Gerson, 'Substance and Separation in Aristotle', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9512
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9512-gerson-substance

@@@@95.12.25, Spellman, Substance and Separation in Aristotle

Lynne Spellman, <i>Substance and Separation in Aristotle</i>.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. ix + 131.
$49.95. 0-521-47147-8.
  Reviewed by Lloyd P. Gerson -- University of Toronto
     gerson@epas.utoronto.ca

In the last few years, there have appeared in English a large
number of monographs on Aristotle's <i>Metaphysics</i> including
works by Gill, Halper, Lewis, Loux, Scaltsas, and Witt.  If one
adds to these the recent collections of essays, conference
papers, and the steady stream of articles, it would seem as if
the study of Aristotle's great work is in the midst of a serious
revival or at least that it has reached a new peak of intensity. 
A curious feature of much of this literature is the
predictability of its focus.  I mean that to a lesser or greater
extent the <i>Metaphysics</i> is reduced to the so-called
"central books," Zeta-Eta-Theta, and sometimes just to the first
two of these.  These books certainly afford the clever scholar
much scope for the exercise of ingenuity.  They provide a
cornucopia of deep philosophical puzzles, especially if they are
treated as an independent treatise on the ontology of the
sensible world.  Once that false step is made, Aristotle can,
with enough effort, be made to say almost anything.  It is true
that the 14 books of the <i>Metaphysics</i> are not, even on the
reading of the most fervent "unitarians," a perspicuous whole. 
And yet there is clarity in Aristotle's scientific project, that
is, in the identification of first philosophy with theology and a
science of being qua being.  So, at the very least, since the
study of the being of sensibles is not equivalent to the study of
movables insofar as they are movable or physics, it would seem
that one is obliged to show that the study of the being of
sensibles, the very subject of the central books, can be
undertaken in isolation from the study of being qua being or
theology.  If, on the other hand, one simply ignores the issue,
then one threatens to turn Aristotelian scholarship into late
20th century Anglo-American fictionalizing. That is, you can make
the <i>Metaphysics</i> say whatever your imagination can concoct,
since as far as Aristotle is concerned, there is no distinct
science of the being of the sensible world anyway.

Lynne Spellman's book fits nicely within the recent tradition of
Aristotle <i>Metaphysics</i> scholarship.  Those who have read
the books mentioned above will discover discussions of familiar
issues, especially the search for the victorious candidate for
the crown of substantiality.  There is some novelty, and,
certainly, some truth in the book's claim that Aristotle's
account of substance must be understood in the light of what
Aristotle does and does not accept in Platonism.  As Spellman
puts it, "Aristotle can be seen to offer a defensible version of
Platonism (1)."  More precisely, substances are like Forms
without the separation (suitably understood).  Even more
precisely, the author argues that for Aristotle a substance is a
"specimen of a natural kind, where specimens, as particular forms
lacking the accidents introduced by matter, are numerically the
same as sensible objects yet not identical with them (2)."  The
evidence for this conclusion is set forth in roughly the first
half of the book.  The second half contains a rather hurried and
therefore unsatisfactory account of Aristotelian epistemology and
teleology, purporting to show that, on the author's reading,
substances retain their priority in knowledge, and, on the same
reading, substances can be said to retain teleological priority
over individual sensibles.

Spellman's new understanding of separation is subtle.  She means
neither numerical distinctness nor "abstractability" or
separation "in thought" but rather "the ontological correlate of
definitional separation (86)."  That is, the essence of a
sensible substance, as distinct from the sensible substance
itself, is separate in the way that primary substance is supposed
to be separate.  So, the essence of Socrates, "to be a man," is
substance.

What Spellman is obviously trying to do is carve out ontological
space for the putative substance roughly midway between the
species and the composite individual, which, everyone, or almost
everyone, agrees cannot be primary substances.  There is,
however, nothing in the text to suggest that the "specimen" of
man is in reality none other than Socrates, nothing, that is,
unless one supposes then when Aristotle says that in what is
primary being and essence are identical he means to refer to
sensibles.  But this is the sort of thing you do only if you
suppose that books 7-9 of the <i>Metaphysics</i> have no
connection to the preceding and succeding books.

Apart from the implausibility of holding that Aristotle means to
say that Socrates is the same as his essence although he is not
identical with it, one wonders why the putative "specimen" of man
is not in potency to the sensible composite.  Spellman would no
doubt agree that if the specimen were in potency to the sensible
composite, then it could not be primary substance.  Assuming then
that it is not, we have two actualities, the specimen and the
sensible composite.  That would obviously leave Aristotle open to
the same charge he makes against Plato, namely, that he
needlessly multiplies entities as a means of solving a problem. 
So, we arrive at the expedient that the sensible composite and
the essence are numerically one but not identical.

If we cast around for another example of numerical oneness
without identity, we can easily locate it in a substance and its
accidents.  The man and the white man are numerically one but the
<i>logos</i> of each is different.  The problem with this analogy
is that a sensible substance is in potency to its accidents and
that is precisely why a sensible substance is not primary
substance.  But Spellman cannot have the essence in potency to
the sensible substance or composite if the former is to be
primary substance.  Nor could she with any semblance of
plausibility have it the other way around.

So, we are left with an interpretation which, in my view, is
based on a fundamental error.  The error is in assuming (never
arguing) that we shall find in the central books of the
<i>Metaphysics</i> an account of primary substance.  Spellman
rightly recoils from the textually unsustainable notion that
primary substance is to be identified with the sensible
composite.  But then, failing to question the above assumption,
she casts around for another candidate and thinks she finds it in
the specimen of a natural kind.  Unfortunately, Everyman is even
less plausible as a candidate for primary substance than is
Socrates.