Abstract

Of course, as scholars have long known, this example has serious limitations. For one thing, a substantial form, as the scholastics understood it, is much more dynamic than a mere shape. For example, the substantial form of an oak tree somehow explains how and why an oak tree can do everything that it does. So the substantial form of an oak tree could not be something as simple or crude as its shape. Nevertheless, the example of the bronze statue does have the virtue of illustrating one of the chief advantages of hylomorphism as a philosophy of the human person. Although we can talk about the bronze and the shape of the statue, respectively, it still seems correct to say that the statue is exactly one thing, not two things. Likewise, although we can talk about the matter and the form of a human being, the hylomorphist insists that a human being is exactly one thing, not two things accidentally conjoined.