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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2011
In this chapter, I characterize Aristotle’s groundbreaking work on ontological categories, and his two analyses of what it is to be an individual substance. Based on this characterization, I then list a set of three conditions that a theory of substance must meet to qualify as a neo-Aristotelian theory of substance. Several other conditions that characterize Aristotle’s theory of substance are also listed, but I judge these to be inessential to a neo-Aristotelian theory of substance. I then turn to an examination of three contemporary or near-contemporary neo-Aristotelian theories of substance, with the aim of showing that they all satisfy the three essential conditions of being neo-Aristotelian theories, and I am able to show that all three also share at least some of the other features of Aristotle’s theory of substance.
Aristotle on substance and ontological categories
Neo-Aristotelianism in metaphysics is an extension of and/or in imitation of Aristotle’s metaphysics. A neo-Aristotelian theory of substance, then, is one that is an extension of and/or is in imitation of Aristotle’s views about substance. I begin, therefore, with a brief account of what Aristotle had to say about substance.
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