Abstract

In the Metaphysics , Aristotle examines the various meanings of concludes that its proper and primary meaning is “that which has predicates and is not predicated of anything else.” My aim in this paper is to accept this as an account of the notion of “substance,” and to free it from confusion with other notions, and then to consider whether when it is thus freed any “problem of substance” remains. I shall illustrate from the classical treatments of the subject both the confusions and the development of a clearer view because it has seemed to me that exposition and criticism of those authorities sometimes show the same obscurities as the authorities themselves