Relations between form and matter

For many centuries the philosophers had all their thoughts but all of them separated matter from thought, Heraclitus first said that we knew matter and data through senses, and that it was in constant movement. From his contradictor, Parmenides, we know that he said we cannot pay attention to the senses because they trick us and we know because of a rationalist process, through thought but not senses. From this first 2 we saw in the semester we have one by senses and one by thought. Then there is Socrates, he who made the dialectic method, and the search for a universal thing beneath everything, a tracendental truth. Plato supported the Aristotelic ideas but Plato has a debate with the sophist to know a tracendental truth. Latter the one that gives us an attempt to unite matter and form is Socrates. He is the one that gives us the first attempt to unite the matter from the thought, with his vision of hades; the place where the ideas are. Ideas come from the hades and get stuck with us, matter. This first attempt to make matter and form in one is not quite good, because this means that matter is like only a mean to accomplish the ideas, and when they are accomplished they return to the hades. But still it is only a mean, there is no actual relation from matter and form, the ideas or form are the perfection, they are immutable, eternal and us, matter, are only the mean to get this ideas, matter is nothing but a tool for the ideas. After the tool we have Aristotle. His way of uniting both matter and form is very good, because he says with both of them we get the reality. This is quite a good way of uniting both parts to create in what we live in, and this may be the very first relationship that is right, because we know that both of them exist but none of the other philosophers had seen this relationship this way, Socratess relationship is like very superficial or not complete because what would happen to the form if there is no matter, if it has no mean? This is an open question found, at least by me, in Socrates that he does not have an answer to.

Getting back so the Aristotelic point of view, after we know that the reality is made by matter and form the classes of substances come, which are, from the point of view of Aristotle; the thing and the idea, which are matter and form respectively. Through matter we know form and we know why it exists, according to Aristotle everything that exists has 4 causes, the first are form and matter, form being the essential qualities and matter the body, the 3rd is the efficient cause;

which is the reason of something to be something, this cause is designated by the maker of the thing. And finally the last cause is the final objective the thing has to accomplish by actualizing itself. This relation is almost explained perfectly because there are the 4 causes which make sense being sequential. This is the best explanation of the relationship between the idea and the thing that we have seen in class. Yet the problem is what is the efficient cause of the maker, who made the maker of one thing and what made this maker, we could take ages trying to figure out the main or first maker and not doubt what made this first maker and what is its efficient cause. Many will answer god is the first maker and blablabla, but that is going into religion and losing the point, but god is important to the relation I found. After Aristotle we have the father of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes. He was an extremely skeptical person, due to the time and the context he lived in. He rejected the aristotelic ideas and also all of the ideas from the precious philosophers, in his search to find the certainty of everything or the search to find one thing that is not deniable, he found I think, therefore I exist that made him know only himself because he cannot know something that is not himself. Latter he comes with the part of knowing something other than himself and he makes the point of god but not as the religious part, but merely as a logic tool. And because god exist everything that god made exists and here comes the matter and the mind. The mind is the thought, but here the mind works by itself and matter keeps being the same. The only relation Descartes found or stated for the matter and mind is that both of them were made by god but there is no direct relationship between both of them. This is the last point made out by the philosophers seen in class, and from all of them, summarizing, only 3 made a relation of matter and form. Yet they all did not see, or at least it seems they didn`t, another relation between matter and form, which happened in all of their time and this relation is Art.

Art, being architecture, sculpture or painting, happened in all of their times and art is another relationship between the matter and idea. The reason of this is very simple, one uses the idea or the thought to change matter and transmit this thought. This may seem like the use of matter merely as a tool, but this is not a tool that perishes once it has accomplished its purpose because its purpose, besides transmitting the idea, is to remain so it can be appreciated. In the times of the presocratic philosophers until now we can see art in the three forms mentioned before and all of the art made from those times until now has the same purpose, which is the actualization Art needs both the thought and the matter; here the idea will be the artist, which makes the efficient cause of the work of art and the matter will be the work itself, accomplishing its efficient cause and getting actualized. The reason for this is that is a work of art has first to be thought by the artist, after being thought or found, this is applied to the Aristotles point of view (once I read that many sculptors did not thought first of the sculpture but sometimes, they found on the rock, piece of wood, or whatever material they used the form of the sculpture also I got the chance to ask various clandestine sculptors and they said the same to me). After the artist has the idea, he has to manipulate the matter in order for it to look as the idea and this process of the matter getting actualized by the artist to become the original idea is the relation I found. Art as a relationship between thought and idea can be seen with the perspective of Aristotle, as explained before, with the Platos view and with Descartes. In all of this 3 philosophers Art can be a relation between, if we see this from Plato, the work is used as a tool for the transmition of the idea, and from Descartes, besides both made by god, he did not stated one relation, and Art cannot be denied from the perspective of Descartes, the only problem would be what idea does the work transmits?. This is very important because even though the artist may want to transmit an idea, the work he or she made may also transmit more ideas than the original, for example there are the works from Salvador dali which many of them are satires or mocks of the people or society and other artists and common people get the meaning of the painting and also they see other things, this work of art has gotten actualized and it also has inspired someone else. Every work of art that is meant to send a message and sends one message has accomplished is efficient cause and this makes Art a relation between matter and form.