Matthew Boyle relates Kant’s account of cognition to Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory of substance. On Aristotle’s view, the form of a substance is the ground of its existence. To know this form is to know those of its properties without which it cannot exist. These characterize the substance as it is in itself. Such knowledge of form amounts to knowledge of a thing in itself, and the view that such knowledge is possible for us might be called formal realism. Kant thinks that this requires a type of mind human beings do not have: a non-discursive intellect. Boyle argues that Kant transposes Aristotle’s hylomorphic framework from a formal-realist to a formal-idealist register, and so “internalizes” the form-matter contrast. Instead of speaking of forms of being qua being Kant speaks of forms of objects insofar as they are knowable by a finite intellect. For Kant, just as for Aristotle, the form of a thing is its essence (and thereby the ground of its intelligibility). But for things whose form is ideal – appearances – knowledge of form cannot amount to knowledge of the ground of their existence. It can only amount to knowledge of the ground of their knowability.

In the first paragraph of the modern translation of the Rationale divinorum officiorum of William Durand (c. 1230–1296) are markers of the change this book seeks to chart. One is immediately visible. The translator, Timothy M. Thibodeau, chose to distinguish through the use of italics what he then identifies, through the use of brackets, as biblical texts. Those italics and those brackets do not simply mark the modern sense of “source,” of a particular relationship between Durand and Scripture, that postdates Durand himself. They distinguish Scripture and, in so doing, obscure Durand’s understanding of revelation and its relationship to “ecclesiasticis officiis, rebus ac ornamentis.” There in the opening paragraph of the Prologue and throughout the Rationale, Durand presents a different relationship entirely among ecclesiasticis officiis, rebus and ornamentis, and biblical history, prophecies, psalms, Gospels, and Epistles.

Plotinus provided an explanation of evil which was original and philosophically challenging. While deriving everything from one source, the absolute transcendent Good, Plotinus does not trivialize the phenomenon of evil or reduce it to human moral deviation, as do other philosophical and religious approaches, but traces evil back to a metaphysical principle, matter, the source of evil in the world and in human souls. In Chapter 11 I present Plotinus’ account of evil and discuss to what extent it can be defended against a series of criticisms formulated by Plotinus’ successors, in particular by Proclus.

This chapter focuses on the core issues concerning the doctrine of creation that were debated by early scholastic theologians. These include the view that God brought the world into being from nothing; that God created everything, all at once; and that creation occurred at the beginning of time.

In this chapter, we explore how electric and magnetic fields behave inside materials. The physics can be remarkably complicated and messy but the end result are described by a few, very minor, changes to the Maxwell equations. This allows us to understand various properties of materials, such as conductors.

The chapter spells out the homeostatic model of how the soul is involved in perception introduced in Chapter 6, while addressing two main challenges for it. First, I argue that while the physiological details are not easy to tease out, there is no principal reason against Aristotle’s extension of the model from touch to other sense modalities. More importantly, I argue that we can understand the role of the perceptive soul as an extension of the model developed for the nutritive soul in An. 2.4 and based on Aristotle’s art analogy (from Phys. 2 and elsewhere). The upshot is that the basic perceptual acts are underlaid by bodily processes non-cognitively controlled by the soul. But while homeostasis is the aim of nutrition, in perception it only becomes a means for achieving something else, namely discrimination. The chapter closes by showing how the interpretation developed in this book pays off when it comes to understanding Aristotle’s two notoriously difficult concluding accounts: the account of perception as a reception of forms without the matter in An. 2.12 and the summarizing account of the cognitive soul in An. 3.8.

This chapter discusses the sections of finite and absolute mechanics of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature which are predicated upon his theory of space and time. It starts with the emergent notions of matter and movement before giving the details of the mechanical analysis in a close reading. Giving a foundation for Kepler’s laws is not only a touchstone of Hegel’s theory but is an integral rung in a system of steps building natural science from space and time. The chapter exposes three main strands of argument: dimensional realization of time and space in movement of matter, striving towards inner and outer centers of extended bodies, and the realization of a system of bodies in motion which materializes a complexity paralleling not only of the tripartite system general-particular-individual of his logic but additionally includes two particulars – as necessary in Hegel’s account of nature. Lastly, the chapter comments briefly on the relationship to Kant, Newton, and classical mechanics, as well as on modern aspects. As it demonstrates, Hegel’s treatment of mechanics is not an idiosyncratic way of presenting celestial mechanics but contains radical, quite modern metaphysical concepts which are not only interesting in their own right but furnish a key to the understanding of his system.

This chapter investigates Shelley’s fascination with issues of communication, especially his engagement with concepts of action at a distance, “the action of one object on another regardless of the presence or absence of an intervening medium” (Oxford English Dictionary). Shelley’s attempts to overcome distances of space and time were a feature of his correspondence, especially during his years in Italy. Action at a distance also informs his representation of a materialized physical universe in early works like Queen Mab (1813) and provides a foundation for his later accounts of political communication in The Mask of Anarchy (1819). I suggest that Shelley’s account of unmediated action at a distance coalesces with more recent treatments of matter and mediation in quantum physics and especially in Karen Barad’s account of material entanglements in which “matter [is] a dynamic and shifting entanglement of relations, rather than a property of things.” Shelley’s poetry itself functions as a form of Baradian apparatus with the facility to offer “agential cuts,” providing moments of insight within intra-active material systems. In these poems, Shelley presents the universe as one continuous material system, which enables unmediated communication across any distance, and which at times of political crisis enables instantaneous solidarity and resistance.

In the first two books of his massive commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (in the third and final redaction), Buridan pays ample attention to the composition of natural substances. Natural substances are composed of matter and (substantial) form. But what exactly does Buridan mean by the notions of “matter” and “(substantial) form”? Does matter possess some kind of being of its own? Is it pure potency? Does matter somehow possess a disposition (or “appetite”) to receive substantial forms, and what precisely are such forms? Buridan also offers a detailed account of the relation between natural substances and artificial things. How do artificial things (such as houses, tables, and axes) relate to the natural substances of which they are (somehow) made? What kind of change is involved in making an artifact and what kind of form makes an artifact the thing it is?

This chapter examines the scope of federal judicial power. Chapter III of the Australian Constitution sets out a comprehensive regime for the exercise of federal judicial power. This means that federal judicial power can be exercised only in the way prescribed by Chapter III. There is no comprehensive definition of ‘judicial power’, although there are some functions that are always judicial in nature and some functions that are never judicial in nature. Federal jurisdiction – that is, the exercise of federal judicial power – is limited to the subject-matters set out sections 75 and 76 of the Constitution and also limited to ‘matters’ respecting those subject-matters.

Chapter 4 argues that those material objects that, in the Categories, would fall under the category of substance qualify as hylomorphic compounds (i.e. they have matter and form). It presents three arguments in defence of the thesis that artefacts have forms. The first argument is that artefacts undergo genuine unqualified coming-to-be (or substantial change), as opposed to the mere acquisition of a property by a substrate. Related to this argument is the crucial Aristotelian distinction between per se unity and accidental unity. The second argument is based on Aristotle’s application of the ekeininon-rule to artefacts, which reveals that the identity of an artificial object cannot be reduced to its matter. The third argument is that Aristotle’s application of the synonymy principle to artefacts shows that the form in the mind of the artisan is identical to the form present in the actual artefact, insofar as it is thought, and that the artisan’s use of tools represents the stage at which the artefact’s form is in potentiality.

‘Style’ is a comparatively rare instance of Pater’s direct theorising; even by the standards of his other overtly theoretical interventions, the essay stands out for the breadth and importance of its subject and its capstone prominence within Appreciations, one of the two most influential volumes of literary criticism the nineteenth century produced. Scholars have often turned to ‘Style’ as if it were the author’s manifesto or summa on the subject, yet the essay tends to disappoint precisely on these terms. If ‘Style’ is the key to Pater’s aesthetic principles, most readers have found the lock jammed; or worse, they have concluded that the essay betrays the essential nature of his aestheticist vision. By contrast, this chapter argues that, while elusive, ‘Style’ is in fact a lucid and authentic intervention that at once tacitly responds to several of the most influential writers and critics of Pater’s generation (Wilde, Arnold, Saintsbury, Newman), while clarifying – rather than contradicting – his own convictions on the relationship between literary beauty or ‘perfection’, and the idea of transcendent ‘truth’.

The introduction defines the two key terms of the book, “matter” and “making.” For the early English court poets, “matter” was a relative term. In its most concrete sense, it denoted the pre-existing textual sources that a poet used as the basis for his poetry, but it also referred, in a broader and Aristotelian sense, to whatever materials a poem was understood to be made from. “Making referred to the set of techniques that early writers used to rework matter into poetry, and it had its origins in classical rhetoric: a poet was said to begin by “inventing” (or identifying) matter on which to work, and only afterwards to “dispose” (or restructure) that matter into a new form and shape. “Making” differs from the Scholastic model of authorship, which stresses the authority (or auctoritas) of the writer, and it also differs from early modern theories of authorship, which stress the autonomy of the literary work. It persists as the prevailing method for writing poetry even to the reign of Elizabeth I, although literary attitudes towards matter in particular begin to shift during the sixteenth century.

The idea of a material constitution has become influential for at least two reasons. The first reason is the absence of coincidence between the scope of the rules of the formal or written constitution and the wider field of constitutional rules. Second, the idea of a material constitution also comes into play as some authors will define the constitution by a specific content or ’matter’. This chapters aims at clarifying the uses of the reference to a constitutional matter by exploring the form versus matter distinction. The core of our case can be summed up as follows: the form of the constitution is law; the matter of the constitution is politics. Politics, as a social activity, influences law as much as law, in turn, can govern political action to a certain degree. In this process, legal substance is as relevant as legal form. What matters, thus, is a relative degree of fitness between political activity (or matter) and law. A (sufficiently) ’good’ constitution allows for political activity to take place, while shaping it in keeping with basic constitutionalist values and principles. Such a constitution can be defined as a principled instrument of self-government.

This chapter is a broad outline of the timeline of the Big Bang and the formation of the universe and solar system. It discusses the relationship between energy and matter, and how elements are formed from simpler elements due to the application of energy and gravity. This chapter emphasizes the large scales of time and space, and also how energy and matter are distributed across the vastness of universe. Finally, it discusses our solar system and similarities to other distant solar systems with planets in the ‘habitable zones’, and the potential for life outside Earth.

In GC II 5, Aristotle proceeds through a long and complicated argument against the view that there is a single primary body, concluding that a single simple body cannot function as the matter or origin of the other simple bodies. In doing so, he responds to a possible objection to his own account, defended in GC II 4, and confirms that each of the simple bodies is an origin for each of the others. This essay brings attention to the role of contrarieties in Aristotle’s refutation of theories that maintain a single primary body, either as the matter or the material origin of other simple bodies: given the role of contrarieties in explaining simple bodies, Aristotle finds that a single primary body is incompatible with the existence of change. By highlighting the role of contrarieties in explaining change, Aristotle leaves room for the primary contraries to function as a kind of matter, although the details of his account are not explored in GC II 5.

After arguing that each of the elements can come to be out of each of the three others, the bulk of GC II 4 presents and compares the speed and ease of three mechanisms by which the elements change into one another. While scholars have thought these three mechanisms are narrowly focused on individual changes, i.e., the three ways an element can change into each of the others, on my interpretation, the three mechanisms describe every possible complete cycle by which all four elements come to be, either singly or pairwise. Thus, I understand Aristotle’s interest in speed and ease as an interest in which mechanism generates all four elements most quickly and easily. My interpretation shows Aristotle builds on passages other scholars and translators have deemed textual oddities or mistakes and has the additional advantage of showing that Aristotle’s interest in the relative speed and ease of cycles of elemental transformation lays the groundwork for his metaphysical and scientific projects in GC II 10 and the Meteorology.