O ponto de intersecção entre compostos naturais propriamente e não propriamente substanciais em Aristóteles

Abstract

Throughout the Metaphysics and the treatises on natural philosophy, Aristotle takes organisms as the paradigmatic examples of natural οὐσίαι (substances). However, in addition to living organisms, in certain passages the philosopher also mentions the living and the elements as examples of substances. However, in other passages, Aristotle seems to consider that the parts of living beings and elementary bodies do not genuinely represent entities, substantial entities. On the other hand, at no time does the philosopher seem to expressly indicate the inanimate homogeneous bodies (metals and minerals), treated in book IV of the Meteorology, as types of substantial beings. In this article, then, I intend to examine whether the parts of the living being and the elements could, in fact, count or not as genuine examples of natural substances; and to what extent inanimate homogeneous bodies, despite not being explicitly mentioned in the condition of substantial beings, could, from the examination of their compositional natures, sustain, in a strict way, the title of natural οὐσίαι.