Note on the Philosophical Perspective of Wilfred Sellars (1)

Part 1 of Wilfrid Sellars’ Philosophical Perspectives gathers six studies in the history of philosophy that he treats as live contributions to current problems rather than as museum pieces. 

The set begins with Plato, moves through Aristotle’s metaphysics, and ends with a constructive dialogue with Leibniz. Throughout, Sellars reads classic texts with a contemporary eye. He uses the ancients’ vocabulary to frame issues about universals, particulars, explanation, and the structure of matter, that still drive debate in metaphysics and philosophy of science. 

The six essays are, The Soul as Craftsman, Vlastos and the Third Man, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Substance and Form in Aristotle, Raw Materials, Subjects and Substrata, and Meditations Leibnitziennes. The sequence is deliberate. It starts with Plato’s account of rational order, tests it against the Third Man difficulty, refines it with Aristotle’s hylomorphism, examines the material base of objects, then considers Leibniz’s rationalist reconstruction. The plan reveals Sellars’ conviction that systematic metaphysics grows when it is worked through historical exemplars rather than imposed on them from above. 

In The Soul as Craftsman Sellars uses the image of technē, craft, to illuminate Plato’s later metaphysics. The key idea is that rational order in the world and in the soul is not a passive mirroring of independent Forms, it is the achievement of a rule guided practice. Sellars emphasises that on this reading the soul does not merely contemplate eternal standards, it applies standards in a way that is structurally like a skilled maker following a plan. The technical point is that norm governed performance yields repeatable patterns that explain why talk of universals is indispensable, yet it also locates universals in the logic of correct performance rather than in a separate realm. The craft analogy helps to dissolve the false choice between ante rem universals, which exist outside things, and in rebus universals, which exist only in things, by shifting focus to the rule bound roles they play in successful making and judging. This anticipates Sellars’ later claim that the space of reasons is a normative order that underwrites, rather than copies, the intelligibility of what we do and say. 

Vlastos and the Third Man addresses the well known regress that seems to follow if we say that many large things are large by participating in the Form of Largeness. If the Form and the many share the same predicate, we are tempted to postulate a further Form to explain the similarity, which invites an endless series. Sellars’ technical move is to question a hidden assumption about predication that drives the regress. He distinguishes different explanatory roles for universal terms, and argues that we need not iterate the postulate when we keep apart the role of a standard that regulates classification from the role of a common feature that explains resemblance. In effect, he recommends a disciplined use of type and token talk, together with a refusal to blur the normative function of Forms with a quasi material feature that things possess. On this view the regress is blocked not by denying that Forms are paradigms, but by clarifying that paradigm status is a logical role within a practice rather than a property standing alongside the properties of ordinary particulars. 

Aristotle’s Metaphysics, together with Substance and Form in Aristotle, provides the centre of gravity of Part 1. Sellars reads hylomorphism, the theory that concrete things are composites of matter and form, as a sophisticated reply to Plato that keeps what is right in the appeal to structure while avoiding hypostatised universals. The technical vocabulary is precise. 

Form is not a separate thing, it is the principle in virtue of which a bit of matter counts as, for example, a statue or an organism. Substance, ousia, is not bare stuff, it is an organised unity whose identity through change is explained by form as actualised in suitable matter. Sellars stresses that Aristotle’s four causes, material, formal, efficient, and final, are not rival candidates for one job, they are different dimensions of a complete explanation. 

Formal cause answers the question, what is it? in the way a definition does. Efficient cause answers, what brings it about? Final cause answers, what for? Material cause answers, what out of? The technical lesson Sellars extracts is that explanation of natural unities cannot be reduced to either structural description alone or to efficient pushes and pulls alone. This is not a retreat into pre scientific teleology. It is a recognition that systematic classification and definition are part of the explanatory enterprise, not mere bookkeeping. 

Raw Materials, Subjects and Substrata faces an old puzzle. If substances change their properties while remaining the same, what is the subject that bears properties through change? The traditional response appeals to a substratum, a this something, that is not exhausted by any list of features. Sellars presses a technical challenge. The supposed bare subject cannot be referred to or thought about without deploying general concepts, so the idea of an underlying core that is wholly independent of conceptual character looks unstable. He then develops an alternative that uses the Aristotelian toolkit without the metaphysical excess. Matter considered under the form appropriate to a kind is enough to explain persistence, once we recognise that kind concepts carry standards for lawful transformation, for example the way a lump of bronze can be recast while remaining bronze, or the way a living body can change while remaining a member of its species. 

This brings with it a deflationary account of substratum talk. What looks like reference to a bare this is really a way of speaking that keeps track of an item under a sortal concept, that is, a kind term that supplies identity and persistence conditions over time. 

Meditations Leibnitziennes closes Part 1 by testing the Aristotelian picture against Leibniz’s rationalism. Leibniz insists on two principles. The Principle of Sufficient Reason, which says nothing is without a reason, and the Identity of Indiscernibles, which says there cannot be two distinct things that share all the same properties. Sellars reconstructs the technical force of these principles for a world described by modern science. 

If physics renders the world as a field of law governed states, then it is tempting to collapse individual things into patterns within a single system, which pressures our ordinary belief in distinct substances. Leibniz’s monads are one way to preserve individuality while honouring the primacy of law and reason, yet monads are metaphysically expensive, since they require pre established harmony to synchronise their states. 

Sellars’ lesson is twofold. First, explanation by laws does not by itself eliminate the need for sortal concepts (like 'horse', 'planet' or 'atom') that allow us to identify and re identify things. Second, individuality is not a primitive thisness behind properties, it is a role within a conceptual scheme that sorts the law governed world into units that our practices require. In this way, the strengths of Leibniz’s principles are retained, while the baroque machinery of monads is avoided. 

Seen as a whole, Part 1 is a worked example of Sellars’ methodological maxim that history of philosophy is most alive when it is used diagnostically. The Plato essays clarify how normative standards function in classification and explanation, which in turn shows how to treat universals without reifying them. The Aristotle essays develop a layered model of explanation that makes room for form as an explanatory factor, where form is neither a ghostly entity nor a mere verbal convenience. The substratum discussion refines identity through change by tying persistence to sortal concepts rather than to a bare subject. The Leibniz study measures the reach of rationalist principles within a scientific image. The positive thread is constant, explanation in philosophy needs both a descriptive image of what there is and a logical account of how our concepts, kinds, and rules work together when we explain. Sellars presents the ancients and early moderns as partners in that joint task. 

Three technical morals stand out. First, predication and participation are not simple mirrors of similarity in things. They are moves within a rule governed practice that can generate a regress if their roles are blurred. Clarifying logical roles arrests the regress without discarding the insight that standards are needed to explain uniform classification. 

Second, hylomorphism is best read as an account of explanatory structure, not as a physics of hidden stuff. When form is treated as the principle of intelligible organisation in a kind, we can explain change, unity, and teleology in a way that is continuous with scientific explanation rather than at odds with it. 

Third, identity through change is secured by sortal concepts that give criteria of persistence. The supposed bare substratum adds no explanatory value. These morals all reinforce Sellars’ long standing programme, bring the manifest image of persons, norms, and classifications into reflective equilibrium with the scientific image of law governed processes. The history in Part 1 is a laboratory in which that reconciliation can be tested without sentimentality. 

Although the 1967 volume was later reissued as two smaller books, with the historical essays grouped together, the original ordering shows what Sellars wanted the reader to see. The live problems of universals, substance, identity, and explanation are already at work in Plato and Aristotle, and they reach a refined pitch in Leibniz. Treating those figures as collaborators rather than as foils allows the technical details to do the real work. The result is a compact history of key ideas and a set of usable tools for contemporary metaphysics.