Substance (Latin substantial is an essence, something that underlies it), objective reality viewed from the side of its inner unity; matter in the aspect of the unity of all forms of its movement; the limiting foundation that allows the sensual variety and variability of properties to be reduced to something constant, relatively stable and independent.
According to the general orientation of a certain philosophical concept, a distinction is made between a substance (monism), two substances (dualism) or a solid substance (pluralism). In the history of philosophy, substance has been interpreted in different ways: as substrate, as concrete individuality, as essential property, as something capable of independent existence, as basis and center of changes in the subject, as logical subject.
Already in ancient philosophy various nouns were singled out, which were treated as material substrate and primary basis for changes in things (e.g. atoms of Democritus, the four elements of Empedocles). Aristotle identified the substance with the first essence and characterized it as the basis that is inseparable from the thing, its individuality.
In addition to the ontological characteristics of the substance, Aristotle reveals its logical properties: the substance as subject and not as predicate of judgement, the expression of the substance in the form and type of an object, etc., and the fact that the substance is not a substance, but a subject, is a substance. Aristotle's interpretation of form as the main reason for determining the subject was not only the source of the distinction between mental and physical substance, but also of the dispute over the so-called material forms that permeates all medieval philosophy (see Nominalism, Realism).
In the philosophy of the new era, two lines of analysis, substance, are distinguished. The first of them, which is connected with the ontological understanding of substance as the ultimate basis of being, was described in F. Bacon's empiricism on the way to the qualitative description of substance forms and to the identification of substance with the form of concrete things. R. Descartes contrasted this qualitative interpretation of substance with the doctrine of two substances: Material (which is characterized by length and quantity. Measurability) and spirituality (thinking).
The difficulties of dualism in explaining the relationship between the substance were overcome by B. Spinoza on the basis of pantheistic monism: For him, thinking and length are not two substances, but two attributes of a single substance. In his Monadolgium, G. Leibniz singled out many simple and indivisible substances with independence, activity and variability. The second line of substance analysis - Geozoological understanding of the concept of substance, its possibilities and need for scientific knowledge.
In contrast to the non-dialectical understanding of the substance as an unchangeable, real substrate, Kant regarded the substance as an inner variable. This approach was developed by G. Hegel, who highlighted the inner contradictions of the substance, its self-development. However, Hegel did not consistently implement the dialectical treatment of substance as a subject that unfolds its content, because for him substance is a stage of development of the "idea", not of being.
Modern bourgeois philosophy is characterized by a negative attitude towards the category of substance and its role in cognition, which is to some extent connected with the increasing attention of science to the study of systems, connections and relationships.
At the same time, there is a tendency in modern science to search for a single substance ("primordial substance"). In various currents of neopositivism, the concept of substance is seen as an accumulation of everyday consciousness that has penetrated science, as an unjustified way of doubling the world and naturalizing perceptions.
On the one hand, the critique of the concept of subtance is connected with the critique of materialism, and on the other - with the denial of the concept of causality and causality, with attempts to replace it with a description or "functional attitude" (E. Kassierer).
In a number of directions of modern bourgeois philosophy (existentialism, philosophy of everyday language), the concept of substance is considered the starting principle of naturalistic metaphysics, and its emergence is explained by the specific structure of European languages, characterized by the contrast between the subject and the predicate of judgment.