PHL 3305 Lecture 32

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Nature

Principles of things/objects: form and matter

This looks familiar...

Previously we discussed the principles of change: privation, form, and matter.

• Principle vs. cause: Privation, for example, is a principle (i.e., a top-level thing) but not a cause
  • the lack of a thing does not bring about its existence

• rest and motion: things are typically at motion to be at rest... except for, e.g., the stars
  • natural motion
  • "violent" motion
• "motion" is also thought by Aristotle to mean (in addition to "locomotion") "becoming", "changing", etc.
  • motion can be part of a thing's essence (e.g., a man is a living thing, and becomes a corpse as soon as this motion stops)

Nature = form     + matter
       = accident + substance

Four Causes

Answers the question of why a thing is the way it is

1. material: the substance from which something is generated
2. formal: the form or pattern of a thing
3. agent: (a.k.a. efficient) that from which change or coming to rest first begins; the thing that acts upon the thing that is acted upon
4. final: that for the sake of which; purpose; the cause of causes (which brings about the other causes)o

aitia (cause) = formal / final

sunaitia (subservient causes) = material / agent

Recommendation

Alt. Translation of Physics by Glen Coughlin. St. Augustine Press