This book is an inquiry into an important yet neglected area of Aristotle’s philosophy: the generation of substances. All change for Aristotle is a form of coming-to-be (or passing-away) in some sense. With some changes the substance already exists and simply becomes qualified in some way, as for example when Socrates (a substance) comes to be healthy from being unhealthy (a change in quality) or comes to be bigger from being smaller (a change in quantity). Aristotle calls this coming-to-be in the qualified sense (gignesthai ti). In cases of substantial generation (what Aristotle calls coming-to-be in the unqualified sense, gignesthai haplôs) the change results in a new substance coming into existence. At the end of development, we say that Socrates has come to be (full stop) rather than saying he has come to be F. This distinction was not universally accepted by Aristotle’s predecessors.

I now want to turn to the generation of biological substances in the Generation of Animals. I have stressed the fact that Aristotle treats living things as substances ‘most of all’ (Metaph. 1034a3–4) and so biological generation should be seen as substantial generation par excellence. This forms the focus of the next two chapters. The central aim of the discussion is to set out in detail what I shall call Aristotle’s “reproductive hylomorphism”, which is a more specific application of the basic hylomorphic model from the foundational works to the generation of living things. By way of introduction I shall begin with some remarks about the project of the GA itself.

Chapter 5 begins with similarities and differences beween Vedic and Greek sacrifice, notably the centrality to Greek sacrifice of the communal meal that was absent from Vedic sacrifice, in which the cycle of nature, the payment of metaphysical debt and the rite of passage to heaven and back each forms a cosmic cycle driven by necessity. The individualisation of the Vedic sacrifice, along with its interiorisation and automatisation, cannot be explained by ignoring the factor of monetisation. Individualisation in India and Greece has different cultural consequences.

Chapter 3 describes how there is in the earliest texts of both cultures (Rigveda, Homer, Hesiod) a variety of anthropomorphic deities whose good will is to be elicited by offerings and praise, against a background combination of pastoralism and agriculture, with no money and very little commerce.

Chapter 11 comparesthe interiorisation of the cosmic rite of passage in India (sacrifice) and Greece (mystic initiation), identifies the importance of the soul (psuche) in mystic initiation, which is interiorised in Herakleitos, in Parmenides and in Plato. This Greek interiorisation promoted ideas akin to the coalescence of mental with abstract monism promoted by the interiorisation of the cosmic rite of passage in India.

Chapter 15 discusses the various features of the Platonic inner self (soul, psuche), in particular its interiorisation of controlling abstract value and of the master-slave relationship). We then take a detour through linguistics, the history of reflexivity in Greek and Sanskrit, to provide independent evidence for our view of monetisation as a factor in the emergence of the unitary inner self, which is then related to the influence of monetised self-sufficiency on a continuous passage of the Chandogya Upani?ad.

Chapter 6 describes the construction of the unified inner self and its relation to the universe. A movement from diversity (inner, cosmic and political) to wholeness is found in the mythic-ritual complex of both cultures, notably in the strikingly similar myths of Prajapati and Dionysos. The wholeness of the inner self correlates with the wholeness of the world obtained by sacrifice. The formation of the unified inner self (atman) as cosmogony is described in the opening of the B?hadara?yaka Upani?ad. The relation of atman to other candidates for the role of unified inner self, prana and manas, is described.

In the previous chapter I argued that in the context of GA I Aristotle uses the hylomorphic model primarily as a way to analyse the causal contributions of male and female seed to the formation of the primitive embryo (embryogenesis). In this context semen is said to give form to the menstrual blood only in the purely mechanical sense of imposing a determinate limit or boundary on her indeterminate fluid. In GA II 4–5 Aristotle uses the hylomorphic analysis as a way to identify the parents’ reproductive contributions to the substance that comes to be from the embryo (the completed offspring). He presents his account in two stages. In GA II 4 he argues that the father provides the offspring’s form in the sense of its soul while the mother provides the body that underlies the soul as its subject. He then refines this account in GA II 5 by identifying the father’s exclusive contribution with sensory soul.

Chapter 13 describes the projection and interiorisation (introjection) of abstract value. The idea of the comprehensive inner self as constituting a person's identity is first indicated in the Homeric Achilles’ evaluation, in a crisis of reciprocity, of his psuche, which is also the first of many passages in which death is envisaged as an economic transaction, for instance in Herakleitos, who is also the first to focus on the nature of the living psuche, and who also exemplifies the Greek interiorisation of unifying abstract value.

In Chapters 5 and 6 we saw that Aristotle treats male and female as ‘principles’ (archai) of generation both in the sense of starting points (animals come to be from the union of male and female) and in the sense of causes (the male as the efficient cause, the female as supplying the material cause). However, Aristotle does not treat male and female as causally basic principles in the sense of being causes of other things while nothing more fundamental is the cause of them (cf. GA 788a14–16). At the beginning of GA II 1 Aristotle tells us that the existence of males and females themselves can be traced to a higher principle (731b24–5: anôthen) namely, the divine. And so, they are not the most basic principles of animal generation since something more fundamental is the cause of them.

At the outset of the Physics Aristotle tells us that when the objects of any inquiry have ‘principles, causes, or elements’, knowledge and understanding are acquired by grasping these: ‘For we do not think we know a thing until we are familiar with its primary causes or first principles and have carried out our analysis as far as its elements. Clearly, then, also in the science of nature our first task will be to determine its principles’ (184a10–16). The aim of the next three chapters is to present Aristotle’s general model of substantial generation by examining those principles from which natural substances first come into being. Each of the three chapters focuses on a different set of texts. This chapter explores the basic hylomorphic model of coming-to-be from the perspective of Physics I, with an emphasis on the account in Physics I 7 (which is generally taken to be the locus classicus of that model).