Abstract

If form qualifies as substance, as it is claimed in Metaphysics, then we seem to have a problem: a form appears to be a relative, while evidently no relative is a substance. At any rate, Aristotle had held in the Categories that no primary substance could be a relative; so, if it turns out that form in the Metaphysics is primary substance, then either Aristotle has contradicted himself or else he has revised his categorial ontology to the point where he no longer maintains even that x's being a substance precludes x's being a relative. If, on the other hand, the categories are by the time of the Metaphysics no longer understood to be mutually exclusive of one another, then the categorial framework itself seems fundamentally in jeopardy; that would be in itself an alarming conclusion, since Aristotle appeals to the doctrine of categories repeatedly in the Metaphysics, where the clear impression is that he continues in that work to uphold it in the main. On the entirely credible assumption, then, that the Metaphysics retains the doctrine of categories articulated in the Categories and the Organon, we seem left with the other, unhappy alternative, that form, as primary substance, is a also a relative - if, that is, it can be shown that every form is a relative