the curious one that their meaning includes a reference to a particular kind of matter. For
this development to occur Aristotle must first have come to take kath 'hauto things, which I said
were the primary subjects of essential predications, to be the primary subjects of definitions or
objects of definition (i.e. of definition in a strict sense) in such a way that the first substances were
no longer to be called kath 'hauto. In Metaphysics, K.2. we find being tode ti, separate, and kath
'hauto all listed as expected of the eternal and primary principles (1060b1), but in Zeta and Eta it is
form that appears as kath 'hauto, whereas it is the composite that is always separate. Here again
Aristotle has proceeded by dividing in meaning and application terms which Plato had united.

VI.4. I have reserved until now the most puzzling aspects of Aristotle's philosophy, namely what I
believe results from a partial revival of elements of Platonism in his thought.
 What seems to me clear is that, whereas in the period of the logical works Aristotle allowed
forms no kind of primacy, other than a logical one, this situation changed when he developed the
conceptions of matter and form which we find in Physics I, conceptions he developed in order to
describe the phenomena of substantial change. Whereas in the Categories it is the ultimate
particulars, individual horses and men, which are said to be 'substances, in the most important, first
and preferable sense of the word', in Metaphysics, Z.3, in contrast, when Aristotle is trying to find
what the now honorific title of 'substance' should be primarily applied to, he says of substance in
the sense in which these material ultimate particulars are substances "it may be dismissed: for it is
posterior". In Z.3, what he anticipates will be primary is substance in the sense of form (the
correlate of matter), which he takes to be an object of definition or definable nature (ti en einai).
Moreover, when one compares Z.8 with the Republic 597A, which both say that the Form is
not made, but which say respectively that what is made is the composite of form and matter and
that it is a particular thing of the kind being made, it is difficult to avoid suspecting that Aristotle
was conscious of some return to more 'Platonic' conceptions, a suggestion which I supported in
other ways at the end of VI.2. However, the return was only partial, and the view which emerges in
Metaphysics, Z, is complex. What Aristotle is forced to do is to allow the title 'substance' a dual
application (Z.15, 1039b 20ff). He cannot refuse this title to the composites of matter and form,
such as the individual men and horses, and it is only of these composites that he allows it to be said
without qualification that they are separate (1042a 29-31), which he has named as one of the marks
of primacy or substancehood. Moreover, they are an integral part of the scheme he presents,
because it is only in relation to them as subjects of predicates in the non-substance categories that
the basic forms are to be picked out. The point of Z.1 and Z.4-5 disappears completely if white is
regarded as just as eligible for the title 'substance' as the soul of man. The basic forms do not
include forms or 'species' in the non-substance categories, but correspond one-to-one to the infimae
species of natural substance, i.e. of the things called first substances in the Categories.
Because of this one-to-one correspondence with species terms (albeit only species of
substance), infimae species remain important, as they had before, in contrast to genera - (next part
of sentence suspect) although in a strange fashion species are now distinguished from the forms
(the word being the same, eidos, although the alternative word for forms, morphe, never means
species), or at least from the basic forms, inasmuch as it is not man but the soul of man which is to
be called substance in the sense of form. The reason for this one-to-one correspondence of the basic
forms with the species of natural substance reveals a second way in which the separate things
remain integral to the scheme Aristotle presents: it is one of the separate things that the forms have
to be the natures. Where separate things have different natures, that is, where they have different
necessary properties belonging to them by the definition of their nature or kind, there we have
different forms. As a result, the forms have to correspond one-to-one with the species or (which has
the same effect) with the differentiae (which in Z.12 Aristotle identifies with the forms), and not
with the genera. The natures of the natural (and separate) things have this prominence in Aristotle,
so as to be regarded as both logically prior and worthy of the title 'substance', because for Aristotle
the test of any metaphysical theory lies in the satisfactoriness or otherwise of its way of dealing
with the definition of natural things and explanation of natural phenomena - the role of forms or
natures in explanation is well exhibited in 333a 35-b22.
This much is relatively clear.
The puzzles which arise arise from an apparent attempt of Aristotle to apply the term tode ti
to these basic forms, and even it has been urged, to call them separate. To instance the most
puzzling thing which he says: in Metaphysics, Z.3, we are told that it belongs above all to substance
(ousia) to be 'separate' and tode ti (1029a 27f); he then proceeds to show that he understands that
this leaves form in the field as eligible for the title 'substance' - the form of a thing being identified
with what he calls the ti en einai of its species (the species name being in the dative). Yet what I
have said in earlier sections appears to make it certain that a form can be, for Aristotle, neither
separate nor tode ti.
Now, Aristotle does elsewhere (1070a 11f) call the correlate of matter, under the title nature
(phusis), tode ti. Accordingly, we can allow Z.3 to imply form to be tode ti. The passages I
appealed to in V.2 above make it unmistakable that this is a new and later usage in Aristotle, and
passages like 1033b 21-25 show that the older usage whereby tode ti may be translated 'ultimate
particular' survives alongside this new usage. Three theories seem possible about this new usage.
a) In Metaphysics, L, 1071a 27ff, Aristotle implies that one person's 'matter, form and moving
cause' are different from another's, and the natural interpretation of this is that he is speaking here
of what Geach calls individualised forms. However, where such things are traceable in Z. (only at
1039b 24f), they are contrasted with what Aristotle elsewhere in Zeta calls forms, and are not
referred to as forms. Moreover, even in the passage in Lambda which I alluded to above (1070a
11f), since the term tode ti occurs in apposition to hexis “this particular state" or "state of a
particular kind"), and the doctrine expressed is intended to be that first found in Physics I, I do not
take individualised forms to be meant.
b) It is arguable that "Form is tode ti" means "Form is that in virtue of which what is tode ti is
tode ti" which is something Aristotle tells us in De Anima (412a 6-9). However, this reads
unnaturally as a gloss of Z.3, and I believe Cherniss is right to reject this view of Ross.
c) The remaining account, which is the one I propose, is that for Aristotle the property of being
tode ti came to be associated with that of being horismenon or definite; this latter property seems
connected with the absence of vagueness or of any lack of definiteness in what is being spoken of
or its boundaries, and this with being an object of knowledge. This connection is most clearly seen
in ?.8, 1017b 17-22, and appears also in 1033b 22f (cf. 3l8b 15-18 where signifying privations,
which are not for Aristotle objects of true definition, is opposed to signifying tode ti); and in Z.3
itself, the assertion about being tode ti immediately follows one explaining how particular matter is
not essentially any of those things in the categories 'by which being is determined' (horistai). Thus,
I believe that Aristotle has a second use of the expression tode ti, whereby being a tode is the
opposite of being 'indefinite' in the way Aristotle often says that matter is indefinite ( aoriston). In
this sense, both forms and composites will be tode ti, being free from indefiniteness and being
objects of knowledge (intuitive and demonstrative) in the requisite ways.
Since the passage in Z.3 (1029a 27f) allows, if barely, of an interpretation whereby a form
could be called substance even if it only satisfied one of the conditions, i.e. those of being separate
and being tode ti, it does not require us to suppose forms to be separate. 1040a 31 which implies
that some forms are separate can be interpreted to refer to nous or to a unique God. It should be
noted that these two are the only passages Cherniss can appeal to. Now, in the sense in which forms
are tode ti, it seems that a thing's being tode ti leaves open the question whether it is separate, or
exists apart, or not (1070a 11-20); further, whether any of the forms of natural substances are
separate is spoken of as an open question in both Zeta and Eta. Hence to take either passage to
imply the existence of separate forms for natural substances would be to multiply difficulties. If one
supposed there to be a sense in which a universal could be 'separate' one would need to explain why
a universal which was tode ti would not automatically be thereby separate, a question which there
is not the least sign of Aristotle's having thought of. More importantly, apart from the fact that the
evidence about the meaning of "separate" in Aristotle which I amassed in Sections I-III above tells
powerfully against Cherniss's exegesis, it is also true that the whole course of discussion from Z.7
to Z.17 militates against either mathematical forms or ti en einai's, or species of living thing, or
their souls or natures (cf. Z.17) having separate existence. Hence I do not accept Cherniss's view
that these two passages show the presence in Aristotle of some metaphysical notion of separateness
independent of the spatial sense.
A final difficulty is the uniform habit of Metaphysics Z, and H, of speaking of form, as well
as of matter and the composite of matter and form, as 'a subject' (hupokeimenon). I take the reason
for this to be that forms, corresponding to the infimae species, are proper subjects of essential
predications, which apply to some things having the form but not to others (at least, it is because
this is not true of genera that in Zeta they are debarred from being called substances). Perhaps we
can say further that Aristotle has in mind that, in any predication of a non-essential property of a
sensible individual, what he would call an indefinite predication (exemplified in 'a man is white') is
made of a form, species or nature; that is, a predication is made, albeit one which needs the addition
of a word like "every" or "some" before its truth conditions are definite. This would accord with the
notions Miss Anscombe sees in Aristotle, whereby no individual can be individuated or spoken of
except as falling under some concept of a nature or kind of thing.
In the work on motion (Physics V-VIII), Aristotle calls the termini of non-substantial
change when affirmatively expressed hupokeimena, e.g. health and disease (229a 30ff). He explains
hupokeimenon here as what is affirmatively expressed (225a 5-7), i.e. white and black as opposed
to not-white and not-black. This makes hupokeimenon mean much what tode ti seemed to mean in
3l8b 15ff, where signifying privations (I suggested because they were indefinite, aoriston) seemed
to be taken as an opposite of signifying tode ti. But it would be awkward to suppose this the usage
of Zeta, because it is incompatible with accepting, which Aristotle does in Zeta, matter as
hupokeimenon.

NOTES----------------------

1. Logic and Knowledge, pp.107-9.

2. See p.52f above.
3. The place of a thing is separable (in the sense that it can have the thing in it spatially
removed from it) - 212a 1f - but saying this does not make Aristotle include places as
separate things elsewhere when he uses the term.
4. Three Philosophers, p.80.
5. Traditionally one would not call a particular anything which can come into existence a
second time. Yet where Aristotle discusses a person's health before and after an illness
(228a 10-20), he is uncertain whether there is numerically the same state (hexis) and only
clear that there is not the same activity (energeia) after the illness. (Where there is the same
activity, he thinks there is certainly the same state).
6. In this passage, he says that these terms can be predicated, but only 'accidentally' and not
'naturally' (prephuke) (cf. 8lb 23-29 and 83a 1-18) and also that they can never be
predicated universally with truth - "Cleon is Cleon" is not a universal predication for
Aristotle, since predications of individuals are without qualification, not universal or
particular [See V.3, under (b)]. His conception of form and matter requires that the name of
the composite be predicable of certain matter (referred to indefinitely, i.e. without using a
substance concept).
7. Other references include l035b 28-32, 995b 31, and the passages I mention below, l07la l9-
24 and l00a l6f. One could compare 2l4a l2, 3l7b 30f, 3l9a l2.
8. See p.54, n.1?
9. Reference and Generality, p.47.
10. Compare the exposition of a remark of Aquinas which Geach gives in Reference and
Generality (l962), p.180.
11. For this wide use of the term pragma, see also l03a 9-ll, l46a 3-4, l034b 20-24, and l037a
l9-20.
12. See footnote l, p.87 below, for some further account of Aristotle's use of the term
"numerically one". [Editor’s Note: This might refer to other work on Aristotle that Braine
separated this paper from.]
13. The oddity in these questions is not that of asking why things which are A's are A's. One
can ask why married men have married, since any married man could have not married, and
there is a disjunction of reasons why men marry.
14. "On the Relations of Universals and Particulars" reprinted in Logic and Knowledge, e.g. at
p.123f.
15. One might want to conjoin the condition that no particular could come into existence twice.
16. I qualify this view in VI.3 below. I believe that some of Aristotle's obscurities spring from
the fact that in "crimson is a colour" "crimson" would refer to a kath 'hauto existent, but, in
"crimson is walking" or "This walking thing is crimson", it would refer to an accident or
something kata sumbebekos. (qv. 73b 6-9, Topics I. 9, and l03lb 22-8).
17. Numerical unity or numerical sameness always means for Aristotle sameness in the sense of
some kind of identity - as opposed to specific and generic unity or sameness which are
forms of resemblance. However, in Topics, l03a 8-l0, Aristotle says there is this kind of
identity present wherever there are two names for the same pragma, and says that mantle
and cloak exemplify numerical unity. According to this first definition even genera could
enjoy numerical unity. Yet in the Categories lb6ff and 3b12, the argument excludes this,
seeming to limit numerical unity to what I call categorial particulars; so here we have a
second meaning for "numerically one". 4a 13 may exemplify either meaning. Then in ?.6
there is a third meaning: here, the numerically one is what is one in matter, so that
substances (i.e. ultimate particulars) alone can be numerically one. Only in the second and
third meanings does the term express any notion of individuality.
18. Somewhat similarly, we could say "a particular Napoleon" but not in the normal mode of
occurrence of the term "Napoleon".
19. I leave it open whether the distinction should be made in a Fregean manner, implying some
unsaturatedness in supposedly universal or 'concept' terms which is lacking to supposedly
'object' terms - the terms being simple terms. This the Tractatus would exclude. However,
the Tractatus does not require that in 3x 3y 3z 3w (x y z w), where the variables take only
simples as values, the quantifiers have the same range: in effect, he does not exclude type
distinctions (to be shown not said), but only the basing of type distinctions on
considerations of the kind appealed to in Principia and perhaps better explained by Frege.
20. I note in passing that Cherniss seems to take the opposite view of Aristotle in Aristotle's
Criticism of Plato and the Academy, p.345f, n.253.
21. Except for the secondary use of term ousia to mean any definition (i.e. definiens) or
definable nature, a use very common in the Analytics, but absent in the Categories. In
Metaphysics, Z.15, Aristotle identifies substance in the sense of form with logoi of a certain
kind, but only certain logoi are basic enough to be or express forms of ousiai.
22. The ideas about place in the Categories may be presumed to antedate Aristotle's
development of the elaborate theories about place which are represented in Physics IV as
well as his criticisms of the Timaeus.
23. I note for the sake of the general reader that the term kath 'hauto occurs in Aristotle in four
inflexions, according as it agrees with a neuter or feminine, a singular or plural noun - thus,
"of itself" is kath hauto (neut.) or kath 'hauten (fem.), and "of themselves" kath 'hauta
(neut.) or kath 'hautus (fem.)
24. The unexplained puzzle is why Aristotle's logical works show no trace of influence by the
Timaeus or knowledge of it. If it is indeed a middle dialogue, it would be strange if it did
not antedate some of the logical works; and Aristotle got to know it well and to be
influenced by it at some stage.
25. cf. R.C. Cross, "Logos and Forms in Plato". Mind 1954.
26. If De Gen. et Cor. is later than any part of the Physics, and, as some of its language
suggests, close in time to Metaphysics L, then the last will be later than any part of the
Physics.
27. Qv. Footnote 1. p.67. Some passages would accord well with allowing only primary
substances which are definite (i.e. are not matter or material parts) to be kath 'hauto (73b 5-
9 itself, 203a5, 206b 15) but this seems impossible from the other passages I cite below.
28. In 1033b 29, Aristotle seems to use the term Platonically to refer to 'Platonic' doctrines
(compare 203a 5).
29. Three Philosophers, pp.32-36, 42-45.
30. Aristotle also calls the present (to nun) in the strict sense something 'said kath 'hauto' to
contrast it with 'the present said kath 'heteron' (i.e. 'the present thus called in virtue of
another', i.e. 'in virtue of containing the present in the strict sense') - 233b 32-35. It is not
easy to distinguish when Aristotle is using the term kath 'hauto purely informally, and when
in technical sense.
31. In saying 'definition in a strict sense', I have in mind, for instance, that what exists only
'potentially' lacks definition in a strict sense, and does not exist kath 'hauto. Thus the infinite
never exists kath 'hauto (206b 15)
32. Aristotle's Criticism of Plato and the Academy, p.351f, n.261.
33. Cf. 209b 8.
34. Cherniss takes a different view because he believes Aristotle to deny the existence of
knowledge of particulars (op.cit. p.345f, n.253).
35. I note that the Oxford translation of the Physics contains a mistranslation at 194b 12-13:
what Aristotle's text says the physicist is concerned with is not 'things with separate forms'
but 'things separate by form' (chorista eidei).
36. Op.cit., pp.366-8
37. My view thus differs from that of Cherniss (op.cit. p.366).
38. Three Philosophers, pp.8, 32ff, 44-46.
39. cf. Geach, Reference and Generality pp.39, 43-6, 178-180, on individual names needing a
nominal essence, and general terms as logical subjects.
40. Aristotle seems to use the term Platonically to refer to 'Platonic' doctrines (compare 203a 5).
41. Three Philosophers, pp.32-36, 42-45.
42. Aristotle also calls the present (to nun) in the strict sense something 'said kath 'hauto' to
contrast it with 'the present said kath 'heteron' (i.e. 'the present thus called in virtue of
another', i.e. 'in v€ ‚ a