The History of Form D (Substantial Form). The
fourth concept of form was initiated by Aristotle. He
used morphē for form in various senses, e.g., shape or
figure, but primarily as a synonym for his particular
concept of eidos , entelechia. He thus regarded form
as the essence of a thing, its nonaccidental component:
“By form I mean the essence of each thing” (Meta-
physics 1032b 1, trans. W. D. Ross; see also 1050b
2; 1041b 8; 1034a 43). He identified form with act,
energy, aim, and with the dynamic element of exist-
ence. This use of form may appear metaphorical to
us but it was not so in antiquity. It was basic in
Aristotle's metaphysics, but neither he nor his followers
in antiquity ever used it in aesthetics.
However, in the Middle Ages, when in the thirteenth
century the scholastics accepted the Aristotelian con-
cept of substantial form, they introduced it into aes-
thetics. They did it in connection with the old idea
derived from Pseudo-Dionysius that beauty consists in
both the right proportion and luster (claritas, splendor)
of objects. “Luster” became identified with Aristotelian
form, and what resulted was the peculiar idea that the
beauty of an object depends on its metaphysical essence
when revealed in its appearance. The first to offer this
interpretation was probably Albert the Great; for him
beauty consisted in the luster of substantial form (form
D) revealing itself in matter, but only when it has the
right proportion (form A) (ed. Mandonnet, V, 420-21).
This viewpoint was maintained by the Albertine
school, in particular, by Ulrich of Strassburg, who
tersely wrote: “substantial form is the beauty of every
object” (ed. Grabmann, pp. 73-74). Other contem-
porary schools, such as the Franciscan and Augustinian,
thought the same way. Bonaventura accepted this view
and inferred that since beauty consists in substantial
form, and since every being, has such a form, every
being is beautiful: omne quod est ens habet aliquam
formam, omne autem quod habet aliquam formam
habet pulchritudinem (Quaracchi ed., II, 814).
The use of form D in aesthetics reached its zenith
but also its end in the thirteenth century: though char-
acteristic of the high Middle Ages, it did not survive.
“Substantial form” along with the whole of Aristotelian
philosophy lasted until the sixteenth century but least
of all in aesthetics. Some traces could still be found,
e.g., in the writings of Vincenzo Danti, a scholar in
the sixteenth century who said that shape in art origi-
nates in a perfetta forma intenzionale (Danti, Book I,
Ch. 11); also in the theories of the painter Federigo
Zuccaro, who identified drawing with form and form
with idea, rule, knowledge (Book I, Ch. 2). These traces
of Aristotelian form in aesthetics became extinct in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. F. Baldinucci,
in his dictionary (1681), describes form as a philo-
sophical but not aesthetic term, and so does Richelet
(1719). Form D ceased as an aesthetic meaning, and
was certainly not used in the nineteenth century.
However, in the twentieth century, this conception
under different names seems to be revived in the works
of abstract painters, such as P. Mondrian or Ben
Nicholson. When Mondrian writes that “... a modern
artist knows that the feeling of beauty is cosmic and
universal,” or that new art “expresses a universal ele-
ment of things because it reconstructs cosmic relations”
(Seuphor, p. 144), then he is praising a sense of form
similar to what the Aristotelians called “substantial
form.”
The historian of aesthetics will note also that “form”
was used not only for Aristotle's entelechies but also
for Plato's Ideas. Medieval translators of Plato's works
did so, and they were followed by translators of Plato
into modern languages. Translating “idea” by “form”
is justified to some extent by the fact that in everyday
Greek, “idea” meant shape, approaching form B, but
a different meaning was introduced then by Plato. The
translators, however, followed the original everyday
meaning of idea as form. As a result, “form” acquired
another metaphysical meaning, which never achieved
the same currency as form D, entelechy, in aesthetics.
Of course, the Platonic Idea has played a considerable
role in the history of aesthetics but not under the name
“form.”
