The distinction between form (shape) and matter (material) belongs to the oldest and most fruitful insights of philosophy. Aristotle formulated it, and to this day it has lost none of its force. The form is the determining principle — that which makes a thing what it is. The matter is the determinable principle — that which is determined by the form. The same letters can constitute a poem or a shopping list: the “matter” is the same, but the “form” — the arrangement, the meaning — is fundamentally different.
In inanimate things the unity of shape and matter is rather external: a table is wood in the shape of a table; the form comes from the carpenter. In living beings, however, the shape pervades the matter from within. The soul — the living form of a living being — is not one part alongside other parts, but that which makes the body alive and a whole. One cannot “extract” the soul and keep the rest — without it there is no living body, but only a corpse (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 146—162).
For the question of personhood this distinction has an immediate consequence: matter alone does not explain the human being. Matter has no direction, no end, no order of itself. From atoms one can make molecules, from molecules cells — but from cells one cannot make a thought, no free act of the will, no love. The human essential form — the spiritual soul — is the sufficient ground for the fact that the human being is not merely a thing but a person. This doctrine is called hylomorphism (Gr. hyle = matter, morphe = shape) and was further developed by Thomas Aquinas.
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: What is human personhood? (esp. 4.3)
Form
The determining principle of a being; that whereby something is what it is (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι). In the case of the human person: the rational principle of life (the spiritual soul). The form is the counter-concept to matter: whereas matter is the determinable principle, the form is the determining one.
In the hylomorphic understanding of the human being, the soul is the form of the body — not a spirit that inhabits a body, but the principle of life that informs and animates the body from within. The human soul is at once the form of the body and a spiritual substance that transcends the body (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 132–140).
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate concept: Form and Matter
- Subordinate concepts: Nature
Ontological relations:
- distinct from: matter
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: Personhood
Ontological assignment: Form (shape) and matter are (according to the ontology) mutually exclusive classes. The form is the determining principle (actuality), the matter the determinable one (potency). The spiritual soul is the essential form of the human person.
See also: Matter, Form and Matter, Soul, Body, Body-Soul Unity, Substance, Nature, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas
Form and Matter
Form and matter are the hylomorphic constitutive principles of being (cf. Bexten 2017, Ch. 4.3). The form (μορφή / εἶδος) is the determining principle: that whereby something is what it is (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι). Matter (ὕλη) is the determinable principle: that which is determined by the form. In the case of the human person the form is the rational principle of life — the spiritual soul — and the matter is the body. This doctrine, hylomorphism, goes back to Aristotle and was made fruitful for the ontology of the person by Thomas Aquinas. The unity of form and matter grounds substance as an ens per se — a whole that exists through itself.
Ontological classification: Subordinate concepts: Form, Matter, Body; chapter reference: Ch. 4.3
See also
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Aristotle: Metaphysics, VII (Z), ch. 7–9 (form and matter as constitutive principles of being)
- Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae, I, q. 76, a. 1 (the spiritual soul as the essential form of the body)