Entities and Accidents: Subsistence, Substance and Body

1. Why distinguish entities and accidents

The division between aʿyān (entities) and aʿrāḍ (accidents) asks what is not present merely as a quality of some other subject, and what does exist in a subject. This distinction structures arguments about bodies, substances, and change.

A white wall illustrates two different aspects: the wall as a body, and whiteness as its quality. Distinguishing them does not make whiteness unreal; it distinguishes the manner in which each exists.

Here subsistence in itself has a technical meaning. It does not imply that a creature is independent of God's creating and sustaining it, nor does it confer necessary existence.

2. The core definition of aʿyān

فالأعيان ما أي ممكن يكون له قيام بذاته
Entities are possible beings that can subsist in themselves, in the relevant technical sense.

The qualifier possible matters: the classification concerns contingent beings within the world, not God's essence or attributes. A thing subsisting in itself means it is not understood merely as an attribute existing in some other subject.

A stone can be discussed as a stone, whereas its being hot or cold is a state or accident of that stone. The classification concerns how created things exist, not their freedom from a Creator.

3. Subsistence does not mean absolute independence

Subsistence in itself may sound like complete self-sufficiency. In this technical classification, however, it means not being an attribute inhering in another subject. It does not mean necessary existence or freedom from a cause.

Separate questions:
1. Does this contingent being depend upon God for creation and continuance? Yes.
2. Does it exist in another subject as color does? Not in the case of the entities being classified.

There is therefore no conflict between the doctrine of the world's origination and the division into entities and accidents. One concerns dependence on the Creator; the other, manners of subsistence within creation.

4. Taḥayyuz and spatial location

أن يتحيز بنفسه غير تابع تحيزه لتحيز شيء آخر
Its localization is not merely dependent upon the localization of another thing.

In this theological usage, taḥayyuz concerns being related to a spatial location. A body can move from one location to another. Its presence at a place does not thereby make it a property inhering in that place in the way a color inheres in a surface.

By contrast, a color is present in a bearer. Its relation to that bearer differs from a body's relation to where it happens to be. This prepares the distinction between an inhering attribute and its substratum.

5. An accident and its subject

بخلاف العرض، فإن تحيزه تابع لتحيز الجوهر الذي هو موضوعه
An accident differs: its localization follows that of the substance which is its subject.

An accident is a quality or state not existing as a separate body, but occurring in a subject. Whiteness is the whiteness of something; its relation to location is therefore tied to what bears it. One must not treat the location of a color as identical in kind to the location of a body.

A subject is the bearer in which an accident occurs. Identifying a quality is not the same as identifying its carrier.

6. Inherence versus being in a place

وجود العرض في الموضوع هو أن وجوده في نفسه هو وجوده في الموضوع
For an accident, its existing in itself is precisely its existing in a subject.

A body's being in a location is a different relation. The body's existence and its presence in this particular place are distinguishable; one can conceive of its moving elsewhere.

A cup resting on a table can be moved to another table without ceasing to be a body. Its particular color, however, does not leave its bearer and move away as a self-contained body. This contrast clarifies the sense of inherence.

7. Bearer, attribute and the language of inherence

An inhering feature (ḥāl) is found in a bearer or substrate (maḥall). The bearer is what has that feature. This distinguishes what is described from the description attributed to it.

Example 1: wood is the bearer; its black color is an accident.
Example 2: water is a body; its coldness is a quality.
Example 3: a moving vehicle is the body; its state of motion is a condition of the body.

These examples clarify classical terminology. They are not a claim that the classification constitutes a complete theory of contemporary physics.

8. The philosophers’ account of subsistence

The discussion also reports a philosophical account of subsistence. To be subsisting in itself is to be independent of a substratum as bearer; to subsist in another is to be present as a feature or quality of something else.

The relationship is described using the terms naʿt (attribute) and manʿūt (that which is characterized): one reality functions as a quality and the other as its bearer.

Similar language between theologians and philosophers does not make every conclusion identical. The meaning assigned to a technical term must be established before an argument is transferred from one system to another.

9. From entities to substances

والجواهر وهي أي ما له قيام بذاته من العالم
Substances are those things in the world that subsist in themselves.

Jawhar is not used in its everyday sense of a jewel or precious stone, but as a technical category of being. A thing not treated as a color or quality inhering in another is considered within the discussion of substance.

The next question is whether a substance is composite or noncomposite. This division leads to the definitions of body and indivisible substance.

10. Composite and noncomposite substances

A composite thing is understood as constituted by parts; a noncomposite thing is not so constituted. Within the category of substance, this opens two distinct discussions: body (jism) and indivisible substance (jawhar fard).

Composite substance: parts combined in a unity called a body.
Noncomposite substance: in the theological model, an elementary part not divisible further.

This is not an assertion that a modern physical atom is identical to the classical jawhar fard. The latter belongs to a specific metaphysical and logical account of composition.

11. The body as a composite of parts

إما مركب من جزئين فصاعدا، وهو الجسم
A substance may be composed of two parts or more; this is a body.

On this definition, two or more parts suffice for composition. It does not immediately follow that an observable extension in every direction must be demonstrable. This is precisely the source of the dispute.

The debate is not merely about how bodies look in ordinary experience. It asks what belongs to the technical meaning of jism: composition as such, or the realization of all three dimensions?

12. Why some require three parts

Some thinkers require a minimum of three parts in a body, appealing to the three dimensions: length, breadth and depth. On this view, two parts do not yet establish the entire dimensional character of body.

Length: extension in one direction.
Breadth: extension in a second direction.
Depth: extension in a third direction.

The argument needs examination: can merely counting three parts establish three dimensions, or does their arrangement matter? Number of constituents and geometric extension are not the same question.

13. Dimensions and the meaning of extension

الأبعاد الثلاثة، أعني الطول والعرض والعمق
The three dimensions: length, breadth and depth.

These name extension in three directions. The abstract notion of a line differs from that of a body: one-dimensional extension is prominent in the former, whereas a body is considered three-dimensional.

In the classical argument, extension and composition must be distinguished. One concerns directions and dimensions, the other constituents. The difference explains why some theologians require full dimensional extension while others treat composition as sufficient.

14. Three parts do not settle geometric arrangement

Imagine three small constituents arranged along one straight direction. Such an arrangement conveys extension in one direction but does not by itself demonstrate independent extension in all three directions.

Number tells us how many constituents there are. Arrangement concerns their relative locations and connections. The two are not interchangeable when defining length, breadth and depth.

This is a conceptual question about the minimum condition for being a body, not an experimental measurement of contemporary material particles.

15. The eight-part account and right angles

Another reported view requires at least eight parts so that the three dimensions can intersect with right angles. Unlike a view centered on sheer number, this account explicitly depends on spatial arrangement.

A right angle is an angle of 90 degrees. The point is not merely to memorize the number eight, but to understand why the organization of three dimensions enters the proposed definition.

These views should be read as historical theological arguments about the nature of a body, not as predictions of particle physics.

16. Is the disagreement merely terminological?

وليس هذا نزاعا لفظيا
This is not a merely verbal disagreement.

If one person chose the name body for two joined parts and another chose a different name for exactly the same concept, the dispute would be terminological. The actual question is whether the meaning signified by “body” is realized through two joined parts.

Verbal dispute: different labels for one agreed notion.
Substantive dispute: disagreement over the nature or essential condition of the notion.

The distinction locates the subsequent argument correctly.

17. The argument for two-part composition

Those who allow two parts to constitute a body appeal to the comparative ajsam (“more bodily” or larger). If one part is added to a composite and the result is called more bodily, they argue, the earlier composite must already possess bodyhood.

This reasoning infers the presence of a quality from an increase in its degree. Calling one object brighter than another ordinarily presupposes some brightness in both.

The reply asks whether ajsam compares technical bodyhood at all, or instead compares the size and bulk of things already considered bodies.

18. The objection: bodyhood or bulk?

وفيه نظر؛ لأنه أفعل من الجسامة بمعنى الضخامة وعظم المقدار
This needs examination: “ajsam” is a comparative of jasāmah, meaning bulk or magnitude.

Being a body and being a larger body are different claims. Both a small body and a large one may be bodies; calling the latter “more massive” does not establish the minimum number of parts required by the definition of body.

This is a general logical caution: the comparative form of a word does not necessarily supply gradations of every technical concept related to its root. Ordinary lexical meaning and stipulated technical meaning must be separated.

19. Jism and jasīm: category and magnitude

In Arabic usage, expressions from jasāmah can indicate largeness or bulk, and jasīm may describe a large object. This does not, without argument, determine the technical definition of jism.

Example: A small stone is a body, and so is a larger stone. The larger can be more massive without having a greater degree of “being a body” in the classificatory sense.

The error to avoid is treating increase in quantity as direct evidence for the essential definition of a kind of thing.

20. Is “body” a class name or a description?

A further question is whether jism functions as the name of a class of things or merely as a descriptive term for bulk. This affects how far one may argue from ordinary language.

If “body” is a class term, one body can be larger without possessing more of the essential classification. If it is used only as a description of size, the subject of the discussion has changed.

Sound analysis first identifies the technical meaning intended by the speaker, and only then asks what linguistic comparisons can establish.

21. The noncomposite jawhar fard

أو غير مركب كالجوهر يعني العين الذي لا يقبل الانقسام
Or it may be noncomposite, like the substance that does not admit division.

Here jawhar fard refers to a basic indivisible constituent. It marks the difference between a composite body and a purported elementary substance.

It does not simply mean something extremely small. A tiny object may still be divisible. The defining assertion is incapacity for division, not invisibility or small observable size.

22. Three senses of division

لا فعلا ولا وهما ولا فرضا
Neither actually, nor in imagination, nor by supposition.

Actually: separating something into parts in fact.
In imagination: conceiving distinct parts within it.
By supposition: positing a division logically or geometrically.

The classical jawhar fard is meant to exclude all three. Practical inability to cut something is not equivalent to indivisibility in principle. A material resisting an ordinary tool has not thereby been proved metaphysically indivisible.

23. The difficulty of an exhaustive classification

Saying every noncomposite existent is a jawhar fard gives an exhaustive classification only if competing proposed kinds of noncomposite things have been addressed. Philosophers proposed other realities not identified with the minimal parts of bodies.

Ḥaṣr means demonstrating that the listed kinds exhaust all possibilities. When the completeness of the list is disputed, identifying one kind does not by itself exclude another.

The proof of an indivisible substance consequently requires examination of rival philosophical categories, rather than assuming their nonexistence in the definition.

24. Competing philosophical categories

The competing philosophical categories include hayūlā (prime matter), ṣūrah (form), ʿaql (intellect), and nafs mujarradah (immaterial soul). These matter because an exhaustive account of noncomposite realities cannot simply omit them.

Prime matter: a proposed fundamental material principle.
Form: a principle of actual determination or structure.
Intellect and immaterial soul: realities some philosophers classed as distinct from bodily parts.

This is a description of historical doctrines, not an affirmation that all such realities have been established. Each requires its own argument.

25. The disagreement about indivisible substances

وعند الفلاسفة لا وجود للجوهر الفرد، أعني الذي لا يتجزأ
In the philosophers’ view, there is no indivisible substance, meaning a part that cannot be divided.

This is not only a choice of terminology. In a prominent theological model a body is composed of indivisible constituents, whereas in the rival philosophical model bodily composition is explained through prime matter and form.

Two questions must be separated: what constitutes a body? and does a part exist that admits no further division? Arguments and objections addressing the second question follow in the next discussion.