Suárez on Aristotelian Causality

Fink, Jakob Leth

doi:10.1163/9789004292161_003

Cited by 3 publications

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“…to avoid this difficulty i suggest reading the expression "it seems (videtur)" in Suárez's problematic classification of matter and form as causes in a proportional sense as a way of distancing himself from actually endorsing this classification. For a more pessimist reading of this passage see Fink (2015 and Suárez argues that causes are just those principles that have the capacity to infuse being into another thing. Suárez's influxus-theory of causation might strike one as rather un-aristotelian in that it conceptually privileges efficient causes.…”

Section: Suárez's Influxus-theory Of Causes and The Obscurity Of Finamentioning

confidence: 99%

Finality without Final Causes? – Suárez’s Account of Natural Teleology

Schmid¹

2015

Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy

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as many scholars have observed, late medieval authors increasingly conceived of all of the four aristotelian causes after the model of efficient causes. this case-study on Francisco Suárez's theory of natural teleology examines what kinds of problems this general tendency to conceive of causes on the model of efficient causes gave rise to, when it came to account for natural teleology. even though Suárez can allow for distinctive final causes that satisfy his general theory of causes, or so i argue against the more pessimist conclusions of recent commentators, Suárez's theory of final causation is strictly speaking-and against his own confession-only applicable to the explanation of the teleology involved in the actions of finite rational agents, while the teleology displayed by natural processes can no longer be seen as a proper and univocal instance of final causation. in this, Suárez provides a striking example for how the increasing restriction of the notion of cause to the notion of the efficient cause brought late scholastic theories to a point where the notion of a final cause became unusable for what it was initially introduced: for the explanation of teleological phenomena.

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Section: Suárez's Influxus-theory Of Causes and The Obscurity Of Finamentioning

confidence: 99%

Finality without Final Causes? – Suárez’s Account of Natural Teleology

Schmid¹

2015

Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy

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“…This division of life and living things into two modes, widely accepted in the community of scholastic philosophers by the second quarter of the 17 th century, demanded a thorough study of specific characteristics of each of these two modes, including the kind of causality that operates in the areas of physical and intentional life respectively. 1 So, even recent works are moving into the context of those four causes, with different accentuations (Carraud 2002;Fink 2015). …”

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After Suárez: Physical and Intentional Causality in the 17th-18th Centuries Scholasticism

Vdovina

2017

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Abstract. The article investigates the distinction between the physical and the intentional causality that appeared in the 17 th century scholasticism in the course of polemics with the traditional Aristotelian classification of causes and with the conception of causality developed by Francisco Suárez. The introduction of the distinction between physical and intentional causation was motivated by the insufficiency of the notion of causality, adopted in ancient and medieval natural philosophy to describe the causal processes in the sphere of conscious human activity. The authors of the 17 th century took as a base two concepts carefully elaborated by Suárez, that is, the concepts of influxus and of metaphorica motio, and, starting from them, introduced an additional concept of influxus intentionalis.

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Efficient Cause as Paradigm? From Suárez to Clauberg

Hamid¹

2021

Journal of Modern Philosophy

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This paper critiques a narrative concerning causality in later scholasticism due to, among others, Des Chene (1996), Carraud (2002), Schmaltz (2008), Schmid (2010), and Pasnau (2011. On this account, internal developments in the scholastic tradition culminating in Suárez lead to the efficient cause being regarded as the paradigmatic kind of cause, anticipating a view explicitly held by the Cartesians. Focusing on Suárez and his scholastic reception, I defend the following claims: a) Suárez's definition of cause does not privilege efficient causation; b) Suárez's readers, from Timpler to Arriaga, did not interpret him as privileging efficient causation; c) it is only much later, in Clauberg, that we find a narrowing of the meaning of causation to efficient causal action; but d) this shift is better explained by Clauberg's rejection of substance hylomorphism in favor of Descartes's doctrine of substance, rather than by any troubles within the Aristotelian causal framework.

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Suárez on Aristotelian Causality

Cited by 3 publications

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Finality without Final Causes? – Suárez’s Account of Natural Teleology

Finality without Final Causes? – Suárez’s Account of Natural Teleology

After Suárez: Physical and Intentional Causality in the 17th-18th Centuries Scholasticism

Efficient Cause as Paradigm? From Suárez to Clauberg

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Suárez on Aristotelian Causality

Cited by 3 publications

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Finality without Final Causes? &#x2013; Su&#x00E1;rez&#x2019;s Account of Natural Teleology

Finality without Final Causes? &#x2013; Su&#x00E1;rez&#x2019;s Account of Natural Teleology

After Suárez: Physical and Intentional Causality in the 17th-18th Centuries Scholasticism

Efficient Cause as Paradigm? From Suárez to Clauberg

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Finality without Final Causes? – Suárez’s Account of Natural Teleology

Finality without Final Causes? – Suárez’s Account of Natural Teleology