The Changing View of Successive Entities in the Fourteenth Century: Peter of Mantua on Matter and Form

This paper takes as its starting point a debate in the mid-fourteenth century on the nature of successive entities and whether substances can be such entities. It brings out Albert of Saxony’s view in particular. The background to this debate was William Ockham’s focus on parts and wholes in physics and their relationship to substances. There was a strong tendency in philosophy after Ockham that this perspective would come to overshadow the Aristotelian distinction between form and matter. From that point of view the paper looks at Peter of Mantua’s interesting and original view of substance. He develops this mereological account of substance and accidents and argues that there are two distinct kinds of parts, namely essential and integral parts, but he also seems to think that each essential part is composed of integral parts. His view essentially reduces form and matter to integral parts. The only exception he allows is the human intellective soul, which is devoid of integral parts. However, he still views the intellective soul as a part of a whole human being.