Hylomorphic Offices

Abstract

Neo-Aristotelian hylomorphism has struggled to arrive at anything approaching a consensus regarding the notion of form. Contending that no ‘right-minded modern’ could embrace anything akin to Aristotle's own preferred conception of a form as a causally efficacious entity capable of unifying material elements into a substantial whole, Fine (1994), for instance, has introduced a notion of form as a function yielding a ‘principle of unity’ capable of ‘variable embodiment’. Others, including Johnston (2006) , have opted for an account of form given in terms of ‘complex quantified relations’, and still others, including most prominently Koslicki (2008) and (2018), have championed a notion of forms as ‘structures’, where structures function as parts in line with the axioms of classical extensional mereology. Some have, though, simply despaired of the program of retrofitting the notion of form with some manner of acceptably modern ersatz replacement. Thus Evnine (2014) has developed a notion of ‘amorphic hylomorphism’, intended to salvage what is worth saving in hylomorphism shorn of anything reeking of the bad old notion of form. Each of these proposals has something to be said on its behalf. Unfortunately, none articulates a conception of form capable of discharging the task most wanted of form: unifying matter in such a way as to provide a privileged ontology, where that is understood as an ontology rejecting universal mereological aggregation without adverting to a notion of intention-dependence in the manner of ‘amorphic’ hylomorphism. A better way forward is to articulate the notion of form in terms of the apparatus of offices, introduced by Pavel Tichý (1987). This approach has, inter alia, the advantage of dissolving some of the puzzles that have developed around the notions of form and matter.