---in one sense of the world.

In western philosophy one finds two distinct conceptions of substance (or
I should say, at least two; but I wish to talk about only two of them).
Now, this is not to say that Buddhism would not reject much in Aristotle.
I am speaking here only of the concept of substance as a concrete,
individual thing. Buddhism would most certainly reject A's affirmation
of the existence of an unmoved mover; it would certainly reject his
speculations about the possible separate existence of part of the human
soul (form in living things is called "soul" by A). But the dynamism
that is the heart of A's point of view (see Books 6, 7, and 8 of the
Metaphysics) is for the most part quite consistent with the dynamism at
the heart of Buddhism.

Bill Snyder wrote:
---in one sense of the world.

In western philosophy one finds two distinct conceptions of substance.
[......]

---in one sense of the world.

In western philosophy one finds two distinct conceptions of substance (or
I should say, at least two; but I wish to talk about only two of them).
In late medieval and modern philosophy one finds emerging a concept of
substance as the underlying reality of which all things are made or in
which all things inhere. It is an enduring unchanging thing, out of
which all of the changing things populating our world emerge. I shall
refer to this view as the "modern view of substance" even though there
were figures in ancient philosophy which held a similar view (Thales,
Democritus, and others). But there is a very different view which
emerges in ancient philosophy (most clearly articulated in Aristotle) and
which dominated much post-ancient philosophy until early modern times.
That view means by "substance" (Latin "substantia") merely whatever it is
that must be taken as fundamentally real, not in the sense of "that of
which all things are made" or in the sense of "that in which all things
inhere" but in the sense of "what in the final analysis are we talking
about", i.e., to use Aristotle's way of putting it, what is the ultimate
subject of predication. More about this view below. I shall call this
view the Aristotelian view.

The modern view appears to me to be essentially absurd and idealistic
(even in its "materialist" version). That is because it takes the most
abstract feature (or features) of existing things and treats them as what
is concretely real. Extension in space/time is a characteristic of each
and every material object; it is what they all have in common.
Therefore, says the modern view there is a substance whose only
characteristic is extendedness, and all material things are made of
extended substance (or inhere in it). Extended substance is the enduring
reality of the material world. But this just sets the world on its head.
The most abstract property of material things (their extendedness) is
taken as what is truly real about them. So, the IDEA of extendedness is
taken as capturing the true reality of material things; a form of
idealism, if there ever was one, and even if one claims that the only
kind of substance is extendedness. A similar argument would apply to the
relationship of thinking things to thinking substance for dualists and
idealists (in the more usual sense of the word). Actually the word
"thinking" is somewhat misleading here, since what is clearly meant in
Descartes and Locke is the capacity to experience (with "thinking" in the
strict sense being only the highest type of experiencing), so the true
reality of thinking things is merely the abstract quality of "being
capable of experiencing" or, alternatively "bare awareness" (with no
reference to what one is aware of). And such a pure abstraction is taken
to be the true reality of thinking things.

The Aristotelian view is very different from, if not in contradiction to,
the modern view. Aristotle asks the question (in several works, but in
the Metaphysics and Physics in particular), "What is 'ousia'?" "Ousia"
is the Greek word he uses; it is an archaic form of the feminine
participle of "on" (which just means "being"). So his question might
best be rendered as "What is a being?" His discussion makes clear that
he means what is a being in the primary and most fundamental sense of
that term. (One translation of the Metaphysics translates "ousia" as
"primary being" throughout, and that makes a hell of a lot more sense of
the text than does the use of the word substance. So, then how did that
word "substance get into the act. Blame the Romans; they used the latin
word "substantia" to translate "ousia", and that becomes "substance" in
English.) So, Aristotle's question is what really exists in the most
fundamental sense of the word "exist". Aristotle's answer is
unequivocable and exceptionally clear: ousia is a concrete, individual
thing (he, like a refrain, often repeats "this man, this horse", i.e.
this particular human being and this particular horse). So for Aristotle
substance is not some abstract kind of being of which all things are made
or in which they inhere; rather a substance is a concrete individual
thing, like this particular keyboard on which I am typing or any
particular human being who reads the post.

Then, for Aristotle, does a substance have any type of "enduring being"?
Well, certainly concrete, individual things endure for a time, some, like
a mountain, for quite a long time, but none that we know of endures
forever. For A, is a substance, in any sense, composite? Yes, in two
different senses. First a substance will consist of parts; in the case
of a human being, arms, legs, flesh, bones, blood, et al. Such things, A
calls the stuff of which a human being is made; usually the Greek word
which I render as "stuff" is translated as "matter'. For A, matter is
just the stuff of which concrete, individual things are made; there is no
such thing as "matter, in general" or "material substance" in the modern
sense. The second sense in which a substance is composite is that each
concrete, individual thing contains both matter and form (structure).
The form (structure) makes it the kind of thing it is; the stuff (matter)
makes it the individual example of that kind of the which it is. To put
this another way, a substance is an individual thing which is an
organized (structured) composite of various materials. (There is, in A,
an exception to the form/matter composition of a substance, but that
entity is not part of the natural world; for further info, read Book 10
of the Metaphysics.)

Now, what is the point of all of this? Buddhism is often portrayed,
correctly, as non- or anti-sustantialist. And it most certainly is in
the modern sense of substance. There is no underlying, enduring reality
(atman) to be found in anything; there is only the flux of coming into
being and passing away and that flux itself has no reality beyond the
arising and passing away which constitutes it. But is that a denial of
"substance" in the Aristotelian sense? I think not. Buddhism does not
deny that concrete, individual things arise and pass away (as eventually
both I and the keyboard on which I type will do). It does not deny that
such things are made up of various kinds of stuff, organized in various
different ways. It does assert that such thing arise and pass way in
mutual interdependence on one another (conditioned co-production); but it
does not deny that such things exist for a time within the arising and
passing away. But what about "form" or structure? Does not the mantra
from the Heart Sutra say "Form is emptiness"? Yes, but it also ends by
saying, "Form is form." (In between it says, "Emptiness is form;
emptiness is emptiness.") I do not believe that the mantra can be read
as rejecting the idea that arising and passing away is structured. It is
just that any structure which we attribute to it is an invention of our
minds (which strikes me as almost a tautology).

Now, this is not to say that Buddhism would not reject much in Aristotle.
I am speaking here only of the concept of substance as a concrete,
individual thing. Buddhism would most certainly reject A's affirmation
of the existence of an unmoved mover; it would certainly reject his
speculations about the possible separate existence of part of the human
soul (form in living things is called "soul" by A). But the dynamism
that is the heart of A's point of view (see Books 6, 7, and 8 of the
Metaphysics) is for the most part quite consistent with the dynamism at
the heart of Buddhism.

BS
_______________________

"Non, rien de rien,
non, je ne regrette rien"
- "Une ombre de la rue."