METAFISIKA ARISTOTELES: MATERI DAN FORMA

The notions of form and matter are treated in very different contexts before and after the Latin translations of the Aristotelian physical and metaphysical texts. Up to the second half of the twelfth century, the Platonic tradition (directly, through the Timaeus, and indirectly) and Augustine of Hippo presented matter as a formless receptacle that precedes the reception of forms. The problem lies in forms coming to be in matter. A parallel tradition begun by Boethius engages in an ontologizing reading of Aristotle’s Categories that leaves matter in the margins of formal ontology. Starting from the thirteenth century, the new context of Aristotelian epistemology reoriented the debate considering the ontology of compound things. Form and matter are then conceived as metaphysical principles that account for change (Thomas Aquinas), or as the constituent parts of things (the Franciscan tradition). In fourteenth-century England, several theories arose that, while very different among themselves, presented matter and form as absolute things. In Germany, a new metaphysics of forms arises that excludes matter from philosophical discussion.