Materia prima y privación en el Comentario tomista a la Física de Aristóteles

Abstract

Thomas Aquinas in the text of his Commentary to Aristotle's Physics tries to point out the distinction between prime matter and privation. Prime matter is the subject of any substantial change; privation is the Jack of a form affecting a subject of change, either a natural substance or prime matter. Both -prime matter and privation- are non-beings, that is, both are outside the scope of formal being or of being in act. But, if prime matter is in potency, privation simply is not. Prime matter owns a confused entity, located in between being in act or formal being and non-being; it belongs to the sphere of being in potency. Privation simply is not and, so, it is only a being of reason, built by human intellect with basement in reality. Prime matter with its being in potency is the ontological background of continuous change in the world and of the essential temporality of any individual substance.