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I formulate an apparent inconsistency between some claims Aristotle makes in his Metaphysics about the sameness and non-sameness relations which obtain between an object and its essence: while a (type of) object is not the same as its essence, an essence is thought as being the same as its essence. I discuss different ways in which one may propose to overcome this apparent inconsistency and show that they are problematic. My diagnosis of the problem is that all these putative solutions share the assumption that Aristotle is operating exclusively with the notion of strict numerical identity between an object and its essence, or between definiendum and definiens. I introduce the notion of sameness in nature which holds between an object and its essence, understood as the metaphysical counterpart to the relation of 'being defined as': two items are the same in nature just in case the answer to the 'what is it?' or 'what is its nature/essence?' question is common to both. I argue that the notions of sameness in nature and 'being defined as' need not (but may) entail strict identity. Further, they are compatible with, indeed require, the idea that an essence is prior to its essence-bearer, or that a definiens is prior to the relevant definiendum. I conclude that the twin notions of sameness in nature and 'being defined as' successfully defuse the apparent inconsistency formulated at the outset.

Kathrin Koslicki's book Form, Matter, Substance is a clear, rigorous, and stimulating study of central issues in metaphysics discussed through the so-called 'Neo-Aristotelian' perspective.Koslicki detects a tension between Aristotle's ontology in the Categories -which she takes to be a 'blob' (non-reductive) ontology-and his later hylomorphic picture, which conceives particular substances as matter-form compounds. In her view of Aristotelian hylomorphism, the form is a part of the compound alongside its material parts (using one single sense of 'being a part'). She specifies the matter-form relation (one of the three 'hylomorphic relations' she distinguishes; p. 104) in terms of what she calls 'Robust Mereological Hylomorphic Pluralism' (RMHP). First, in line with her view of form as a part alongside material parts, she takes the matter-form relation as a type of mereological composition. Second, she favours robust hylomorphic pluralism. The form is a robust particular which cannot be analysed in reductive terms. Nor can it be specified using minimal conditions which could be satisfied even by the matter constituting a compound just in virtue of the matter's being spatiotemporally coincident with that compound. Thus, it does not follow from the fact that a compound's constituent matter is spatiotemporally coincident with it, and so has the same structure, arrangement, or organisation as it does, that the matter, too, has the same form. Rather, the constituent matter has a different form of its own, and so is numerically distinct from the compound. This pluralist aspect of her view denies the monist idea that no two numerically distinct objects can be spatiotemporally coincident. Rather, in her hylomorphic picture, despite being spatiotemporally coincident, the compound and its constituent matter are two numerically distinct objects with corresponding different essences.

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