Meditation 73: Emptiness and Aristotle

A Buddhist theory has it that we will be enlightened when we realize the emptiness of the phenomenal world.  At that moment we will be freed of the illusion that anything in or out of our experience has independent Being and existence. How are we to understand this from a perspective within the Western philosophical tradition?

Western ontology developed in Greece and found it fullest abstract expression in Aristotle’s account of form and matter. Everything we encounter in the world is ‘formed matter’. Nevertheless, we can distinguish between form and matter in thought. Knowing what a thing is gives us its form, perceiving the individual thing acquaints us with the matter making it up.

Aristotle defines substance as an amalgam of form and matter. Matter gives us objects to perceive, while form gives us the concepts by which we can think of objects. Substance is what remains self-identical through change, but if the changes are too great, a substance can be destroyed. A mound of wet clay goes through many changes to become a pot.  In its final state, the pot is an amalgam of matter and form and it remains more or less the same throughout many changes. However, if it falls and smashes on the floor, it ceases to exist as this particular substance.

On the Buddhist view I examine, we have to explain why things appear to have independent existence and being when they do not.  This is summed up in the Buddhist idea of the ‘co-dependent origination of all things.’ Every so-called separately existing thing is part of a great interrelated causal nexus that accounts for the appearances of independently existing things. Nothing escapes change, remaining eternally what it is, and having a completely independent existence. There is no metaphysical substance ‘behind’ the changing phenomena. Non-being clings to them and cannot be shaken off.

Does non-being cling to Aristotle’s metaphysical idea of substance? Can we see the doctrine of dependent co-origination in his theory of causation? Can Aristotle’s account of substance accommodate the realization of the emptiness of things? Matter is real in Aristotle’s system, and it is indestructible, though it can go through many transformations. At the same time, pure or ‘prime’ matter is inconceivable, defined as sheer ‘potentiality’ (of taking on form).  Thus the idea of matter is itself, ultimately, empty.

Form fares no better. For Aristotle, primary substances are individual beings that fall under different categories. For example, a particular horse is an example of a primary substance, while the concept of a horse is only a substance in a secondary sense. Forms do not wander around by themselves. However, there is one notable exception. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle grants that Pure Form (without matter) does actually exist, though we cannot understand it. He calls this strange being the Unmoved Mover. Like a magnet, this Form draws order out of chaos. Yet the idea of ‘Pure Form' is as empty as the idea of ‘Prime Matter.’ We are only acquainted with substances as mixtures of form and matter. Thus, the idea of the Unmoved Mover is itself empty.

Could Aristotle have a sense of the emptiness of things in the Buddhist sense? I think that he could. The things around us are passing away as I write. Some take longer to pass away than others. Time is their emptiness, and Aristotle’s substances come into being and pass away. Perhaps the difference is only that Aristotle thinks that things come into being and pass away, while a Buddhist may only see phenomena coming into being and passing away. Neither has to reject the reality of the world around us, but only to see that this reality is not absolute, and, therefore, to realize the emptiness of both things and appearances.