The concepts of matter in the Western tradition ex-
hibit bewildering confusion. Matter has been held to
be essentially inert (ancient atomism) and inseparable
from motion and action (L. Büchner; Marxism); essen
tially extended in space (Descartes) and composed of
extensionless centers of energy (Leibniz, R. Boscovich);
essentially unintelligible or unknowable (Plato, Berke-
ley, Kant) and the only perspicuous foundation for
systematic philosophy (Hobbes); essentially and eter-
nally actual (Democritus) and a form of being which
is never more than potential (Plato, Hegel). Any effort
to articulate a common focus of these concepts runs
the risk of ignoring a formidable array of counter-
instances and the certainty of accommodating some
historical concepts far more awkwardly than others.
Fortunately, one focus does not necessarily exhaust all
other possibilities.
The term “matter” or its near synonyms has been
used to designate: (1) the stuff of which something is
constituted as contrasted with the structure or propor-
tions according to which the stuff is organized. The
structure is held to be what can be representatively
expressed in ideas and words, if indeed the so-called
structure in things is not considered the product of
structures of thought or language; but the “material”
aspect is precisely that whose existence is most radi-
cally other than such formulae.
(2) Matter therefore can only be indicated osten-
sively and this implies that it can occasion sensory
effects. It is through these that it is first encountered
in almost all accounts; in most accounts it is tangible
in sufficient concentrations. Even when matter is sub-
sequently defined, the definition may be based on an
admitted hypothesis (e.g., the cause of sensations in
Hobbes), or on an innate idea (e.g., the idea of extension
in Descartes), rather than on any self-disclosure of
matter itself. “Matter,” therefore, has also connoted
what confronts us but, at least initially, as unintelligi-
ble.
(3) This identification with “brute fact” seems also
to account for the role of “matter” as a principle of
individuation: formulae can migrate over the instances
but the instances are sedentary. Even in many theories
where such material facticity is held to be a philo-
sophically inadequate basis for individuation it seems
rather because these philosophies “dematerialize mat-
ter” than because the empirical connection of “matter”
with individuals has been abandoned.
(4) Since the things which a given stuff can go to
compose are transient, matter is identified with some-
thing that persists through change. The changing things
are its appearances, actualizations, or emergents: mat-
ter is the more primitive and permanent substratum.
(5) The characterizations of interests as “material,”
of individuals and societies as “materialistic,” and of
interpretations of history as “materialist” illustrate
usages, favorable or unfavorable, arising from practical
concerns. While they obviously represent meaning
components additional to, and not always entirely
inclusive of, those previously listed, it would be an
error to ignore them. Ideas about matter in this sense
have rarely developed in complete independence of
the value-judgments of those who, on the one hand,
found in “matter” a rubric for what they regarded as
base and degrading, and those on the other, who liked
to invoke it as assurance of their honest practicality.
