presubstantial

English

Etymology

pre- +‎ substantial

Adjective

presubstantial (not comparable)

1. (philosophy) Having no physical substance, but having the potential to become substantial.
   • 1894, Charles John Vaughan, Last Words in the Temple Church, page 221:

     Faith, which has but one definition, the realization of the invisible, begins by realizing the invisible past, the prehistoric, the pre-Adamite, the prematerial presubstantial past, and understands that it was by a fiat of the Self-Existent that it was made to be.

   • 2003, Jennifer Yhap, Plotinus on the Soul: A Study in the Metaphysics of Knowledge, page 118:

     By way of explanation, Narbonne suggests that Plotinus accepts the Aristotelian notions of actuality and potentiality used to explain change in substance, but also elaborates a new, presubstantial notion of potentiality.

   • 2014, Andrew Cutrofello, All for Nothing: Hamlet's Negativity, page 148:

     Hegel is a materialist rather than an idealist insofar as he represents subjectivity as an irreducible “crack” in the cosmos rather than as a presubstantial ground from which substance itself would proceed.

   • 2021, Simon Cox, The Subtle Body: A Genealogy, page 30:

     Damascius's elucidation of the presubstantial matrix of the subtle body served his larger project of fusing the theoretical and theurgical trajectories of the Neoplatonic tradition, which in his view were complementary methods on equal footing: […]