Form as inhering in matter endowed with corporeal form

The corporeal form is always attached to matter, and it is the necessary actual principle, which explains why matter, taken absolutely does become a certain piece of matter. As its concomitant feature, this matter has a shape and a spatial position in the universe.

For a Peripatetic thinker, however, what immediately leaps in mind here is that in this case, a material substance should have more substantial forms. Avicenna, nevertheless, uses the “form”

quite often: he allows forms getting attached to a substance. Forms correspond to the quiddities that are in the individual, and in consequence, as conceptualized in the mind, they might be predicated of it, mirroring the inhering forms. Although it is the substantial form, corresponding to the infima species that constitute the subject, other accidents may equally be considered as forms.

761 Taʽlīqāt, (B) 58–59, (M) 146 [200–201].

177 Avicenna admits several times that the corporeal form never stands alone with the matter. Since corporeity means the supposition of three dimensions, prime matter along with corporeal form would mean a simple three-dimensional, continuous mass, which has a shape and limits.

However, there is no such, otherwise qualityless body. What is more, even the shape presupposes other inhering features, accidents superadded to the matter-corporeal form compound. In other words, everything that the notion of corporeal form entails presupposes other forms in the composite.⁷⁶²

In the al-Samāʽ al-Ṭabīʽī of the Shifā’, Avicenna leaves open the question, whether the corporeal form is prior to all the other forms, or it is simply inseparably attached to them.⁷⁶³ If the corporeal form is prior to the other forms, in view of the former considerations, it cannot be a temporal priority, as we have seen in the former passage. It may be considered as prior essentially since the body is among the essential features, which are usually enumerated in the Tabula Porphyriana; thus, it is like a genus for any kind of animal. As such, it is encompassed in the infima species, the substantial form, for example, in the form of humanity. In this sense, it is prior essentially, since theoretically, following the Tabula Porphyriana, something must be material and must have a body to be a human.

If this latter is the case, at the moment of substantial change, when a new substantial form emanates from the separate causes a new corporeal form – included in the substantial form – comes to be. The author of the Kitāb al-Taʽlīqāt elaborates more on this possibility: when simple bodies, for example, fire becomes air, the corporeal form ceases to exist when the substantial form, fire perishes. At the next moment, when the form of air is generated, a new corporeal form comes to be with it. What shows this is that dimensions change by thickening and rarefaction, and apparently, the actual dimensions at the moment of substantial change disappear, and new ones come to be.⁷⁶⁴

However, Avicenna’s hesitation may be due to the apparent fact that the generation of composite substances is not always this simple. For example, at the generation of humans, when the semen of the father enters the womb, and it becomes a fetus and an embryo, it traverses

762 Ilāhiyyāt, 413, 15–17.

763 Samāʽ, 14, 1–4. The passage is quoted by McGinnis, 2006, 61: Since the form of corporality is either prior to all the other forms that belong to natural things and their genera and species or is something inseparably joined with them, what belongs to the body as the wood belongs to the bed also belongs to all those other things that possess the forms in this way, since all of them exist in fact together with corporality; and so that [namely, the material] is a substance.

764 Taʽlīqāt, (B) 71, (M) 185 [272].

178 several substantial changes.⁷⁶⁵ However, in this case, the underlying matter is actually the same continuous piece of matter, not a numerically distinct one. The only difference is that from that moment on, in virtue of the new substantial form (the form of the fetus, etc.) a new existent comes to be. In other words, Avicenna’s theory of instant and spatial position solves the problem.

To underpin this statement, we must take into account Avicenna’s theory of substantial change.

It was Jon McGinnis who showed that Avicenna’s theory of the (quasi-mathematical) limit makes possible that substantial change occurs in an instant. Although it seems to presuppose atomic time that Avicenna openly denies, the limit, which is not part of time seems to resolve the issue.⁷⁶⁶ The main move lies in the understanding of instant as the limit of time, which is not part of the time. In this respect, there are infinitely many points that may be posited near the limit, but they all belong to the next substance.⁷⁶⁷

This understanding of limit, as Jon McGinnis has convincingly shown, renders Avicenna’s theory of instantaneous substantial change a tenable option. It does not entail the atomic understanding of space and time, and, at the same time, there is no instant at all, when the matter would be devoid of form. Until the time limit of the substantial change, the matter is actual by its previous form, and after the time limit is also actual by the new substantial form.

In Avicenna’s theory, time does not consist of actual, indivisible instants – exactly this would be the atomic perception of time.⁷⁶⁸ However, in a certain period of time, there is potentially an infinite number of instants that may be singled out: during the motion, there are potential limits (ḥadd), indivisible spatial points that have no extremes that the moving thing simply transgresses. However, by supposition, an identifiable indivisible point is a spatial position which the moving thing trespasses in an instant. Thus, to any spatial limit – that may be only described by the category of position – corresponds a temporal instant.

Therefore, it is no wonder that Avicenna highlights the role of spatial position in the process of becoming. It is not only so in the Kitāb al-Taʽlīqāt, but also in the Metaphysics if the Shifā’.

In the context of how the new form of the clod acquires its direction, Avicenna also alludes to a spatial position:

765 As it was convincingly shown by McGinnis, 2004, 52–57.

766 McGinnis, 2004, 57–61.

767 McGinnis, 2006, 203.

768 Samāʽ, 86, 10–11.

179 Moreover, the form of being a clod is not in any [specific] direction unless it has an appropriate relation to that direction. It is due to this relation—not, first of all, to its actually being matter, nor, secondly, to its actually acquiring form—that it became specified with [the direction]. And that relation is a position.⁷⁶⁹

That is, due to the preparation of matter, which occupies a certain spatial position, at the moment of preparation, when at the next supposed instant the new form comes to be. The same idea appears in the Kitāb al-Taʽlīqāt, where Avicenna clarifies what he means by the positional relation (munāsaba waḍaʽiyya):

The air, for example, if it changes into earth, it either undergoes [this substantial] change in its [own] extension or the extension of the earth. If it is in the extension of air, it descends by rectilinear motion, and it is towards the spatial position (mawḍiʽ) that the earth faces. This state is the positional relation. Likewise, if the water ascends as vapor, it ascends in a rectilinear motion to [the spatial position] that faces the air, unless if it is hindered by an obstacle, and this is the positional relation. Both of them are specialized by that spatial position (mawḍiʽ) in which it came to be due to the relation which is between it and between that place, and this is the positional relation.⁷⁷⁰

The text is clear: there is a positional relation between the thing and the place it occupies. This process, however, being the limit of motion, cannot be conceptualized but as a spatial position in Avicenna’s universe. The text here uses the term mawḍiʽ, which we translated as spatial position: it is definitely not mawḍūʽ – substrate or subject. The term mawḍiʽ as a derivative of the root w-ḍ-ʽ, in the first sense of the term, means the place or time of waḍʽ. ⁷⁷¹

In the Kitāb al-Mubāḥathāt, similarly to the Kitāb al-Taʽlīqāt, we found numerous passages that highlight the role of spatial position in individuation. Although the passage asks about the material principle of the individuation of the separable potency, intending the human rational soul, the answer highlights position:

Q: If the individuator of the bodily potencies is the matter in which their existence becomes specified, then how does matter specify the existence of the separable potency, and how does it individuate it?

A: Matter alone is not enough in its individuation until the position is not attached to it, or whatever is specified by a certain position. Either in itself or by a relation in itself, because it is already individuated, and it cannot be shared by anything else in a given instant (ān). It is impossible for a similar [thing] to share that one position, and its states and to share its quiddity, then it is something else.⁷⁷²

769 Ilāhiyyāt, 74, 3-5; Tr. by Marmura, 2005, 59.

770 Taʽlīqāt, (B) 56–57, (M) 139 [186].

771 Ishārāt, II (al-Ṭūsī), 43. The same term appears in the al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt, where Avicenna talking about individuals subsumed under the same species attributed a differentiating role to the mawḍiʽ. Tr. Inati, 2014, 126:

If, on the other hand, it were possible for the nature of its species to be predicable of many, then the specification (taʽayyun) of every one is due to a cause [other than this nature], for there are no two blacks not two whites int he same thing, if they not differ in place (mawḍiʽ) and the like.

772 Mubāḥathāt, 180 [525–526].

180 This passage speaks for itself: the unshareable thing in it is a spatial position. In other words, Avicenna connects his different readings on individuation: the unshareable element, the spatial position is also a necessary condition of individuation. As attached to matter, this is what best describes the materia signata. The theory of the instant “attached” to a given spatial position explains that there is no time for the subject devoid of any substantial form.