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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Philosophical Instructions Lesson Forty-Six: Matter and Form Views of the Philosophers on Matter and Form We have thus far taken up the discussion of three kinds of immaterial substance and one kind of material substance, and we have established their existence.

However, we previously reported that the Aristotelians held that corporeal substances are composed of two other substances called matter and form, the former being the aspect of the potentiality of bodies and the latter being the aspect of the actuality of bodies. We shall now review this theory.

Before anything, we must bear in mind that matter, in the sense of the ground for the appearance of a new existent and that which receives its actuality, is accepted by nearly all philosophers, as, for example, water is said to be the matter for steam, soil for plants and animals, and grains and pits for their plants.

An existent which is the matter for other existents but which does not itself appear from some prior matter, in technical terms is said to possess ‘original existence’ ( wujūd ibdā‘ī ) and to be without need of a material cause, and it is called the ‘matter of matters’ ( māddat al-mawādd ) or prime matter ( hayūlā ūlā ).

The difference of opinion between the Aristotelians and others is over whether prime matter is a substance possessing actuality which can be considered a kind of corporeal substance, or is a pure potentiality without any kind of actuality whose only property is the ability to accept corporeal forms. The opinion of the Aristotelians is the latter, and this was also accepted by most of the great Islamic philosophers, including Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā and Mīr Dāmād.

In many instances, Ṣadr al-Muta’allihīn has followed the same line, but in some cases he called hayūlā a ‘privative thing’ ( amr ‘adamī ) and in some cases he referred to it as a shadow which the intellect considers for corporeal existents, but which does not have true existence, as the concept of ‘shadow’ is abstracted from weak luminescence and has no existence beyond that of light.1 There are also some scholars who consider it incorrect to attribute the above-mentioned position to Aristotle.2 On the assumption of the existence of prime matter as a substance lacking actuality, it would seem inappropriate to consider matter and form alongside bodies all equivalently as kinds of substances.