Antichi Dibattiti sull'Ilemorfismo

This chapter focuses on ancient debates on hylomorphism from Aristotle to Plotinus. Contemporary hylomorphism is often re-garded as a non-reductivist kind of materialism that avoids the opposed difficulties typical of reductivist materialism and of substance dualism. Ancient Greek hylomorphism emerged with Aristotle and we could expect that this theory dominated the philosophical panorama. This chapter argues that this was not the case. The ancient debates show instead that hylomorphism was often neglected or interpreted in a way that we would now regard as reductivist of epiphenomenalist (this happens with philosophers such as Aristoxenus, Dicaearchus, Galen). The Peripatetic commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (3rd century CE) developed a sophisticated ontology that comes close to con-temporary hylomorphism, but soon after him Plotinus argued that hylomorphism cannot sufficiently be distinguished from physical reductivism.