Abstract

This thesis attempts to elucidate the argument against the substantial status of artifacts found in Aristotle's Metaphysics. It argues that since there is no evidence in the Metaphysics to warrant a reader's inferring that all living entities are substances, we cannot appeal to any of the factors that are exclusively applicable to living entities as criteria of substantiality. By analyzing the connection between the argument and the context , we establish that a substance is somehow an "eternal" actuality. ;Although art is a principle which exists potentially in the mind of an artisan and nature is a principle which exists actually in the form of a parent, this distinction is inadequate for determining the ontological status of artifacts; for the form of an off spring exists potentially in the parent, just as the form of an artifact exists potentially in the artisan. But, in the De Anima and in the Generation of Animals we discover that, in contrast to "potency" , Aristotle introduces principle of "power" , which is somehow both an actuality and potentiality at the same time. And the mark of this "power" is that it can actualize its potentiality by itself--the process which we shall call "self-realization". ;Because the same active dynamis exists in the male parent , in the motion of semen and in the principle of growth --that is, because the active dynamis can be transmitted from one generation to another--it is possible for the form, understood as an active dynamis, of some living entities to exist as an "eternal" actuality; for no such dynamis exists in some mules and spontaneously generated animals. Accordingly, since the principle of art is a potentiality, and not an active dynamis, products of art, including artifacts, are not substances but merely things