Aristotle’s Phenomenology of Form: The Shape of Beings that Become

Abstract

Scholars often assume that Aristotle uses the terms morphe and eidos interchangeably. Translators of Aristotle's works rarely feel the need to carry the distinction between these two Greek terms over into English. This article challenges the orthodox view that morphe and eidos are synonymous. Careful analysis of texts from the Categories, Physics, and Metaphysics in which these terms appear in dose proximity reveals a fundamental tension of Aristotle's thinking concerning the being of natural beings. Morphe designates the form as inseparable from the matter in which it inheres, while eidos, because it is more easily separated from matter, is the vocabulary used to determine form as the ontological principle of the composite individual. The tension between morphe and eidos-between form as irreducibly immanent and yet somehow separate-is then shown to animate Aristotle's phenomenological approach to the being of natural beings. This approach is most clearly enacted in Aristotle's biology, a consideration of which concludes the essay.