Hylomorphic Offices

Christopher Shields University of Notre Dame

Abstract
Neo-Aristotelian hylomorphism has struggled to arrive at anything
approaching a consensus regarding the notion of form. Contending that
no ‘right-minded modern’ could embrace anything akin to Aristotle’s
own preferred conception of a form as a causally efficacious entity
capable of unifying material elements into a substantial whole, Fine
(1994), for instance, has introduced a notion of form as a function
yielding a ‘principle of unity’ capable of ‘variable embodiment’. Others,
including Johnston (2006), have opted for an account of form given in
terms of ‘complex quantified relations’, and still others, including most
prominently Koslicki (2008) and (2018), have championed a notion of
forms as ‘structures’, where structures function as parts in line with
the axioms of classical extensional mereology. Some have, though,
simply despaired of the program of retrofitting the notion of form with
some manner of acceptably modern ersatz replacement. Thus Evnine
(2014) has developed a notion of ‘amorphic hylomorphism’, intended
to salvage what is worth saving in hylomorphism shorn of anything
reeking of the bad old notion of form.
Each of these proposals has something to be said on its
behalf. Unfortunately, none articulates a conception of form capable
of discharging the task most wanted of form: unifying matter in such
a way as to provide a privileged ontology, where that is understood
as an ontology rejecting universal mereological aggregation without
adverting to a notion of intention-dependence in the manner of
‘amorphic’ hylomorphism. A better way forward is to articulate the
notion of form in terms of the apparatus of offices, introduced by Pavel
Tichý (1987). This approach has, inter alia, the advantage of dissolving

Ancient Philosophy Today: DIALOGOI 1.2 (2019): 215–236

DOI: 10.3366/anph.2019.0016
© Edinburgh University Press
www.euppublishing.com/anph
216 Ancient Philosophy Today: DIALOGOI

some of the puzzles that have developed around the notions of form
and matter.
Keywords: forms, matter, offices, hylomorphism, identity, occupancy

Neo-Aristotelian hylomorphism has struggled to arrive at anything

approaching a consensus regarding the metaphysics of form. Perhaps
the biggest challenge to developing a defensible view is given in
an obiter dictum of Kit Fine: although he is himself attracted to
the metaphysics of hylomorphism, Fine avers that no ‘right-minded
modern’ could embrace anything akin to the conception of form
assumed by the author of hylomorphism, Aristotle.1 Although he does
not specify in detail the feature unpalatable to a modern sensibility,
Fine is understandably sceptical about the prospects of a thoroughly
Aristotelian approach. Among other impediments is this: Aristotle
evidently assumed, without the benefit of argument, that the form of
a hylomorphic compound was a causally efficacious entity capable of
unifying material elements into a substantial whole. Unfortunately,
precisely how form was meant to perform this feat he left unspecified.
One sees this sort of Aristotelian assumption at work, for instance,
in Metaphysics Z 17. There Aristotle observes that in order to account
for the unity of complex substantial particulars, it is necessary to appeal
to something beyond the elements (stoicheia) which jointly constitute
a substantial whole. After all, if we begin with a collection of
elements, and then add another element of the same sort, we find
ourselves with nothing more than a slightly larger collection of
elements. That is, the addition of each new element to a collection of
elements yields nothing beyond a new collection of elements, and
every new collection stands as much in need of unification as the
collection to which it was added. We cannot, for instance, turn this
particular pile of 2,011 bricks into a wall simply by adding a 2,012th
brick to the pile. To be a wall, so many bricks need in addition
something which is not a brick, but rather some form or structure. This
form or structure is not an element, says Aristotle, but something
capable of unifying the elements into a wall, as opposed to, for instance,
into a brick oven.
This seems fair enough, but then when it comes to specifying
precisely how forms unify elements, Aristotle mainly falls silent. He says
at first negatively and then rather vaguely that what is needed is ‘not an
element’ but ‘something else’ (heteron ti), adding that this something
else would need to be a ‘principle’ or ‘source’ (archê) (Met. vii 17,
 Hylomorphic Offices 217

1041b10–1042b7). Yet how this principle or source works its unifying

magic he does not say. The thought thus lies near that Aristotle, rightly
seeing the need for a principle of unity, introduced something, which
he called a principle of unity, and then left to others the difficult task of
explaining just how this principle was to effect its unifying role. To put
the matter unsympathetically for the purposes of laying bare the diffi-
culty with Aristotle’s procedure: material elements seem well-suited to
the task of causing things to happen, but ill-suited to the task of
unification; forms, conceived as abstract principles, might be suited to
the task of unifying, but if unifying requires causal efficacy, then forms
seem ill-suited to this task, because they are causally inert. If unifying
progresses without causation, then forms seem tasked with making
things happen without causing them to happen. Thus, Aristotle’s principle
of unity, form, seems either epiphenomenal, in which case it does
nothing by way of causing unity, or is able to make things happen
without exercising causality, in which case it is efficacious by wishful
thinking alone.
Presumably one thing a right-minded modern should find suspect
in all of this is that a form should prove to be at once abstract and
causally efficacious. If we as a first approximation think of a form
as a shape or a structure – something Aristotle himself invites us
to think (so, e.g. in Physics ii 1–3) – then we are hard pressed to
imagine how it does anything at all. If, by contrast, we are thinking of a
form as itself a sort of material element, as a kind of metaphysical
glue, then we run afoul of the stricture that we cannot provide a
principle of unity by adding yet another element to a pile of elements:
every new pile of elements is itself a pile in need of unification. Here
Aristotle is right to observe that each time we try to effect a unity
by adding yet another element ‘the same argument will apply’ (Met.
Z 17, 1041b21). So, just as he says, something else is needed. Aristotle, or
a neo-Aristotelian hylomorphist, owes us something else – something
more, in fact.
Neo-Aristotelian hylomorphists have felt the pressure applied by
these sorts of considerations, sometimes forthrightly and sometimes
only implicitly, and have sought to develop workable conceptions of
form.2 Surveying their proposals, not exhaustively but for the purposes
of illustration, we find that no currently available alternative has
emerged as a viable reworking of Aristotle’s notion of form. Perhaps
this is why one broadly neo-Aristotelian metaphysician has given up
the ghost, preferring to advance a sophisticated variety of ‘amorphic
hylomorphism’, a sort of winkingly oxymoronic monicker it seems,
218 Ancient Philosophy Today: DIALOGOI

reflecting the judgement that hylomorphism must content itself without

a notion of form recognizable to Aristotle. This final capitulation might
be necessary if the general framework of hylomorphism is to be
adapted to the modern era. Still, there is an alternative, one which
articulates a notion of form by decoupling two questions: (i) what sorts
of roles are forms meant to play in a hylomorphic metaphysical econ-
omy? and (ii) what are the role-players playing those roles? By reflecting
on these two questions a superior approach to the metaphysics of form
emerges: forms are offices – offices occupied by matter, such that
hylomorphic compounds turn out to be not the sorts of form-matter
composites initially envisaged by Aristotle. They are not complex
entities with two internal components, one material and the other
formal, like the statues which on this picture are most readily thought to
be quantities of matter together with formal structures. Instead, objects
are quantities of matter occupying certain offices.
Those familiar with the work of Pavel Tichý will recognize that this
suggestion derives, at least loosely, from a framework developed in
connection with the Transparent Intensional Semantics he pioneered.3
While it seems unlikely that Tichý would have welcomed the appro-
priation of his framework for these purposes, his notions of occupants
and offices with their relative requisites dovetail rather nicely with the
exigencies of hylomorphism. One among several advantages of this
approach resides in the fact that it makes easy work of an otherwise
bedeviling problem for hylomorphism.

1. Modern Approaches to Form

Even a cursory survey of neo-Aristotelian hylomorphism reveals a
wide range of competing theories, each in its own way an attempt to
rehabilitate the notion for a modern philosophical sentiment. One
reason for this wide variety of approaches turns on the fact that there is
no settled conception of what role or roles forms are meant to play in a
hylomorphic metaphysics. Forms seem co-opted for a wide variety of
roles:

1. Forms account for kind membership: x is a member of K

in virtue of its form φ. Xanthippe is a member of the kind
human being in virtue of the form humanity or being human.
2. Form is responsible for the structure we see in objects. Matter
is structured; form structures.
 Hylomorphic Offices 219

3. Perhaps most importantly, form is the ground of unity of a

matter-form compound. If unity comes in degrees, then the
degree of an object o’s unity is grounded in the unity of its
form φ. If unity is binary and non-scalar, then this too is
grounded in some fact about form. In either case, form supplies
the principle of unity for a hylomorphic compound.
4. Forms explain (or even render possible) the powers of members
of some kind K.
5. If members of K characteristically engaging in ψ-ish activity
(cutting, thinking, perceiving), that is in virtue of their having
form φ. This holds especially when the ψ-ish activity is an
activity essential to K (and so not, e.g., shaving one’s legs,
drinking espresso at Santa Eustachio in Rome, sweeping the
garage floor).

We should not be sanguine about the prospects of there being

one metaphysical posit that can discharge all of these roles. For now,
however, we can focus on a salient fact about modern approaches
to form: they disagree widely, very widely, about what forms are. This
is perhaps a function of the fact that we expect that forms are as forms
do; and since they do many different things, they end up being many
different sorts of things as well.
Some, including Loux (2006), contend that forms are primitive
universals, universals that are, of necessity, proper constituents in all
and only the members of the kinds they define.4 Others, including
Johnston (2006), treat forms as relations serving as principles of unity
for the parts of an object o, where o might be something highly unified,
like a model airplane, or something highly disunified, like a mere
mereological sum. Forms, on this view, are simply ‘complex quantified
relations,’ where unity appears scalar such that some parts p1 … pn can
exist as highly united and others may diminish to the point where parts
p1 … pn exist as a weak (the weakest) unity, that is to say an object o
where p1 … pn exist merely as an aggregate and no more. Fine (1994b)
offers the most technically sophisticated account: a form is function
yielding a ‘principle of unity’ capable of ‘variable embodiment’.
Others, including most prominently Koslicki (2008; 2018), have not
been satisfied with these approaches. She has championed a notion
of forms as ‘structures’, where structures function as parts in line with
the axioms of classical extensional mereology. So understood, forms
are, she suggests, recipe-like: forms provide slots for material
components and then provide directions for the filling of those slots.5
220 Ancient Philosophy Today: DIALOGOI

At the most extreme, some have simply despaired of the program of

retrofitting the notion of form with some manner of acceptably modern
replacement. Thus we find Evnine (2014) developing a sophisticated
notion of ‘amorphic hylomorphism’, intended to salvage what is worth
saving in hylomorphism shorn of anything reeking of the bad old
notion of form. This is perhaps part of the reason why some have
simply attempted to fend off demands that the notion of form be
updated for the modern age, by hewing closer to Aristotle’s own
conception – though, needless to say, what Aristotle’s own view might
be is itself a matter of contentious debate.6
While not pursuing each of the proposals individually, it is safe to say
that none has emerged with anything like a leader’s status.7 Some treat
forms as properties or relations, effectively as abstract entities; others
treat them as sui generis sorts of entities, not reducible to any other class
of entity. Some have simply identified them by the role they wish to see
them play: forms are the kinds of things which have the power to do the
kinds of things we would like to see them do, namely to serve as agents
of unification – without any indication at all about how they are meant
to discharge this role.8 In so speaking, they have done nothing to
advance the discussion from the point where Aristotle left it. One
crucial question thus remains: can we offer a conception of form true to
hylomorphism without offending the legitimate demands of a right-
minded modern?

2. Forms as Offices
We seem forced to choose between two strategies for translating
hylomorphism into a workably modern idiom: we reduce forms
to something otherwise recognizable – powers, properties, structures,
functions – but then risk sacrificing what forms were meant to be,
namely principles of unity, or we dispense with them altogether,
offering instead a kind of amorphic hylomorphism, which is to
say a kind of hylomorphism without forms. There is, however,
a tertium quid: forms are offices. Forms do not play roles;
they are roles. Let us start with a simple analogy and then work
backwards.
We speak of the Prime Minister. The phrase ‘Prime Minister’ may
however, take one of two referents, namely the person occupying the
office of Prime Minister, at this writing Theresa May, or the office itself,
 Hylomorphic Offices 221

the office occupied by the person called the Prime Minister in the first
sense. Consider:

1. The Prime Minister is only the second woman to lead the United
Kingdom.
2. The Prime Minister sits in the cabinet solely in virtue of being
the First Lord of the Treasury.

The second sentence might refer to Theresa May, but need not and
in fact usually will not; the first, by contrast, must refer to the person
occupying the office, namely, at present, Theresa May. The first
designates the occupant and the second the office occupied.
What is an office? We may start with the simple thought that an office
is a kind of specified role, a role which can be occupied, most often, but
not exclusively, by an individual occupant. Thus, for example, the Prime
Minister of Canada is a political office, generally speaking the office the
role of which is specified by an interweaving set of political practices
in Canada, comprising, among others, the role of leading the national
government; it is also a role carrying with it various rights, prerogatives,
and privileges. It is no mystery how the duties and norms of this
office came to be: although not specified in any written constitutional
document, the duties and prerogatives of this office were generated
over time by a collective decision of the people of Canada and continue
to be constituted by the shared intentions of their descendants. Nor is it
unclear that the office places certain requirements on its occupant; those
too are set by entrenched conventions, which, though malleable, have
remained fairly stable through the generations.
Abstracting away from the local features of this particular office, one
can say that, in general, an office comes replete with requirements and
requisites. The requirements of an office are those features one must
discharge if one is its occupant; its requisites are those an occupant must
satisfy in order to be an occupant. Further, one can, if so inclined, easily
define a property specified by the office, such that the occupant of the
office bears the property so defined. So, for a given office o, there will be
the property being-o, borne by the occupant of o as long as the occupant
occupies o. So, in our illustration, the Prime Minister has the property
being-the-Prime-Minister just as long as the Prime Minister is the Prime
Minister, that is, just so long as the person who is the Prime Minister
occupies the office of Prime Minister. Having left the office, even if
honorifically called ‘Prime Minister’, that person is no longer Prime
Minister and no longer bears the property defined by that office.
222 Ancient Philosophy Today: DIALOGOI

Abstracting still further, one can liken an office in useful ways to a

Fregean concept (Begriff). Like a Fregean concept, an office has features
akin to both marks (Merkmalen) and properties (Eigenschaften). The
office of Prime Minister is an abstract entity, not capable even in
principle of instantiating its requisites. As Tichý (1979: 408) notes, ’In
general, the requisite of an office is any property such that, for any
world w and time t, if x occupies the office in w at t then x instantiates
the property in w at t.’ As here conceived, a requisite might be one
of two sorts: (i) it might be an enabling condition; or (ii) it might be
an office-generated property – that is, a property which an occupant
acquires in virtue of its occupancy and instantiates as long as it remains
an occupant of that office. Thus, where the office of Prime Minister is
concerned, one requisite will be being a human being (as an enabling
condition) with the right to call a special election (as an office-generated
property). By contrast the office itself bears neither of these properties.
It is not and could not be a human being: it is an abstract object. The
office will have other sorts of properties, however. An office might, for
instance, instantiate the property of being occupied or the property
of being unoccupied. An occupant typically can be neither. Again,
the Prime Minister of Canada, a human being, is not the sort of thing
that can be occupied. Generalizing, then, we may say that an office
is an abstract entity capable of being occupied, setting requisites on all
potential occupants, and instantiating properties which its occupants
cannot. The nub of the distinction between offices and occupants is thus
the distinction between role and role-player.
With that much in place, we can advance a general statement of hylo-
morphic offices. First, in keeping with the general tenets of hylomorph-
ism, we say that ordinary objects are metaphysical complexes of form
and matter:
o is an ordinary object =df o is a metaphysical complex of form and matter.
The notion of ‘ordinary object’ is by design non-technical and inclusive.
Ordinary objects might include tables, chairs, aunts and uncles, auto-
mobiles, computers, purses, beakers, rose bushes, and spanners. This
notion will need to be refined and defended, since it will not take long
to discover that the class of ordinary objects is fuzzy: we equally talk of
clouds, of rivulets, snowflakes, galaxies, tines, and particle detectors.
Further, among the class of ordinary objects, some may be privileged in
the sense that certain objects are in some sense metaphysically prior to
others. Thus, one might say that being a human being is prior to being
in aunt, in the sense that being a human being is a requisite of being an
 Hylomorphic Offices 223

aunt, but the opposite does not obtain. So, in addition to being fuzzy,
the class of ordinary objects is not metaphysically flat. Still, we may
begin with the core cases as a first entry into the general theory
of objects.
The core claim of the theory of hylomorphic offices can now be stated:
a form is an office. Correlative to that claim: matter is the occupant of an
office. Thus, more fully:
C is a hylomorphic compound =df (i) there is some matter m and some office
φ; and (ii) m occupies φ
To take a simple illustration: a table is so much wood or other
functionally suitable stuff occupying the office of being a table, which
office is broadly functional and characteristically intention-constituted.
Tables are made of suitable stuffs, with flat surfaces raised on
supporting legs for conducting various activities, including among
others dining, working, and displaying. One can appreciate that the
notion of ‘office’ here is an extended one, as Tichý himself realized, but
this is merely a matter of language. That said, as we proceed with
further extensions, the matter becomes much more than linguistic.
Five features of this construction on hylomorphism are immediately
worth highlighting in order to distinguish it from other approaches.
First, it represents a departure from one dominant strain of
hylomorphism, championed by various proponents, in which form
and matter are intrinsic ‘causes’.9 This is represented by any number of
thinkers, especially medieval, who articulate their commitment to
hylomorphism within the broader framework of Aristotle’s four-causal
account of explanatory adequacy. On this approach, it is natural to
speak of matter and form as internal causes, as constituents of a sort of a
complex, while the efficient and final causes are external causes. In the
base case, simplified for illustration, on this approach, the form (=
shape) and the bronze of a bronze statue of Pericles are internal causes,
whereas the sculptor (Kresilas) and the end served by the the bust
(honoring Pericles) are external. An office is not in any ready sense
internal to the complex; it is not, for instance, a shape. Instead, it is a role
which some matter occupies.
Second, as a sort of corollary of the first, one cannot think of the form
and matter of a compound as parts, in any ready sense of that term.
Thus, for instance, the detailed and interesting work done by Koslicki
(2008) to explicate the relationship between hylomorphism and classical
extensional mereology falls by the wayside. One may simply sidestep
one question she poses – a question which makes perfect sense in her
224 Ancient Philosophy Today: DIALOGOI

framework, and is even rather urgent in that framework – of whether

the mereology implicit in such locutions as ‘metaphysical complex’
needs to recognize forms as parts in such a way that a plausible
principle of weak supplementation obtains; weak supplementation is
variously formulated, but in essence it is the claim that if x is a proper
part of y, then there is some z which is also a proper part if y, where z
does not overlap x.10 To many, the principle of weak supplementation
has seemed a conceptual truth; others have doubted that this is so.11
Koslicki embraces it, and presses Fine’s failure to respect it as a serious
problem for his account of rigid embodiments, which, as she notes,
evidently requires some further mereological specificity.12
Conceived as offices, however, forms are not in any sense parts. We
do not say that the office of the Prime Minister of Canada is a part of
Justin Trudeau, even if, as some may be wont to do, we think of the
office-generated property, a requisite of occupying that office, being
Prime Minister, as a part of the human being occupying the office. There
is, of course, some relaxed sense of ‘part’ in which one might say that
the office of Prime Minister is a part, as when we say, ‘How will Winston
Churchill get out of bed in the morning once he is removed from the
office of Prime Minister? It is simply part of who he is.’ In so speaking,
we say that the office is a part of his psychological make-up, but really
say nothing more than that the office is a sort of degenerate contributing
part, as when we say, ‘She will always be overly optimistic. It is just part
of who she is.’ She has this tendency, but her tendency seems not to be a
part in any sense captured by the principles of classical extensional
mereology or indeed to be otherwise in play in questions regarding the
principle of weak supplementation. Such questions have no purchase
when forms are conceived as offices.
Third, the notion of matter in this approach is governed primarily by
the requisites laid down by a given office. We have noticed two kinds of
requisites, with the result that there are two different sorts of constraints
offices place on matter. First, whatever is able to occupy an office must
be enabled to do so in virtue of its own intrinsic traits and capacities. No
tea cup can be Prime Minister and no tissue paper can be a circular saw.
Only matter able to execute the role specified by the office can come to
occupy it. This first constraint corresponds rather directly to Aristotle’s
frequent observation that matter is in a way in potentiality (Met. H 6,
1045b8; K 2 1060a20; Λ 10, 1075b23). Given that what is potentially φ
must already be actually ψ (e.g. whatever can learn to speak Chinese
must already be rational), then the enabling requisites of an office
require actual, grounded capacities in potential occupants. Further,
 Hylomorphic Offices 225

anything which actually occupies a certain office receives various

office-generated requisites. If some functionally suitable matter is
organized into a computer, then that matter occupies the office of
being a computer and so can, trivially, compute.
Further, if we recall that every office o carries with it an office-
generated property being-o instantiated by its occupants, then we can
also see that offices govern sortals for their occupants. This has the
welcome result of making ready sense of one feature of traditional
Aristotelian hylomorphism that has often defied explication, namely
the doctrine of homonymy, or, as the medieval tradition came to call
it, the doctrine of analogy. Aristotle himself claims in De Anima ii 1
(412b10–413a3) that an eye in a statue is only homonymously an eye, or
an axe which cannot chop is only homonymously an axe, and even that
a body which has lost its soul is only homonymously a body. This last
claim has struck many as peculiar, and rather forced. Surely, we should
say that a dead body is, well, a body. Yet we can see that some body
occupies the office of being a human body only when it is the body of a
human being. Human bodies have the instantiate the office-generated
property being a human body only so long as they in fact occupy that
office. Just as we may continue to call something which resembles an
eye or an axe an eye or an axe even though they do not occupy the
offices of eye or axe, so too some flesh and bones qualify as a body
when and only when they occupy the body office. If we continue to call
a former body a body after it has left its office behind, that will be
simply by custom or courtesy, just as when we call a former senator
‘Senator’ in an honorific manner. A former senator is a senator only
homonymously.
Fourth, hylomorphic offices are categorially neutral. That is, the
requisites of matter place no categorial constraints on the kinds of
things that can be occupants beyond those that are given by the role.
To occupy the office of Prime Minister, the occupant must be a human
being. If, necessarily, every human being is a substance, then neces-
sarily, if x is to occupy the office of Prime Minister, x must be a
substance. This categorial limitation flows from some manner of
independent categorial commitment and not from office theory itself.
If one independently adheres to a theory of categories according
to which some office-generated sortals are substance sortals, then
anything occupying that office will be a substance. Further, since it
is possible to occupy more than one office at a time, a substance,
while remaining numerically one and the same substance, can come to
occupy and leave other offices which are, in effect, accidental to it, such
226 Ancient Philosophy Today: DIALOGOI

that they generate properties instantiated by those substances, only to

lose them when they are no longer occupants of that office. Some offices
are simply categorially more significant than others – provided, that is,
that one adheres to a theory of categories featuring primary beings
or substances.13
There is an analogous neutrality about the relationship between
offices. Offices may stand in various superordinate and subordinate
relations to one another. For instance, anything occupying the role of
the office of tiger of necessity occupies the role of animal as well, though
of course the contrary does not obtain. This follows, however, from
such free-standing metaphysical relations between properties as may
obtain. If it is a metaphysical (and not a logical) fact that nothing can
be red and green all over, then if anything occupies the office of being
completely red, it cannot at the same moment occupy the office of being
completely green, though, of course, nothing precludes one object’s
occupying the red and green offices at once. More importantly, one
might wonder whether something might be able to occupy various
non-logically exclusive offices at once – for instance the god office and
the human office, or the pencil office and the living office. These are
issues not to be decided on hylomorphic grounds but rather, again, on
independent metaphysical grounds. Those concerned with problems
attendant to the incarnation may freely avail themselves of the theory of
hylomorphic offices, but they then will need to determine amongst
themselves whether these offices can be occupied at once by the
same entity. Same again for those engaging issues in the realm of
panpsychism. If there are non-living beings and, necessarily, whatever
is non-living is not living, then nothing non-living can occupy
the life office, not, at any rate, while it is non-living. Panpsychists
will take issue with the contention that there are non-living beings.
Their dispute, however, is not with the proponents of hylomorphic
office theory, but with those who insist that the non-living exist
alongside the living. All parties to this dispute can accept
hylomorphism.
Fifth, nothing about hylomorphic office theory requires that any of
the offices which we have mentioned exist as mind- and language-
independent entities. Fairly clearly some of the offices that we have
mentioned are generated by and indeed constituted by the interlocking
intentional activities of various conscious agents. Thus, for instance,
the office of Prime Minister. More obvious still is the office of fashion.
Presumably that office is constituted by the interlocking attitudes
of the fashion czars, their minions, and followers. If a Burberry scarf
 Hylomorphic Offices 227

is fashionable this year, then it occupies this office; when it ceases to

occupy it, it no longer has the office-generated property of
being fashionable, even though it has changed in no intrinsic way
whatsoever.
This allows us to characterize the general office artefact directly. We
start with the general definition:
C is a material hylomorphic compound =df (i) there is some matter m and
some office o; and (ii) m occupies o
In the case of artefacts, we will normally expect the office to be
intentionally constituted. The notion of intentional constitution requires
some clarification. To begin, the notion of constitution is non-causal, or,
if you prefer, non-efficiently causal. Further, we will say that φ partially
constitutes ψ only if an essence-specifying account of being-ψ makes
ineliminable reference to being-φ. Taking that together, then:
C is an artefactual material hylomorphic compound =df (i) there is some
matter m and some office o; and (ii) m occupies o, where that office is such
that (a) its essence is φ; (b) there exists some ψ which partially constitutes φ,
where ψ partly constitutes φ only if an essence-specifying account of φ makes
ineliminable reference to ψ; and (c) ψ is an affective/intentional/responsive
property.
This entails that artefacts occupy the offices they occupy only if they are
regarded as occupying them. This entailment in turn has the welcome
consequence of explaining how certain artefacts can be re-purposed, as
when a folding chair is turned into a shelf and clothes rack by being
opened and affixed to a wall. Every artefactual office, like every other
office, has enabling requisites; the only constraint on repurposing is that
the office holder satisfies these requisites.
Importantly, in contrast to artefactual offices, there are offices which
are not constituted by the intentional attitudes or affective responses of
conscious agents. The water office is one such, as are the electron and
the human offices. Such offices are given rather than imposed, but like
all offices they set requisites of two kinds and thus generate sortal
properties instantiated by their occupants. We may call such offices
natural offices. The hylomorphic compounds qualifying as natural may
be defined, by contrast, as such:
C is a natural material hylomorphic compound =df (i) there is some
matter m and some office o; and (ii) m occupies o, where that office is such
that (a) its essence is φ, and (b) φ is a mind- and language independent
property, which is to say that it is not even partly constituted by any
affective/intentional/responsive property
228 Ancient Philosophy Today: DIALOGOI

Such offices correspond, roughly, to at least some notions of natural

kinds.14 In this sense, three observations are in order. First, whether
such offices are sparse or plentiful is, as far as this definition is
concerned, an open question. This, too, must be settled on independent
grounds. Indeed, second, whether there are in fact any such offices at
all is a question for realists and anti-realists about kinds to debate. The
definition of natural offices assumes a kind of minimal realism; if that
proved false, then, of course, there would be no occupants of natural
offices, because there would be no mind- and language-independent
properties available for defining such offices. Third, on the assumption
that there are natural offices, the definition does not by itself settle any
of the difficult questions about whether certain phenomena should
be regarded as occupying natural offices. Thus, for example, hurricanes
and tidal waves seem in some ready sense the occupants of natural
offices. Still, one might legitimately wonder whether these are purely
natural or partly constituted by the responsive attitudes of intentional
agents, as seems to be the case if one wishes to enforce a distinction
between hurricanes and typhoons.
The existence of hylomorphic offices does not settle all the problems
of metaphysics. Rather, such offices provide a framework within which
certain high-level debates may be articulated and fruitfully adjudicated.
Needless to say, a fully developed and defended metaphysics
incorporating hylomorphic offices would need to take a stand on the
broader sorts of issues in metaphysics only gestured towards here. Even
so, it is important to bear in mind that hylomorphism as such can
and should remain neutral about such questions. Hylomorphic offices
explicate a workable form of hylomorphism, but hylomorphism by
itself cannot settle broader questions such as these. After all, one can
be a realist or anti-realist about form while remaining a hylomorphist.
The doctrine of natural hylomorphic offices provides a way of
characterizing a realist version of hylomorphism without endeavouring
to show its superiority over its anti-realist competitors.

3. Hylomorphic Offices and Material Migration

This is not to say that hylomorphic offices have no immediate con-
sequences for issues in metaphysics. They do. At a minimum, they
make easy work of several problems that extend beyond hylomorphism
but have bedeviled hylomorphism all the same. To illustrate, we
may focus on only one such problem, one formulated with
 Hylomorphic Offices 229

characteristic clarity and force by Fine, namely the problem of material

migration.15
Picking up on an observation of Furth’s, Fine notices that in
traditional hylomorphism, the matter of one hylomorphic compound
H1 may ‘migrate’ into another compound H2, even while the matter of
H2 migrates into H1, such that at t2` H1 is composed of exactly the matter
that had composed H2 at t1 and vice versa.16 We can illustrate such
a case easily by placing two qualitatively identical ships S1 and S2
side by side, and systemically swapping corresponding planks one by
one until all planks have been swapped. Then all of the matter of S1 at t1
will be the matter of S2 at t2, and all of the matter of S2 at t1 will be the
matter S1 at t2. This much seems entirely possible, just as Fine contends:
‘That such an exchange of matter is possible is a point on which many
Aristotelian scholars could agree. However, I wish to argue that such a case
gives rise to a fundamental difficulty; for its possibility runs into conflict
with certain basic metaphysical principles which are commonly attributed to
him and which would also be commonly accepted.’
If this is correct, then hylomorphism – at least the sort of hylomorphism
commonly ascribed to Aristotle – is in trouble. The difficulty can be
put in terms of a simple set of identities which jointly yield a
contradiction. Consider our two ships S1 and S2. Let the following
notation be used:

m1 = the matter of S1 at t1
m2 = the matter of S2 at t2
φ(m) = the compound of m and a form
F = the form of S1
G = the form of S2

Hylomorphism then faces the following problem:

1. S1 ≠ S2
2. S1 = F(m1)
3. S2 = G(m2)
4. m1 = m2
5. F=G
6. So, by two applications of Leibniz’s Law: (S1 = S2)
7. Hence, we have a contradiction: (S1 = S2) and (S1 ≠ S2)

So, hylomorphism must be rejected.

230 Ancient Philosophy Today: DIALOGOI

Fine runs through various strategies for trying to resolve this puzzle
with varying degrees of success. Our solution is simple and direct: we
deny φ(m) = the compound of m and a form. A ship is not identical
with a form-matter compound in the sense that it is a whole identical
with two of its parts. A ship is, rather, some matter occupying an office.
Since the ‘is’ of occupancy is not the ‘is’ of identity, neither of these
identities obtains.
Of course, each ship is self-identical, and indeed necessarily so. It
does not follow, however, that each ship is identical with a form-matter
compound. Rather, each occupant of an office is identical with the
occupant of that office. To say that this wood is a ship is not to say that
this wood is identical with a compound of form and matter; it is rather
to say, again, that this wood occupies the office ship.
To illustrate, let us say that at present Albert and Beatrice occupy the
office Member of Parliament of Canada. He occupies an office; she
occupies the same office.17 Now suppose, following Fine, that each one
slowly and carefully cannibalizes the other in such a way that neither
goes out of existence. When we say that they continue to occupy the
same office we do not say – we could not say – that either he or she is
an entity with two parts, one of which is the human being, and another
of which is the abstract entity, the office Member of the Canadian
Parliament. Each is simply a human being occupying an office. No
contradiction ensues, and, indeed, no confusion looms. There is no
tendency to say that she is he or that he is she; the same holds if these
two members of parliament happened to be identical twins.
It is, of course, difficult to fathom what is envisaged in the exotic case
of mutual cannibalization. It is, by contrast, easy to picture two statues
gradually having their matter swapped, or, better still, two qualitatively
identical ships having their planks swapped one by one. Since lumps
of matter can occupy offices as well as human beings, one may say the
same thing about the lumps of bronze which occupy the office of statue
or the piles of planks which occupy the office ship as we have said
about the members of parliament. If some number of planks p1… p211
occupy the office ship, then we have a ship. If another set of planks
p212… p222 occupy that same office, then we have two ships. Of
necessity, each ship is self-identical. Of necessity, each of the planks is
self-identical, as is each set of planks. None of that changes if the planks
are moved in space from one place to another. Different planks can
migrate in and out of office as readily as members of parliament.
If we have come this far, we have come to regard the form not as a
constituent of a hylomorphic compound in any straightforward sense
 Hylomorphic Offices 231

of the term ‘constituent’. It is not a part as parts are conceived, for

instance, in classical extensional mereology. One may thus wonder
whether this is really a notion of ‘form’ at all, and thus whether there
remains on the table a variety of hylomorphism worthy of the name. As
we have seen, some hylomorphists have simply abandoned the thought
that forms ultimately play any role and have been willing to speak
oxymoronically of ‘amorphic hylomorphism’, treating the history of
material construction as the crucial to the question of the identity of an
object in question.18 This is not, however, the current proposal. Rather,
we have externalized form and have highlighted the occupancy relation
in place of any manner of predication or identity between matter and
form. The difference is not trivial, because the thesis that forms are
offices does not need to fall back on the historical facts about the
production of the entity in question: some matter has its form just so
long as it occupies its office.

4. A Right-Minded Modern’s View of Hylomorphic Offices

Where does that leave us with respect to the efficacy of form?
We began with the thought that modern hylomorphism has a form
problem. That problem is that forms are meant to be unifiers, and
thus, capable of making it the case that certain material elements
could be brought together to constitute a single entity. The problem
is especially acute if, as is universally the case, hylomorphism proves
to be a moderate position between two extremes: nihilism and
universal mereological aggregation. Hylomorphism is indeed mod-
erate, and so owes an explanation of how it manages to avoid
both of those unpalatable extremes. If the number of the total stock
of atoms, on the assumption that there are atoms, is n, then hylo-
morphism affirms that there are more than n objects. Yet it
denies that all possible combinations of atoms yield individuals.19
Instead, hylomorphism holds that those elements which are
enformed by a single form qualify as individuals, and those that do
not, do not.
The response is that this is wholly a matter of the number of offices
there are. If there is an office φ, then if φ is occupied, there is an
individual φ. Hylomorphism by itself does not determine whether a
given office exists; along with other forms of moderation, it instead
relies on the existence of natural kinds alongside such socially
constructed kinds as there may be.
232 Ancient Philosophy Today: DIALOGOI

In the case of artefactual hylomorphic compounds it is fairly easy to

see how this story will go. Since an artefact involves some matter
occupying an office which is partly constituted by the intentional
behaviour of conscious agents, Hume’s too general contention about
unity is at least partly true of them: ‘The idea of a substance is nothing
but a collection of simple ideas that are united by the imagination and
have a particular name assigned them by which we are able to recall,
either to ourselves or others, that collection’ (Hume, Treat. I vi). While
this is an overstatement even for artefacts, it does capture at least part of
the picture. Artefacts are the artefacts they are not only in view of their
origins as designed; their continued existence as the artefacts they are is
partly a function of the use to which they are put. So, to this extent, but
no further, Hume is right. At least in part we unify artefacts, by
constituting their offices by our intentional activity. In so doing, we set
their requisites. There is an office of Prime Minister, and not an office of
Prime Skunk (= the one and only politically elected leader of the total
population of the world’s skunks). Given these socially constructed
facts, some quantities of matter will occupy socially constructed offices
while others do not.
Matters are not so clear, however, in the case of natural hylomorphic
compounds. Since we do not think that human beings, for instance, are
unified by the intentional activities of other human beings – and still
less is a human being unified by her own intentional activity – we need
either to take them as unified by nature or as not unities at all. This is
again, however, not strictly a question for hylomorphism to address.
If we have good reason for thinking that there are natural kinds, then
we also have good reason for thinking that there are natural offices.
Broadly speaking, the reasons for supposing that there are such kinds
are clear and well-rehearsed: scientific kinds, including biological taxa,
play roles in inductive explanations, in explaining observed regularities
in nature, and in various forms of causal explanations.20 If we have
good independent reason for accepting the existence of such kinds, then
hylomorphism can avail themselves of them.
This does not yet, however, address the question of how forms
manage to unify the material elements whose form they are. An answer
is now available: not at all. Or, rather, forms do nothing additional
beyond being the forms they are. When a human being enters the office
of Prime Minister, she becomes Prime Minister, enjoying whatever
duties and prerogatives attend to that office. We should not think that
the office itself reorganizes the matter, the human being, in such a way
as to make it the case that she is Prime Minister. Similarly, if so much
 Hylomorphic Offices 233

bronze is made into a statue by the efficacy of a sculptor, then it comes

to occupy the office statue. The office itself does not enter into any
causal relations with its occupant. More exactly, to revert to the
Aristotelian idiom, it does not exert an efficient causal activity on its
matter. One may yet say, to go further in the same idiom, that an office
is a formal cause, that is, a cause whose presence accounts for the
identity of its occupants as occupants of that office. This is, however, what
one expects of a form, and so in another way indicates how forms
are offices. If a right-minded modern can allow that offices are formal
causes, then a right-minded modern can embrace hylomorphism
without embarrassment.

Conclusions
Neo-Aristotelian metaphysicians have struggled to articulate an
analysis of form worthy of the name, seeking to recondition hylo-
morphism for a modern age, even to the point of developing a variety
of amorphic hylomorphism. Their efforts have met with limited
success: forms are somehow meant to be powers, or otherwise to be
causally efficacious, capable of unifying the elements whose form they
are. How they achieve this end has, however, remained something
of a mystery.
Instead of thinking of forms as role players, then, we should conceive
forms as the roles themselves; and instead of thinking of forms as
occupying offices, we should think of them as the offices occupied. As
offices, forms unify only in the weak sense that formal causes have
always unified – not by efficiently causing the material components of
a compound to array themselves so as to realize the form, but rather as,
well, formal causes, causes which may then also enter into any other
causal regularities or explanations available to forms. The occupants of
offices do things in virtue of occupying the offices they occupy; but they
do not occupy the offices they occupy by dint of some manner of
efficient causation on the part of the offices themselves. The offices
do not cause their occupants to occupy them, except, again, in the meek
and mild way of formal causation. Even so, however meek and mild,
formal causation remains explanatorily salient when it comes to speci-
fying the kinds of activities an office’s occupant is able to perform. The
form is that in virtue of which some matter is actually some determinate
kind of thing. Updating slightly, we may say that the occupant of an
office is what is in actuality only because it is an occupant of the very
234 Ancient Philosophy Today: DIALOGOI

office which confers its kind membership upon it. We may end, then,
giving the final word to the original hylomorphist: ‘The actuality
is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potentiality is acquired…
matter exists in a potential state, just because it may come to its form;
and when it exists actually, then it is in its form’ (Met. θ 8, 1050a9–17).

Notes
1. Fine (1994: 19): ‘Aristotle seems to have a possible basis for the belief [in
individual forms], namely that forms are real and active principles in the world,
which is denied to any right-minded modern.’
2. See Koslicki (2008a) and (2018), Rea (2011), and Fine (1994b).
3. Office theory was developed by Pavel Tichý (1987).
4. See also Peramatzis (2011), who, in explicating Aristotle’s hylomorphism, offers
a sophisticated account of forms as universals construed as ways of being.
5. Koslicki (2008). For a critical discussion of Koslicki’s proposal, see Hovda
(2009).
6. For conceptions of form aiming to remain true to the letter and not only the
spirit of Aristotle’s own conception, see especially Scaltsas (1994), Marmadoro
(2013), and Koons (2014).
7. Koslicki (2018) does an excellent job of considering them individually.
Her criticisms are apt and well-placed. For those seeking an in-depth review
of the currently available alternatives, this is the best place to begin.
8. So Jaworksi (2014): ‘Third, structures have the same directedness that all
powers do. The structures of living things in particular appear to be directed
toward developing and maintaining the organism’s mature state, as well as the
powers that characterize that state and their manifestations…’
9. Suárez offers a clear serviceable overview of this way of thinking of form and
matter as internal causes in Metaphysical Disputations 15.1.8 .
10. More formally: PPxy ! ∃z(Pzy ∧ ¬Ozx). See Simons (1987: 26–28) for a
discussion of the relative merits of various formulations of the principle of weak
supplementation.
11. For a review of the considerations adduced on both sides, see Cotnoir (2018).
Cotnoir argues that the principle admits of various formulations and that
understood in at least one way it is after all analytic.
12. Koslicki (2008: 82–3, 155). For a defense of Fine, see Jacinto and Cotnoir
(2019).
13. Without engaging any question of categorialism, Oddie (2016: 234) justly
observes: ‘Offices are pretty easy to come by. For any collection of properties
there is an office, whether occupied or not, that has just those properties as its
requisites. So there are as many roles as there are collections of properties. But
not all roles are equally interesting or salient.’
14. Note, then, that this view does not advert to any notion of intention as
necessary for construing the existence of hylomorphic compounds. Compare
Evnine (2016: 3.3), and note 18 below.
15. Fine (1994b).
16. Fine (1994b): ‘Montgomery Furth has written, “given a suitable pair of
individuals … there is no reason of Aristotelian metaphysics why the very
fire and earth that this noon composes Callias and distinguishes him from
Socrates could not, by a set of utterly curious chances, twenty years from now
 Hylomorphic Offices 235

compose Socrates …”. He does not specify what these “curious chances” might
be. But we may suppose that Socrates eats Callias for his lunch and that, owing
to the superiority of Callias’ flesh and bone, it is the matter of this which
remains in Socrates after the period of twenty years.’
17. Note that in addition to shared offices, there may in principle be individual
offices. Individual offices might restrict their bearers to one, either by being
impure (by specifying the bearer in the specification of the office) or by being
akin to a Fregean individual property the φ, namely a property realized by at
most one bearer. This set of issues mirrors questions about the existence of
individual forms, but that is a matter for another discussion.
18. Evnine (2016: 3.3): ‘I have contrasted what I have called morphic hylomor-
phism, which takes objects in the domain to be composites of matter and
another entity playing the role of form, with my own amorphic variety, which
attempts to capitalize on the historical facts of making to explain hylomor-
phically complex entities without adverting to the existence of anything like
forms. My approach treats artifacts as a sui generis kind of entity the conditions
of existence and identity of which are determined by facts about their origins,
in particular, facts about the intentions with which their matter is worked on in
the course of their being made.’
19. For discussion of various motives for denying universal mereological aggrega-
tion, containing a novel reason for doing so, see Elder (2008).
20. Koslicki (2008b) provides a set of arguments in this direction. See also Kistler
(2018) for an argument given in terms of causal roles. Kistler’s approach marries
especially well with the conception of natural hylomorphic offices offered in the
current paper.

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