“Substance and Form” According to Aristotle and According to the Kalam – The Fourth Premise | Part I Chapter 73 | (6) | Guide for the Perplexed 161 (Auto Translated)

Premises 4–9: Substance and Accident in the Kalam System

Introduction: Scope of Discussion

We are at the fourth premise. From the fourth premise through the ninth, the discussion deals with substance — with this matter of substance and accident, or to describe it more precisely, with the laws, the rules of accidents according to the Kalam system.

I am missing a lot of information and understanding here, so I will try to say things that at least will have good questions — so that if I don’t understand something, I’ll know that I don’t understand it.

The Basic Aristotelian Division: Substance and Accident

Origin of the Concepts: The Book of Categories

The matter in general is that Aristotle invented this concept of substance and accident. Substance and accident is the basic division of things, which is explained at the beginning of Aristotle’s book of Categories. Substance is the thing about which we speak. It is usually translated as “substance” or “essence,” something like that, but in its simple meaning, every time we speak about things, we speak about things, right?

These are the Categories, essentially. From the sense of saying something about something. “Category” is the same word as the word we know from the Sages — *kategor*. A *kategor* is someone who claims something about someone, who says that a certain judgment applies to you, or who says something about you. There was someone who wrote a new translation of the Categories and he calls it “Allegations,” or in Hebrew they would call it *ma’amarot* — things that are said about something.

The Structure of the Division: A Thing and What Is Said About It

And so every time something is said about something, there must be something about which it is said. So the basic division of metaphysics — not metaphysics — the general form in which we speak about the world or understand the world, meaning that in his view it is also a property of the world itself, it’s not all in our heads, it’s all in the world itself — is that there is substance and accidents.

There are things, and these things are called bearers of accidents, right? This cup I’m talking about — there is some cup, and now there’s a problem of what the “cupness” of the cup actually is. In any case, there is a cup, and this cup has a color, for example, or a size, or heaviness, or something happens to it, or it does something, or there is a quantity of it, or it itself possesses quantity. These are all things said about the substance.

So this is the basic division of substance and accident.

Terminological Notes

The Word “Substance” (*Etzem*)

The word accident is also — *etzem* is not a bad translation. Of course, in Hebrew *etzem* is simply “bone.” *Etzem* really comes from that word — it’s an invention of, I don’t remember — in the Torah it says *akh atzmi u’vesari atah* (“you are indeed my bone and my flesh”), the translation being “my bones and my flesh.” In return, there is *bikhvodo u’ve’atzmo* (“in his honor and in himself”). Yes, so there already exists this abstraction, apparently. Based on this thing, as they say, *akh atzmi atah* — “you are my bones” — so if we abstract this a bit, we say that a person is not only his bones, so it turns out to mean “I myself,” right? Self-reference, right? Something that refers to the speaker himself. Does *bikhvodo u’ve’atzmo* actually appear in the Sages? One needs to check. All these things always need to be checked. It’s possible that it does.

The Word “Accident” (*Mikre*)

In any case, and “accident” (*mikre*) is also a somewhat poor translation, because it takes on many other connotations, right? *Mikre* means “accident,” and in English too they translate it that way, and then people talk about things that happened by chance and so on, which is true that one can connect to the meaning here, but a better translation of *mikre* here in the Aristotelian sense at least would be “a thing said about something else” — “said about” rather than “said as,” right?

If I speak of “the man” — what does that mean — “a man is a man,” that is called speaking about the substance. If we say “the man is white,” “he is black,” “he is Jewish,” then I am describing him, right? We can — we discussed in the chapters on Attributes that attributes are all accidents, as the Rambam described there. To describe something — sometimes “attributes” would be a better translation than “accidents,” right? Accidents are things that happened to the substance.

The Rambam and the Word *Me’ora*

The Rambam, by the way — when the Rambam writes in Hebrew, he never writes the word *mikre*; he always translates it as *me’ora* (“occurrence”). Which is the same word, just in better Hebrew, because the Rambam uses the word *mikre* in a different sense. *Mikre* for him really means something like *im telkhu imi keri* (“if you walk with me in happenstance”), which the Rambam interprets in the sense of — they also call it “accident,” but I think one needs to characterize it as something like — I don’t remember — random things, right? From the root meaning “random” and not from the root meaning “happened,” right? These are different roots.

So the Rambam, when he wrote in Hebrew, always writes *me’ora’ot* — *me’ora’ot ha-gufim* (“occurrences of bodies”), meaning accidents of bodies, and if the Rambam were to translate the Guide for the Perplexed (*Moreh Nevukhim*) himself, that is probably what he would have written.

In any case, the matter is also clear, right? A *me’ora* is something that happens to something, so it is not the something itself, but rather something that happened to it. Not necessarily “happened to it” in the sense of a temporal event, right? That’s why this is also a misleading word. “Happened to it” in the sense that I say it about it — so what is upon it: there is the thing, and there is the thing that happens to it, that is found upon it or within it — all sorts of analogies like these that one can use for the idea, but the essential word is *mikre* or “accident.”

The Most General Division of the World

So this is a very basic rational division of the world. One can say, almost, that the most general division of the world is its division into substance and accident.

The Aristotelian System: Matter and Form

From Logical Division to Metaphysical Theory

Now, the Kalam scholars, in a somewhat strange way — which, as I said, I don’t fully understand — adopted this language very much, right? This was their way: they took words, collected words from all sorts of sources. They were very fond of this terminology — substance and accident.

But now there is — so in the most basic sense of substance as a thing and accident as something said about it, this is something shared between the Kalam and the Aristotelians. One could say that even today it is shared in a certain sense — that basically we still use these words and their meaning is not far from the meaning Aristotle originally gave them.

The interesting question is that Aristotle also had — not just this division, which can be understood only as a logical division, that we divide in this way, or even a logical division in a very abstract and basic sense of the things themselves. But Aristotle also had a very specific theory of what the substance is — one could say, what the thing itself is. And on this point, in the sense of the modern philosophers and also the Kalam, there was complete disagreement.

The Aristotelian Substance: Composed of Matter and Form

So when an Aristotelian says “substance and accident,” he means not only substance and accident in the most basic sense of the book of Categories — almost in a purely logical sense — but also a much more expanded meaning. And the best Aristotelian language one can use for this — there is indeed some dispute in the interpretation of Aristotle in the Categories — but the consensus, which I think the Rambam generally follows, is that substance is Matter and Form.

Right? So Matter and Form is not the same division as substance and accident — these are different divisions, right? The question of Matter and Form is about what the thing itself is, right? Not what happened to the thing. Because both the Matter and the Form bear accidents — the Rambam will write this explicitly later in this chapter. Accidents are things that happened — one can speak from the side of Matter, one can speak from the side of Form; usually we speak from both sides at once. But in any case, substance and accident is not related to Matter and Form.

Matter and Form is a specific foundational theory of what the substance is, right? What the thing itself is, which we do not call accidents.

Substance as a Composite Thing

So Aristotle says the thing itself must be — or at least the things we see here must be — composed of Matter and Form. Yes, so substance is not a simple thing; it’s not a basic thing. It’s not necessarily the case that the most basic thing in the world is substances. In the sense of our world, this is true, but one can analyze the substance itself.

Therefore there is here — here a problem arises, here there is a dispute in interpretation, but this is the Rambam’s consensus. And overall, accidents are things that happen to the substance, but this substance is already a composite thing, right?

Analyzing the World into Basic Components

It is not true, as it were, that if we were to break down the world into its smallest factors — which is essentially the direction the Kalam takes, like the direction of our science, which thinks that understanding anything means cutting it into the smallest parts — that we would find substance and accident. What we would find is actually Matter and Form, and then this Matter is made of another Matter, various stages of Matter and Form, and one can speak of privation and Form, all sorts of other things.

So that is Aristotle’s system.

The Kalam System: Substance and Accident as Basic Components

The Essential Shift

The Kalam system was different. They took the idea of substance and accident and interpreted it, or used it, precisely for the other question — namely, how the world looks when we divide it, break it down into its most basic component factors.

And then they said: not only is substance and accident a condition of how one thing is conditioned upon being another thing, but substance and accident for them are the basic components of the world.

The Simple Substance of the Kalam

So now we already get a very different picture, and I need to elaborate on this and say that their substance is precisely the non-composite thing, right? Their substance is not substance in the Aristotelian sense of the essence of a thing that has a certain definition, where the thing itself is one thing but it can be made of other things, it can have an entire history of change, and so on.

The Fourth Premise – The Existence of Accidents

Substance in the Kalam versus the Aristotelian Substance

So that is Aristotle’s system. The Kalam system was different. They took the idea of substance and accident, and they interpreted it, or used it, precisely for the other question — namely, how the world looks when we divide it, break it down into its most basic component factors. And then they said: not only is substance and accident a condition of how one thing is conditioned upon being another thing, but substance and accident for them are the basic components of the world.

So now we already get a very different picture, and I need to elaborate on this and say that their substance is precisely the non-composite thing, right? Their substance is not substance in the Aristotelian sense of the essence of a thing that has a certain definition, where the thing itself is one thing but it can be made of other things, it can have an entire history of change, and so on. Their substance is precisely the atom. The indivisible part — that is the substance.

So they interpreted the Aristotelian substance as something completely different. They use the same word, also the same Arabic word and so on, but its meaning is completely different. Their substance is not a substance of “essence,” of a thing — there are no essences of things at all — it is only the atom.

The Role of Accident in the Kalam System

And therefore their accident also turns out to be something that, as they later call it, particularizes this atom, okay? So the accident turns out to be something much more basic — not only does the substance become more basic in their system, but the accident also becomes more basic in their system. The accident is precisely the thing that turns the atom into an atom of a specific type, right? Which is precisely the role of Form in Aristotle’s system.

The Aristotelian substance is already a specific type — there are no simple substances; the only simple thing is Prime Matter or something like that. All the substances we speak about are already substances of a specific type. But we learned that the Kalam atom has no characterization — all atoms are the same thing, they are all similar, resembling one another. What happens to them? They are all similar to one another, they are all the same thing. And there is no such thing as different substances at all — there is only the atom, and all atoms are the same thing.

So now there is, for example — we don’t see everything as the same thing; there are all sorts of things in the world, and here the answer is: accident. The accident is what differentiates one atom from another — not from the side of the atom itself, which is, as it were, the more basic component of existence, but rather the accident. There is some accident in every atom that makes it an atom of this type or that type, and so on.

And this is a very general introduction to the existence of substance and accident according to the Kalam system, and to its opposite from Aristotle’s system, which uses the same word but ultimately means completely different things in its basic physical picture. Alright?

An Open Question: Why Do We Need Substance at All?

Okay, now let’s begin reading what he says. And now, this system leads to all sorts of — many parts, many details follow from this system, and many proofs, and many things about how the world works, and how God, one might say, operates the world in accordance with the idea of substance and accident.

One thing I need to say that I don’t understand — I’ve already asked this and I have a gap in understanding here — according to their system, it’s not entirely clear what the role of substance and accident is here, right? If they had said there are only accidents, only things that differentiate, that would also, it seems to me, be correct. Because it’s not clear why they need the substance to serve as a substrate for the accident.

After all, this is not true — according to Aristotle it’s clear, because not every substance can bear every accident. So a human has types of accidents that pertain to a human being as a human being and don’t pertain to a horse or something like that, because a human is a substance and a horse is a substance. According to their system, the substance is only something very empty, right? The bearer of things, but it is not at all something defined — so all substances are the same thing. So what does it actually add to the accident? Why don’t they start the world from the accidents?

There is here — I don’t — presumably there is indeed something to the effect that an accident needs to happen to something, right? This particularization, the characterization of something as something of a specific type — they also understand that it happens to something. But that something is not something that explains anything; it only — it has a very simple, very uninteresting role, their substance, right? It is the unit of existence, but not a unit of existence of any type. It doesn’t actually bear the accidents in the same way that the Aristotelian substance bears the accidents; it is simply the substrate.

Substance Without Accident – A Logical Impossibility

And then they say — the Rambam says — they say explicitly that God cannot create a substance without an accident and an accident without a substance. And this is because, as I already mentioned, despite the Rambam’s claim that their system is not rational and all that, they are not as irrational as those who deny the law of contradiction, as those who deny the concept of impossibility.

What they say is only that they deny what the Aristotelians call impossibility, but in an abstract sense they agree that God cannot do impossible things, and in their view, a substance without an accident is an impossible thing.

That is to say, apparently, what this means is that this is a logical principle and not a physical principle, because every physical thing — precisely because of the worldview of substance and accident — every physical thing one can imagine is possible. We will see later that this is what follows from all this. Whereas metaphysical things or logical principles — they cannot make a triangular square, not because it’s impossible to imagine, but precisely because it’s impossible to imagine a triangular square, right? Or in another sense, in contemporary language we say: in no possible world can there be a triangular square, because this is simply an incoherent request, right? What exactly do you want God to do? There is nothing here — you cannot answer that question. Either it is a logical impossibility, or what they call two opposites in one subject.

Two opposites can exist in many senses, but not such that it would be defined in the same contradiction, or that God would negate Himself, right? Also a type of thing that God cannot do, even according to the Kalam system, right? There are those who say He can, but they also don’t mean it literally, so it doesn’t matter.

So apparently this substance-accident thing itself is a logical principle, as I prefaced — that this is a stronger principle than the Aristotelian interpretation of what substance is and what accident is, right? Yes, the fact that we see things that have “thingness” and what they are — yes, in general, at least in our speech, and presumably they understood that reality too is something logical: one cannot describe an accident to which nothing happened, or a substance that has no accidents — that too is impossible, because what would that be? Existence and what exists, right? Something like that.

But this is something I’m saying — I’m missing some understanding. Maybe we’ll read the chapter another 50 times and start to understand, but for now we don’t understand enough, or at least I don’t understand enough.

Structure of Premises 4–9 and a Methodological Note

So the Rambam now, when he divides — I said from the fourth premise to the ninth deals with this matter — he divides their system into many principles, many premises, what happens to them, and all these premises are connected to each other. One cannot truly understand one without the second and third and fourth. The Rambam himself says this; I’m not the one inventing it. But in each premise he sharpens a different point to explain, and especially, as I teach it, he emphasizes it through the lens of the Aristotelian system, right?

Each time he shows you, from within a point — he assumes you are already an Aristotelian and more or less interpret the world according to Aristotle — and he shows you how the Kalam system works by constantly building, slowly, the things they say differently, and then you understand what follows from their general system. It could be that if there were a clean presentation of their system, one would need to start differently — I don’t know.

Reading the Fourth Premise – The Existence of Accidents

So, good — up to here, general introductions. I will read the fourth premise, which is ostensibly a premise about the existence of substance — excuse me, the existence of accidents — and we will see that he adds one more point about what kind of accidents, what the plain meaning of these accidents is according to the Kalam system. And afterward I will also reveal to you that this depends on various other assumptions — I think mainly on the fifth premise — so one really needs to read the fourth and fifth premises together; they are almost the same thing. I would also have placed the fifth before the fourth, if you ask me. Presumably the Rambam — perhaps the answer is what I said, that he thinks from the perspective of another system, and perhaps — I don’t know — already in the commentaries they struggle a bit with this. I’m not the first to think this way.

The Text: The Existence of Accidents and Their Necessity

So the fourth premise: He says that they say that accidents exist — right? There are accidents. And what are accidents? And they are matters additional to the matter of the substance — right? “Matters” in the sense of “meanings” — that is, not that there are meanings, but the meaning of the word “accident” is that there is something in addition to the substance, right? And no body among bodies can escape from one of them.

There is nothing in the world — right? It could be that there are non-bodies, abstract Forms that have no accidents. That could be, because a Form is precisely something that is completely separated from everything non-essential. The Form of the square, for example, has no accidents. Every physical square must have a specific color or a specific size — is what I’m saying understood? Not every non-physical thing needs accidents, because physicality is itself an accident — that is, length and width, for example. If I speak about what it means to be a square — a square is a figure, how do you say, a “shape” — I don’t know what he calls it — a pattern or something like that.

Turning Privation into a Positive Accident in the Kalam

Illustration: The Square – What Is Substance and What Are Accidents

Every physical square must have a specific color or a specific size, right? Not every non-physical thing needs accidents, because physicality is itself an accident — that is, length and width, for example, right? If I’m talking about what it means to be a square — a square is a figure, how do you say, a “shape” — I don’t know what they call it — a pattern or something like that — that has length and width and four sides, and however one defines a square. And now, this thing is precisely what it is — that is its Form. So if its Form exists separately, like Plato held, then that is what its Form is.

Now, every square in reality is more things than this, right? There are things in every square in reality that I can remove from it and it will remain a square, right? I can change its color and it will remain a square, I can change its size and it will remain a square, I can change the type of material it’s made of and it will remain a square, right? I can change its location and it will remain a square. I can change what happens to it and what it does and its time. All the accidents — these are precisely things that can be removed from the thing and it will remain what it is, right? It’s not that it will become a triangle if I change its color, but still, it’s true that this is a square possessing a color, right? I can’t say this square has no color — it has a color. A square without color is only the non-corporeal thing, the Form itself.

Every body has a Form — that is the substance, of course, Aristotelian substance — and it must also have accidents.

The Tension Between the Categories and the Metaphysics

Because the physical world at least doesn’t allow us — this is probably a law of corporeality, since corporeality itself is an accident of some kind. That’s not exactly precise, because it already depends on how we understand the Forms. If I were to say, for example, the Form of a human is a thing that has a body, right? A thing that has no body — the soul of the person or something, the intellect of the person — is not a human, at least not the human of the Categories, because that is explicit.

So according to the Categories, substance must be Matter and Form, and therefore it’s not that the substance itself having Matter necessitates that it have accidents, but apparently Matter is of such a kind that it always has size and other things that can be varied without changing the Form, right?

In the Metaphysics, Aristotle says that the true essence of all things is the Form and not its Matter, so this is somewhat of a contradiction between the books. And from here stems the dispute I mentioned about substance — whether it is the Form itself or the Matter and Form together.

But in any case, we understand that at least for us, it’s difficult to think in the world about — even if the Form necessitates the Matter as well, yes, the definition of a human is something with a body — still, that body has many things that can be changed without that person ceasing to be a person.

So that’s the introduction up to this point.

The Rambam’s Praises for the Premise — and the Game Behind Them

And now, the Rambam says, and here there’s something very tricky, because of what I prefaced — the distinction between the Aristotelian interpretation of those same words and the Kalam interpretation of those same words.

The Rambam says: so this is the Arabic premise, and therefore he began with things we already believe and recognize. The Rambam says, and this is the premise — this premise that there are accidents in the world, and at least in corporeal things it’s impossible for substance to exist without them, or at least they are additional things beyond the substance, they are not what makes the thing into something, but rather something additional.

So he says: “Had they been satisfied with this” — meaning, had they limited themselves to this measure, if they had said only this, had they stopped here — “it would have been a true premise.” So it would have been a correct premise. “Clear, evident” — and he gives many praises for the truth of this. Clear, evident, “beyond doubt” — and there’s even one more praise written, something like “there is no perplexity in it,” no difficulty or error, which Ibn Tibbon omitted from the Arabic. *Rayb* is a type of doubt or dispute, and *shubha* or something like that is something like perplexity or error or problem.

So there are many things we say in praise of this premise. It’s very evident, very simple, very clear. I think that if one is precise with all these words, one would find some secrets, but I don’t know what the secrets are. Because we already prefaced that the Rambam doesn’t just say things — yes, he wrote here four praises about this premise, right? According to Ibn Tibbon’s translation: clear, evident, beyond doubt, and there’s even a fourth thing written here. As if the word “true” is written twice, right? True, true — I don’t know. There are five or four things written here about this premise, about how good it is.

And I think the multiplicity of these words is somewhat connected to this, because he’s somewhat playing with them, since what he thinks when he says substance and accident is not what they think when he says substance and accident. Apparently — and we already discussed this in chapter 72 — one of the Rambam’s arguments is that the Kalam contradicts things visible to the eye, and when he says “visible to the eye” he doesn’t only mean things one can literally see, but things close to seeing, like Aristotelian concepts which aren’t exactly visible things, but it’s very hard to understand the world without them, so they are very basic.

And he says: yes, you took something simple, and now you destroyed it with your interpretation, okay?

And what exactly the… but there’s still some secret here that can be understood, right? It’s something — precisely because they somewhat, they of course cannot deny evident things that can be seen, and on the other hand they go further, right? Afterward they say you can’t trust your eyes, right? So there’s something there.

The Problem: The Kalam Turns Every Privation into a Positive Accident

“But” — now, and here is the thing the Rambam says follows, though he doesn’t invite us to see where it comes from, right? I think it derives from later premises, which is why I say — “but rather they said” — here comes their problem. They add to this, and this addition is precisely because their interpretation of the words substance and accident is not our interpretation.

“They said” that every substance — right? And we must remember, the word substance for them doesn’t have the same meaning as our meaning; for them it’s actually an atom, and for us it’s essence. So they said as follows: “that if it does not have the accident of life, it must necessarily have the accident of death.” Why? “For of every two contraries, the subject cannot escape one of the two.”

Explanation of the Kalam Argument

So what they’re saying is this — I’ll say it in the Rambam’s language and then I’ll try to explain why they say this. Yes, in the Rambam’s presentation they state an astonishing novelty with no connection to anything, right? We understand that there’s no substance without accidents, right? You could even say, for example, every thing made of our material had some accident of size, for instance, right? It needs to be either large or small — it can’t be without size at all. Okay, these are correct and agreed-upon things.

But they add something more here. They say that every accident must either be a certain accident or its opposite.

Now, for example, we recognize in the world living things and non-living things. There are living things — animals, human beings, trees, etc. — and there are non-living things like stones. So Aristotle says: there are living things and there are non-living things.

Now the Kalam says: no, the non-living things have an accident of non-life.

The Connection to the Question of Privation

Later, in the fifth and sixth premises, the seventh — I don’t remember — he discusses the question of whether what we call privation, non-existence, exists. And there the Rambam also plays with them and says that they agree that privation doesn’t exist, and therefore they say this, right?

That is, if there’s a thing that is not alive, then according to our system, according to Aristotle’s system, there’s no problem, right? There are types of Matter and Form, or types of substances that are alive, and Forms that are not alive, okay? Things we call animate beings, etc.

Why the Kalam Needs This — The Problem of the Simple Atom

But according to the Kalam system, one must remember that their substance is completely simple — it has no reason to be of one type or another, right? So what makes the… so they have a genuine question — I don’t know if I’m going to say exactly these words in the seventh premise.

What actually makes the stone non-living and the human being alive? The Aristotelian can answer: it has Matter of such a type that allows it to receive life, and it has a Form of such a type that constitutes its life, etc. But the Mutakallim cannot answer anything, because it’s composed merely of atoms, and all atoms are the same thing.

So there must be something that distinguishes it, that characterizes it in order to be alive. So what makes those things that are not alive non-living? That they have an accident of death.

When he says an accident of death, he doesn’t mean only something that was once alive. He says every thing in the world is either alive or dead, like a game. All human beings are either communists or non-communists, so they have something to do with communism.

The Clarifying Analogy

This is exactly the game he’s playing here — every thing in the world is either alive or dead. Okay, so life is a type of accident, a statement about something — there’s a thing that is alive — and being dead is also a statement about something.

Afterward they will say: when God creates the world constantly and makes certain things alive and certain things not alive, He makes these alive and makes those not alive — He does both. How does He do it? By giving this one the accident of life and that one the accident of non-life.

The Kalam Formulation: Binary Choice

And they say: I have an argument, because after all there are two contraries — being alive and being not alive is a complete opposite, right, it’s a contradiction. How can it be that there’s something that is the opposite of something and doesn’t have one of the two? After all, it’s a binary choice — either you’re alive or you’re not alive. So either you have an accident of life or you have an accident of non-life. There can’t be something in the middle, since there is nothing in the middle.

So how can it be that there would be a thing that is not alive without it having an accident of being not alive?

This is the argument of the Kalam.

The Logical Argument for Turning Privation into an Accident: The Distinction Between Contrariety and Contradiction

The Logical Chain of the Mutakallimun: Why Privation Must Be a Positive Accident

The Rambam himself will formulate this in exactly these words: “that there is nothing besides the substance with this accident” — or that accidents must reside in the atom alone. There isn’t even a combination of multiple atoms that creates something new — that would already be an Aristotelian Form of some kind. They deny this.

And then every atom is the same thing, and there can be nothing that distinguishes between a living atom and a dead atom except its accident. And it can’t be an accident of something else; it can’t be that it stands next to something — all such things are invalid according to their view. So there must be an accident of death within every non-living thing.

And this is exactly what God does, afterward, as we will see. God makes things with an accident of death and things with an accident of life — or death here in the sense of non-life.

Why This Is Necessary According to the Mutakallimun

What I tried to explain is this from the standpoint of their necessity, because otherwise there’s nothing that would make — it’s impossible. They don’t just say this is how it appears to us; it’s impossible.

Because it’s impossible — what makes a thing non-living? Not the substance, because there is no substance. Substance has no characteristics, so there must be an accident. And there must be something that causes this; it can’t happen on its own — that would certainly be heresy. What does it mean that it happens on its own? Who does that “on its own”?

So God must do it. And to do something that is not — that’s also impossible. So there must be such a thing as an accident of death. At least this is how I understand the logical chain that makes this — impossible.

The Assumption That “Not” Is a Thing

And they also say this is impossible because they think life and death are contraries. And after all, how can it be that you’re not? If we introduce here the assumption that “not” is also a thing — because otherwise there’s no reason — it must be.

Their assumption that “not” is a thing is necessary because they need something to cause it. So they’re correct in their conclusion that if I have — it’s impossible to have neither the thing nor the not-thing. Either you have the thing or you have the not-thing; there’s nothing in the middle.

The Aristotelian Distinction: Contraries Versus Contradictions

One must remember — I’m sharpening this now through the Aristotelian understanding — one must remember that they would be correct if it really were so.

Aristotle says there is a distinction between contraries and contradictions. Not every contrary is a contradiction, and not every contradiction is a contrary.

Example of Contrariety: Hot and Cold

For instance, hot and cold are contraries. They’re sometimes called contradictions, but it’s not true that heat contradicts cold. That is, if something is hot, it’s also not cold, but another way to say it is that it has less cold. One can understand that there’s a continuum between hot and cold.

And therefore, the Rambam says in some chapter of Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah, everything that is hot also has some cold — or at least most things, except for the ultimately hot thing, or fire itself perhaps, or something like that. Why? Because there’s no problem — this is contrariety and not contradiction.

There is opposition between hot and cold, so it’s not that the existence of heat contradicts the existence of cold. There can be something — there is such a quality. Hot and cold are qualities in things; they are a type of accident that exists on something, and that something can be somewhat hot and somewhat cold.

This is something contrary — you can be a bit of both. And the hotter you are, the less cold you are. I can heat something or cool it — it doesn’t matter from which side I do it — so that it’s this hot and this cold.

But this is called contrariety, and at this point it’s true that there can’t be something in the middle. Everything that has heat and cold — not all things perhaps receive heat and cold, maybe they do, I don’t know — but insofar as something must be at a certain temperature, it’s true that it can’t have neither heat nor cold, because it must have some. It can be anywhere on the continuum, but it must be somewhat hot and somewhat cold. And cold is simply not-hot. This is the type of contradiction where the other side — this is also a distinction between contrariety and contradiction.

Contrariety is the type of opposition where the other side is truly something positive that is contrary to the first side.

Example of Contradiction: Life and Death

Now, there are other things that are not contraries but contradictions, and they are in one respect more severe and in another respect lighter. And the opposite is like being alive and being not alive.

Being not alive is not a story — the same thing that it’s not alive — it’s not true, it’s not an accident in a stone that it’s not alive. It’s true that it’s not alive, but this is a complete privation. That is, there’s no connection whatsoever. It’s not true that someone who is not a communist must be a non-communist. There are non-communists, but not everyone needs to be a non-communist, because this thing called alive is exactly the opposite of being alive.

It’s impossible to be somewhat alive and somewhat dead — this is also probably the case, at least insofar as life is something defined. It’s impossible to be somewhat alive and somewhat dead. Not in every living thing is there also death. In a certain sense there is, but in the sense of — either you’re alive or you’re dead. This is called contradiction.

Or you’re either material or non-material. Things like that. This is contradiction. You can’t be a bit of both.

The Meaning of Contradiction: Privation Does Not Require Positive Existence

And for exactly the same reason — let’s call it Matter — it’s impossible to be somewhat alive and somewhat dead. Either you’re alive or you’re dead. Or one could say even more deeply: it’s impossible for there to be a type of thing that can be somewhat alive.

The Matter of the human body can be alive, so it has some connection with life. But the Matter of a stone is also not dead. One can understand this better through the concept of wisdom: a stone is not stupid. A person can be stupid; a stone cannot be stupid, according to Aristotle, because a stone doesn’t have the type of Matter at all in which the accident of stupidity could inhere. It’s not even in the category of being stupid. It’s not wise — but no one would therefore say it’s wise.

So the fact that something has the complete privation of a quality at one end doesn’t necessitate that it has the other side, because it’s not even in the discussion, it’s not even in the category. This is called contradiction, perfect contradiction, or true distinction.

On the other hand, precisely because of this, you can be the opposite of something, the opposite of something, without having any connection to it, without it having an accident of death.

Therefore, if death is a true privation, the true opposite of life, then it does not follow according to Aristotle that every dead thing also has non-life or not-life. Because if death and life are simply different things, they are different categories, one could say, or something like that — different types that are opposites of each other but not contraries of each other.

The Condition for This Distinction: The Existence of Qualities and Natures

All of this is possible only if we assume that there is such a thing as qualities and natures, and as we will see later.

If you don’t understand any such thing — there are only atoms and accidents — then all things are the same thing. All things come out, behave like Aristotelian contraries, and they are contraries that also have the opposite side. It’s almost impossible — it’s also impossible for there to be intermediate stages.

Why in the Atomistic System Every Contrariety Becomes a Binary Contradiction

We remember that atoms are discrete things. You’re either this or that, so you can’t be in the middle. There’s a middle only in the sense that there’s another division here, another complete division, but there’s no middle. There are no intermediate things in the atomistic system; there’s nothing between two atoms. There’s a thing composed of 30 atoms, 15 here and 15 there, but there’s no in-between.

Therefore, according to their system, every two contraries are two opposites. So either you’re hot or you’re cold. If there’s something between hot and cold — okay, maybe there are 20 million types of accidents of heat and cold, each one separately that God produces in every atom, etc., or the thing we call half-hot and half-cold is actually composed of many atoms, half of which are one way and half the other — but there’s nothing in the middle, there’s no continuum.

Therefore, for them, truly everything is two opposites, and it must be that you’re either this or that.

The List of Necessary Accidents for Every Atom

And they continue, and the Rambam writes this because it’s simply — if you hear this you’ll understand it’s insane and therefore it can’t be. But here is precisely his initial distinction between their types of accidents and our types of accidents.

They said — so he adds: yes, so this is the first thing. If there’s an accident of life, if there’s no accident of life, then it must have an accident of death. So all things in the world — so the Mutakallimun also made lists of the number of accidents that must exist for every substance in the world. Every atom that God creates constantly, He creates it with some list of 30 accidents — I saw they had a list, or maybe the list needs to be much longer, it doesn’t matter — because everything that it is, is something, and also everything that it is not, is something. So for everything — the list of characteristics of every atom is very, very, very long.

Quoting the Language of the Mutakallimun

And then they said — and the Rambam details further — they said, and everything where he says “they said,” he’s probably quoting either some sentence that was common or that’s written in books or that was well-known among them. Rabbi Schwartz and others search for where these phrases come from, and he says the language here is probably almost a direct quotation.

So they said: And likewise, if everything in the world is either alive or dead, that is to say, either alive or not alive, that thing, and likewise it will have an appearance – it must have color and taste and so on, because every color must be – either you have the color or you have the non-color, there is nothing in between. So everything in the world, every atom has color, not from its own essence, not from the substance itself, but from the accident. Every atom, if there is an atom without color – then here there is an accident of non-color.

And likewise, it has motion, or the opposite of motion. We already learned in the first premise – every atom has motion. Of course, motion is almost non-existent; it is only jumps of each atom to another place. And motion or rest, either it is at rest or it is in motion, or it is combination or separation – which is the same thing as we learned. Being is motion and rest and combination and separation.

And therefore if these are the states of all being, then everything, every atom in the world, has, in addition to having…

Every Atom Bears All the Accidents in the World

According to the Kalam system, every atom in the world must bear all types of accidents – either the accident itself or its opposite. The list includes:

Appearance and taste – which the Rambam brings to emphasize the absurdity.

Motion or rest – as was learned in the first premise, every atom moves in jumps from place to place, and motion is almost non-existent in the ordinary sense.

Combination or separation – which are essentially the same thing as motion and rest. Combination means that an atom is next to another atom, and separation is motion itself. These too must be accidents, since there is no independent place – everything is void. And therefore “being next to something” belongs to the atom itself as an accident, because nothing can belong to the void. So in each and every atom all these things exist.

The Chain from Life to All Accidents of Living Beings

And now, the Rambam continues even further, and says, when he quotes them: If it had the accident of life – and I think, and I have debated this, it’s possible that others read this differently, but I think the correct reading here is as follows – if every atom has the accident of life, and we need to insert here either the accident, or non-life, which is also a type of accident of life.

After all, we remember that living beings – we, the Rambam and Aristotle, constantly look at the world generally through the lens of living beings. Living beings are the most complex thing, the most interesting for thinking about and understanding the world through them. So we know that living beings, at least living beings like human beings, or perhaps other living beings too, are very complex things. The list of characteristics that characterize a living human being is much longer than color and appearance and motion and combination, and many things.

And if we say that everything either has this or has the non-this, then everything that has life must have many more things. If it had the accident of life, it is impossible without other types of accidents. Every living being, every person, has – this is essentially the meaning of being a living being, of being a human being at least – that you have wisdom or ignorance and so on.

The Accidents Entailed by Life

So he says: It is impossible without other types of accidents, such as wisdom or ignorance – ignorance or lack of knowledge, simply not wisdom, not knowledge.

Or will or its opposite – to will, or it’s not clear what it means to not will, so he writes “its opposite,” this is also in Arabic, the meaning is the opposite of willing. That is not willing – being coerced or being indifferent, I don’t know, not willing. Perhaps hating, being against something.

Or ability, or lack of ability – which Ibn Tibbon calls here “le’ut,” not from the word for tiredness, but from the word for insufficiency of ability.

Or perception – perception, one can translate it as perception, perception not necessarily intellectual apprehension, there are all kinds of types of perception. Or one of its opposites – meaning, sight and blindness, or hearing and deafness, and so on. All types of perception, so there must be perception or one of the opposites of perception.

So this is at least true regarding every atom that has the accident of life, which necessitates – this drags along with it – that it must have one of the two rulings, one of the two sides in all these things.

Why This Applies to **Every** Atom and Not Only to Living Atoms

And I claim that this is not only – after all, according to their view there are no types of atoms, and as we will learn later in the ninth premise, there is also no accident borne upon an accident. Accidents cannot specify for other accidents; only an accident directly upon an atom – that is what makes things what they are.

Therefore I think he is arguing here that every – and I think this is explicit in what follows, or at least it comes out as explicit for me – that everything in the world, because it can be alive and be alive, the implication being, after all there cannot be a living being without wisdom or ignorance. This is actually true for us as well, but it is also true – look at the world, all living beings are either wise or foolish.

So because all things in the world are either living beings or not living beings, they must have in their accidents the specification of all these things. So every stone in the world has the accident of ignorance and the accident of will, or if it doesn’t have will, then it has coercion, being unwilling, being – it hates, something like that, or lack of ability and so on.

In sum, or in general, everything that is found in a living being is impossible without it or without one of its opposites.

So this is the Kalam system regarding the accidents that must belong to everything. That everything has accidents in the sense of the Aristotelian substance is true, at least for every physical thing, and here we are speaking only about physical things in any case. And what is not true, or what is novel in their view, is that everything must have all the accidents in essence – all the opposites in the world. We will make a list of however many opposites we can find in the world, and every atom in the world has all of them, either the thing itself or its opposite.

The Absurdity That the Rambam Points Out

This is an innovation, and the Rambam will later say that this sounds terribly strange. Because it turns out that everything, every stone, all the time, God is occupied with making it foolish. Making it foolish. And this is renewed every moment, because after all the accidents do not persist for more than one moment. So what emerges is a world that sounds very strange. I don’t know if this is an argument that sounds strange, but it sounds very strange that God is occupied all day with making all the stones foolish.

This is one of the things He does, because the fact that a stone is foolish has no cause – after all there is nothing that specifies the atom of a human being to receive wisdom, there are no properties of the substances themselves, so there are only accidents. What makes me wise and a stone foolish is that God creates foolishness in every stone in the world at every moment. The Rambam himself will say something like this, but I think this is apparently what follows from this matter.

The Strangeness from the Standpoint of Common Sense

And therefore what I am saying is that it turns out – and this is also, I think this is also, I think one must say that this is also strange from the standpoint of common sense. We don’t call stones foolish, or intelligent. Foolish is a specific type of ignorance. Ignorance in the simplest sense of lack of knowledge – the stone is not lacking knowledge, it knows everything that, I don’t know, one could say it knows everything it needs to know, that would also be strange. It doesn’t know, it has its own existence, without the problem of… it doesn’t need life, it doesn’t need knowledge.

And according to their view it turns out that yes, it turns out that every stone is unknowing, and has ignorance. Ignorance in an abstract sense, not ignorance in the sense of… Yes, only human beings can be fools in a very specific sense – one who thinks the opposite of reality. A stone doesn’t think the opposite of reality; that is already a specific type of human stupidity.

The Distinction Between Types of Ignorance – and an Additional Problem

But even this is not correct according to their view. Because after all there is nothing that makes the atom of a human being capable of this ability to be foolish in the way that only human beings can be. So there is also some property, some accident, that makes the stone not foolish in the precisely specific sense in which my friend is foolish. Because otherwise how does my friend have – because after all there is such an accident, every accident.

In short, everything that is found in a living being must be, either it has it or it has its opposite, and everything that is found in a living being is simply the place where we can find the most accidents. So therefore this makes the world very interesting according to their assumption, and this is the fourth premise with their innovation.

—

Perhaps that is enough for today. Yes, I think that is enough. If you disagree, then make a different accident.

What, that we can continue? That’s exactly what got killed. What? What do we disagree about? We think we can continue? Yes. Is there an accident that makes us continue or not? Because if we’ve finished, we’ve finished.

We can do the fifth premise. I didn’t prepare it here, but it’s possible. But it’s longer, and then it gets into all sorts of things that I still need to… Fine, enough. Enough then enough.