College Essay: "Causality In Aristotle"

Hi everyone. Here's an essay I did in second year on causality in Aristotle. Hope it helps!


Aristotle’s approach to metaphysics stemmed from his criticism of Plato’s teachings of the forms. Plato’s theory had attempted to bridge the gap between the two dominant philosophical thoughts at the time in the nature of reality; that of Parmenides, who claimed that the universe was a solid and unmoving sphere of being and that of Heraclitus, who held the notion that the universe is in complete and total flux. Aristotle taught Plato’s teachings at his school, the Lyceum but he also taught to criticise them. In this essay, I will look at Aristotle’s theory of causality in beings and the world, the origins of this theory and criticisms for it.

First however, a word must be said on the terminology used in Aristotle. Although Aristotle disagreed with Plato’s theory, he used some of the same terminology as him. Aristotle makes a clear distinction between between matter and form, as did Plato, but claims that this distinction can only be made rationally, in the mind, and not in actuality, in the world around us. For Aristotle, the form of an object is what it is, insofar as to say that if a person was to refer to an object by it’s name, e.g. a bird or a tree, they are naming it’s form. The form is the things essence, or nature. It is related to the thing’s function. An object’s matter is what is unique to that object. All birds and trees have the same form (or function) but no two have the same matter. For Aristotle, an object with both form and matter is called a substance.

According to Aristotle, a substance must also have accidents, that is, the features of the substance which are not essential for it be what it is. The essence, or form, is what is essential (to be human, one must be rational, so rationality is part of the human essence; but although every human either has hair or is bald, neither harness nor baldness is essential to human nature, therefore a person’s hair can be considered an accident.)

Aristotle attempted to address the problem presented in the theories of both Heraclitus and Parmenides, by reinterpreting matter and form as potentiality and actuality. Aristotle believed that every being had potential but the nature of this potential can only be known when it is actualized. Potential, in Aristotle, can be examined in four different ways. There is the potential that is inherent in a being from the moment of it’s creation, there is the potential which a being can acquire over time, there are active potentials or the potentiality of a being to do something and there are passive potentials, the potentiality of a being having something done to it or for it to receive an action.

The famous example Aristotle gives is that of an acorn. The acorn’s physical structure contains within it the possibility of it’s developing over time into an oak tree, and that goal, that form of the oak tree is the acorn’s actuality. However, according to Aristotle, potential alone is not enough for actualization. Potency must be actualized. In the case of the acorn, it will not just spontaneously actualize itself and become an oak tree. There needs to be a cause for it. The potency can only be actualized by a being that possesses the act which corresponds to the potency in question. According to Aristotle, this theory applies to all beings. This notion means that the world around us is a unified structured of beings with potential, actualizing each other. There is a sense of the Parmenidean unity here but also that of Heraclitean flux. This idea can be compared to a system of cogs in a machine. A cog, on it’s own, has the potential to turn, but only when there is another, moving, cog attached to it will the first one begin to turn also. Everything needs each other to be actualized. Each individual substance is a self-contained, teleological system. Notice that a substances essence doesn’t change but it’s accidents do.

In order for a being to have it’s potential actualized, there must be a reason for this to happen, or a cause. In Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, Aristotle claims that we can only have knowledge of a thing when we can grasp it’s cause. Ft1. Aristotle analyzed all substances in terms of four causes. These are the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause and the final cause.

Consider the case of the production a marble statue. The material cause is what the being, or in this the case the marble statue is made from. The marble is not only the material out of which the statue is made, it is also the subject of the change to result in the statue.  The formal cause is essence or the form of the statue which the marble is striving to become. This form, or essence, exists in potentiality in the marble itself and both in the mind of the sculptor. The efficient cause can be explained as that which brings about the change in the object. In the case of the slab of marble to become a statue, Aristotle would not name the sculptor or his chisel as the efficient. When the sculptor chips away at the marble and is shaping the marble into a statue, Aristotle claims that this is only a manifestation of the knowledge the sculptor has of carving statues and in particular, how to carve this one. It is this knowledge that Aristotle claims is the most sufficient explanation of the efficient cause. The fourth cause is the final cause and this can be seen as the purpose for which the statue is built, e.g. to decorate the Parthenon. The final cause can also be seen as the initial cause. The process of producing a statue from marble, or any other act for that matter will only get under way if there is a motive behind it, driving it through all other causes. Being the first of the causes, it moves the efficient cause which in turn drives the material cause and the formal cause. The final cause, although it is the initial one, it is the final one in execution.

The four causes show that Aristotle is offering a teleological explanation for the production of the statue with reference to a goal point which does not depend on psychological concepts such as beliefs or desires. This provides Aristotle with a teleological model for studying natural processes whose explanation does not involve beliefs, desires or anything of the sort. Aristotle does not psychologize nature because his study of the natural world is based on a teleological model that is consciously free from psychological factors.

Although Aristotle believes that the process of shaping the statue is the efficient cause of the statue’s production, Aristotle believes there are cases where the beliefs and desires of the sculptor in question are important. For example, a particular statue may become more favourable or prominent in the eyes of those regarding it because it is recognized as the greatest work of a sculptor who has both mastered  and applied his skills in sculpting with his own unique style. It is in this case that Aristotle believes it is appropriate to include the particular beliefs and desires of the sculptor and makes room for these when he says that we should look “for general causes of general things and for particular causes of particular things” FT(Phys. 195 a 25–26).

Aristotle goes on to add a specification to his four causes by claiming that the form and the end often coincide. Here, Aristotle puts forward the slogan “it takes a man to generate a man” FT(Phys. 194 b 13). What he means by this is that the generation of a man can only be understood by the end of the process; a fully developed man. A fully developed man is specified by the form of a man. Not only is the fully developed man the final product of the generation, it is also what initiates the whole process.  For Aristotle, the ultimate moving principle responsible for the generation of a man is a fully developed living creature of the same kind; that is, a man who is formally the same as the end of generation.

According to Aristotle, a lot of  his predecessors, such as Parmenides and Heraclitus,  recognized only the material and the efficient cause. This explains why Aristotle is not content with saying that formal and final causes often coincide, but he also has to defend his thesis against an opponent who denies that final causality is a genuine mode of causality. In the case of an opponent who denies there is final causality in nature, Aristotle shows how an opponent who claims that material and efficient causes are enough to explain natural change do not account for the characteristic regularity. However, despite the fact that Aristotle argues that a study of nature which omits final causality  cannot account for crucial aspects of natural change, he is only offering a defence for final causality, not a proof that there are final causes in nature. Aristotle’s defence is to ask the opponent why things in nature appear with apparent regularity, e.g. why all people’s teeth grow with sharp incisors at the front and blunt molars at the back. In the example of the teeth, Aristotle argues that because they are suitable for biting and chewing food the person takes in, there must be a real causal connection between the formation of the teeth and the needs of the animal. If it was by pure coincidence that the teeth develop this way, it does not explain the regularity in which it occurs in nature. Once Aristotle has established his defence, he goes on to discuss the role of the material cause. Although he is unable to state precisely what material processes are involved in the development of teeth but he recognizes that certain material process have to take place in order for the teeth to grow the way they do. There is also more to the formation of the teeth than the material process but without it, these other causes cannot take place. Matter is recognized as a hypothetical necessity. By so doing Aristotle acknowledges the explanatory relevance of the material processes, while at the same time he emphasizes their dependency upon a specific end.

Through a critical examination of the use of the language of causality by his predecessors and with a careful study of natural phenomena, Aristotle elaborated his theory of causality by building explanatory principles which are specific to the study of nature. Although Aristotle's theory of causality is developed in the context of his science of nature, its application goes beyond the boundaries of natural science. Aristotle is not only seeking wisdom but wishes to clarify what kind of wisdom he seeks and conceives that this wisdom is the science of substance or a science of being.