Substance

'Substance, in philosophy, has to do with the question or problem of what exists, and, more specifically, what exists by itself, underlying the changes that occur in things. The origin of the term goes back to the ancient Greeks. The English term “substance” comes from the Latin terms sub (“under”) and stare (“to stand”). This is a translation of the Greek term hypostasis, from hypo (“under”) and hitasthai (“to stand’). So the term substance has to do with the “stuff” or existence that underlies change. But the term also has to do with the individual thing that is subject to change, and the Greek terms that best capture that notion are ousia and hypokeimenon. Ousia can mean both “substance” and “essence,” and hypokeimenon can mean the “concrete thing,” the “substratum,” and the “subject.”

Aristotle’s View

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle used both the terms ousia and hypokeimenon—these are both translated into English as “substance”—and noted that this can be used to refer to four different things: the essence of something, the universal, the genus, and the subject. But Aristotle was primarily concerned with what cannot be predicated of anything else, but is itself the subject of predication, so he reduced this to “first substance” (ousia prote), which is the subject of predication, and “second substance” (ousia deutera), or all the other references.

The Atomists

Ancient atomists, such as Leucippus Democritus, held that the real and substantial existents of nature are the atoms, out of which everything else is made. [See the article Atomism.] These atomists did not discuss the difference between substance and accident, but they did offer, by implication if not directly, an answer to Aristotle.

Medieval Philosophers

Following Aristotle, medieval philosophers dwelt on the distinction between substance and accident. A substance, they held, is something that can exist by itself, not needing something else as a substratum for its existence. An accident exists, they held, by inhering in a substance. Thus a man, for example, exists by himself and is therefore a substance. But the man has color, health, attitude, weight, and so on. Let’s suppose the man is brown, sick, sleeping, and weighs two hundred pounds. Those things—color, health, attitude, weight, and so on—can exist only if they are in a substance. Color does not exist except it is in a colored thing, and the same with health, attitude, weight and other accidents.

Descartes

French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes (1596-1650)—often called the father or founder of modern philosophy—used methodical doubt to attempt to reach a bedrock of something indubitable from which he could, he thought, rebuild the edifice of knowledge. His famous remark, “Cogito, ergo sum,” “I think, therefore I am,” was the result of that process.

That phrase contains, in summary, an argument. Descartes's argument was based on the observation that doubt is a form of thinking, thus his process of doubting everything possible nevertheless yielded the existence of thinking. Since he accepted the substance-accident ontology and thinking (or doubt) is an accident, therefore his existence as a (thinking) substance is logically and ontologically necessary if he is thinking. So he could conclude “therefore I am" (i.e. I exist as a substance) from the premise “I am thinking” (i.e. the accident of my thinking exists).

Spinoza

Jewish, Amsterdam-born philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) drew interesting conclusions from the work of Descartes. If substance is what can exist by itself, then, Spinoza concluded, there is only one substance, which is God. Moreover, if by God we mean “absolutely infinite being,” then there can be only one such God or Being, and this Being exists necessarily and is eternal, not temporal. Its essence implies its existence. That statement is at the heart of the so-called Ontological Proof of God’s Existence, a proof that had been put forth by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) and also adopted and used by Descartes.

Leibniz

The concept of substance was fundamental to the philosophical work of German mathematician and rationalist philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). He used two of Aristotle’s criteria of substance—substance as subject and substance as the locus of change—and added the concept of simplicity. By simple he meant without parts. He concluded from the existence of complex things that there must be simple things or simple substances; he called them monads, and they were the basic elements of his metaphysical system. They were, he held, centers of change and the subjects of predicates. He also claimed that these monads do not interact with one another because “monads have no windows.” The seeming interaction between things occurs because of a God-given pre-established harmony between all monads. But this suggests that monads, as substances, cannot be known or apprehended. British philosopher Bertrand Russell made a study of Leibniz and concluded that, concerning Leibniz’s monads, “substance remains, apart from its predicates, wholly destitute of meaning.” (The Philosophy of Leibniz, p. 50)

Non philosophical usages

Substance may refer to:

• Chemical substance, in chemistry, a substance is an element or compound with uniform composition. If a substance is not a mixture it is called a pure substance
• Substance (medicine), in medicine, substance is any drug, chemical, or biologic entity, as well as any material capable of being self-administered or abused because of its physiologic or psychologic effects
• Substance (Joy Division album), a 1988 Joy Division compilation album of songs recorded in 1977–1980
• Substance 1987, a 1987 New Order album
• Substance design, a London-based design company

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