Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 11:52:30 -0500 (EST)
Subject: BHA: Aristotle on causality



               State University of New York at Stony Brook
                       Stony Brook, NY 11794-3355

                                            Michael Sprinker
                                            Professor of English & Comp Lit
                                            Comparative Studies
                                            516 632-9634
                                            23-Jan-1998 11:34am EST
FROM:  MSPRINKER
TO:    Remote Addressee                     ( _bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu )
 
Subject: Aristotle on causality

In response to Marshall's recent post, I must disagree with
Harre's account of Aristotle's four causes.  The material and
formal causes are presented more or less correctly, but 
efficient and final causes seem to be exactly reversed.

In the two places where Aristotle discusses the system of causes
that make a thing what it is (in the Physics and the Metaphysics),
he has recourse to artisanal examples, in particular, the making
of a silver bowl.  The efficient cause is, depending on how one 
construes the passage, either hammer itself or the silversmith's
hammering.  The final cause is the prupose for which the bowl
is being made, e.g., either for drinking or for religious
purposes.

To take a quite different example, from the Poetics, the 
material cause of tragedy consists of the last five of the
so-called parts (character, thought, diction, music and
spectacle); the formal cause is the plot; the efficient cause
is the poet or tragedian; and the final cause is the catharsis.

So, purpose or aim or intention is generally confined to the
domain of the final cause.  It affects the efficient cause
(the hammering of the silversmith or creative work of the
poet), but is not identical with it.

Michael Sprinker


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