Study Notes of Ross’ commentaries. Z7: How is a natural thing, such as a man, produced?
Natural becoming: the “from which” is matter, which is capable both of being or not being.
How is an artistic production, such as a healthy man, produced?
Artistic becoming: the artistic production presupposes the presence of the form of the product in the soul of the artist. Health is produced (a) by thinking of the conditions of health and (b) when the thought is complete, the making (i.e. the process toward health) begins. The genesis has two stages, thinking and making.
How is a spontaneous production, the heat in the body, produced?
Spontaneous becoming: the spontaneous productions starts the making in artistic production, e.g. the heat in the body is either a part of followed by a part of health.
Thus some part of the product must pre-exist, e.g. matter.
While becoming presupposes both a privation and a substratum, it is said to proceed from the privation, e.g. sick, rather from the substratum, e.g. man. So strictly speaking, becoming does not come from man, since the “from which” must change and not persist.
Z8
To make a “this” is to make it out of the substratum.
Matter does not come to be: the substratum is not made, for, if so, it would be made out of something else and so ad infinitum.
Form does not come to be: the form is not made, either, for, if so, it would have to be divisible into matter and form. The form is a “such” not a “this.” In making, a “this such” is made out of a “this.” The whole “this,” e.g. Callias, is analogous to “this bronze sphere.”
Is there any Form apart from particulars? Forms do nothing to explain becomings or substance, and are not to be viewed as self-subsistent substances.
The individual is “such a form in this matter,” where matter is what differentiates individuals identical in forms.” Therefore it is the combination that comes to be.
Z9
Why is there a difference between things produced with spontaneity and with art (e.g. health) and things not produced with spontaneity and with art (e.g. a house)?
Well, the reason is to be found in the matter involved. The matter of the former is capable of being moved by itself, whereas the latter requires an external mover.
Study Notes on Burnyeat’s Map Z.7-9. Burnyeat argues that Aristotle made the insertion when revising an earlier draft of Z. He provides various reasons for thinking Z7-9 a later insertion and refutes the possible objections to his “Insertion Hypothesis.”
Burnyeat aims to consider how the later insertion of Zeta 7-9 would affect our reading of Z as a whole.
The origin purpose of Z7-9
What was Z7-9 written for? The main theme, the thread that runs all the way through the three chapters and binds them together, is the “synonymy principle:” when something comes to be, producer and product are the same in form. The synonymy principle is first affirmed for natural becomings and then for artistic becoming.
The phrase hupokeimenon, which Aristotle used at the beginning of the chapter to pick out the matter (1032a17), would normally be used for the privation from which change starts.
Z8 mounts an argument for the ungenerability for both form and matter.
In the end of Z9, where seems to be a good conclusion to write this essay for: it is a peculiarity of substantial being that it has to be the product of a prior actual substantial being of the same kind.
Reasons for the insertion of Z7-9
Z7-9 make for easier reading than Z10-11. In Z7-9 we are given a diachronic view of the artifacts and substantial beings that Z10-11 study from a static or synchronic perspective, where scholars break their heads over just how far Aristotle means to push the idea that definition is of form without matter. Now the temporal priority of form without matter in Z7’s medical example is much easier to grasp. If the final product is what it is because of the way it came to be, and it is form that explains how it came to be, it comes reasonable to say that form, and form alone, explains what the product is.
As the form of a substance is not produced, so are other categories.
