Chapter Three Of Aristotle's Metaphysics

Aristotle in Book Z, chapter three of Metaphysics is attempting to answer the question, ‘what is substance’ or better, what is the determinant of something that qualifies it as a substance. Aristotle begins this chapter by outlining several possibilities of what this determinant could be. These possibilities are the essence, the universal, the genus, and the primary underlying subject. For example, if something is a substance then the particular substance of this would be; the essence of it, the universal predicated of it, the genus that it belongs to, or the subject of which it is predicated. The first three are examined in various chapters, but the primary underlying subject will be the focus of Z3, to examine the underlying subject,

He then focuses on the underlying subject, he defines the relationship of the underlying subject and why it seems to be most of all substance. Aristotle then delves deeper into what the components of substance and a particular subject may be, the form, the matter, and the composition of the two. However, Aristotle does not like the multiple possibilities and works to determine which is more important. He begins with the form itself, which is the determinant of the structure and visual identity of a subject. But then he discusses how the matter must be the substance because it is the most basic and by stripping away all quantities and qualities of a subject you are left with matter. This is all sound logic and appears to be making progress towards an answer and an ultimate explanation to the question ‘what is substance,’ but when discussing combination of the two, he does not make an argument for or against it. He leaves to question for the reader to investigate on, with the logic of how to discover the unknown, to progress from less knowable to more knowable. This could be an attempt to discover what perceptible things are true substances and things are not, to proceed from the poorly known towards the ones that are fully