Category Archives: Ontology

Four Causes of Substance and Plato’s Forms

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By the time we are nearly to the end of Metaphysics Lambda 3, Aristotle, perhaps surprisingly, announces that the preceding has been in some way a rebuke of Platonic Forms.  Aristotle says,

Hence Plato was not far wrong in saying that there are as many Forms as there are kinds of natural objects; that is if there are Forms distinct from the things of our world (Metaphysics 1070a18-19, trans. Hugh Tredennick). (1) 

Along with other implications I take this to mean that, if there are even such (implausible) entities as Plato’s Forms, the most likely candidates for them would be Forms of natural objects, not Forms of Pez dispensers and shoeboxes.

One important observation to take away from this, which we will return to, is that Aristotle takes Plato to be asserting that Forms are causes of substances in some sense.  This is shown by his following remark that asserts a distinction between moving and formal causes, a sentence which translators often choose erroneously to set off as a new paragraph.

Moving causes are causes in the sense of preexistent things, but formal causes coexist with their effects. For it is when the man becomes healthy that health exists, and the shape of the bronze sphere comes into being simultaneously with the bronze sphere (1070a21-24 trans. Tredennick). (2)

Aristotle here is saying something about the causal nature of forms, whether his or Plato’s, namely that they are coterminous with their effects.  I take this to be a logical and not merely chronological relation.  More generally, however, Aristotle has already introduced the notion of how different substances come to be,

We must next observe that every substance is generated from something which has the same name (“substances” including not only natural but all other products).  Things are generated either by art or by nature or by chance or spontaneously. Art is a generative principle in something else; nature is a generative principle in the subject itself (for man begets man); the other causes [i.e. chance and spontaneity] are privations of these (1070a4-a9 trans. Tredennick). (3)

So Aristotle has made the point that forms come about at the same time (ἅμα) as their effects, and here he presumably sets out four causes of substances that are exhaustive, and mutually exclusive.

Of these four causes of art, nature, chance, spontaneity, I take it that Plato, wishing to maintain that Forms are a cause of substance would deny that they bring about substance by chance or spontaneity.  This leaves nature and art as the kinds of causes for Forms.  And as can be gleaned from all of chapter 3, Plato wants to uphold the idea that Forms are transcendent, or to put it less loftily, they are not immanent within their substance, as Aristotle would have it.  Yet this would preclude Forms from being a natural cause, for “nature is a generative principle in the subject itself (for man begets man).”  This, of course, would play into Aristotle’s preferred definition of form.  This leaves art alone as the candidate cause for Forms.  I do not see an argument here directly addressed to this possibilty, but Aristotle does say that, “In some cases the individuality does not exist apart from the composite substance (e.g., the form of a house does not exist separately, except as the art of building” (1070a13-15 trans. Tredennick) (4).  This would seem to grant the desire to Plato to have his Forms aloof from the present world, but at a cost of making them merely instrumental, and worse perhaps, dependent on something else to initiate the causality, a craftsman.  This possibility, however, was dissolved when Aristotle said that a formal cause operates simultaneously with its effect, therefore a form cannot be an art.  

REFERENCES:

(1) διὸ δὴ οὐ κακῶς Πλάτων ἔφη ὅτι εἴδη ἐστὶν ὁπόσα φύσει, εἴπερ ἔστιν εἴδη ἄλλα τούτων.

(2) Τὰ μὲν οὖν κινοῦντα αἴτια ὡς προγεγενημένα ὄντα, τὰ δ᾿ ὡς ὁ λόγος ἅμα. ὅτε γὰρ ὑγιαίνει ὁ ἄνθρωπος, τότε καὶ ἡ ὑγίεια ἔστιν, καὶ τὸ σχῆμα τῆς χαλκῆς σφαίρας ἅμα καὶ ἡ χαλκῆ σφαῖρα.

(3) Μετὰ ταῦτα ὅτι ἑκάστη ἐκ συνωνύμου γίγνεται οὐσία· τὰ γὰρ φύσει οὐσίαι καὶ τἆλλα· ἢ γὰρ τέχνῃ ἢ φύσει γίγνεται ἢ τύχῃ ἢ τῷ αὐτομάτῳ. ἡ μὲν οὖν τέχνη ἀρχὴ ἐν ἄλλῳ, ἡ δὲ φύσις ἀρχὴ ἐν αὐτῷ (ἄνθρωπος γὰρ ἄνθρωπον γεννᾷ), αἱ δὲ λοιπαὶ αἰτίαι στερήσεις τούτων.

(4) ἐπὶ μὲν οὖν τινῶν τὸ τόδε τι οὐκ ἔστι παρὰ τὴν συνθέτην οὐσίαν (οἷον οἰκίας τὸ εἶδος, εἰ μὴ ἡ τέχνη·

Goes On Forever, Then Stops With Aristotle

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After these things, [one must observe] that neither matter nor form comes to be, I mean the ultimate ones.  For everything undergoes change as something and by something and into something.  The by something is the initiating mover, the something is the matter, and the into which is the form.  Therefore they continue into an infinite regress, if not only bronze comes to be round but also the round comes to be and the bronze comes to be.  Indeed, there must be a stopping point. (My translation, Metaphysics 1069b35-1070a4) (1) (2).

In an attempt to explain the “infinite regress” mentioned above, I have made two previous posts (1st post, 2nd post).

There are at least two errors in the explanation of change, considered as opposite extremes.  One is to claim that something comes from nothing.  This is no explanation, however, for we simply have two incidentally contiguous events, the state of non-being and then the state of being, which are erroneously construed as having a causal connection.  The other error is to become “cause happy” and multiply explanations, destroying any causal cogency which an account of change might have had otherwise.  It is this second notion which I think Aristotle is trying to neutralize.  When he claims that having to give an explanation for both the “round” and the “bronze” apart from the bronze becoming a round, leads to an “infinite regress,” the point he is pressing is that, unless we accept the termini of a change “from a this, to a that” we are stuck with the philosophically inert task of endless explanation.  In this erroneous method, from Aristotle’s point of view, what is being proposed is simply an ever increasing succession of events, with nothing tying it together.  A subject of change would provide this unity of account.  Without this subject of change, a substratum, there is a chain of succession both receding and similarly reaching out into the future without limit.  There is likewise nothing that could be imposed on this succession to prevent it from applying to the cosmos as a whole.  Thus the “infinite regress” is perhaps better understood as an infinite succession, intended primarily to single out for criticism a futile explanatory chain.   The explanatory role of change cannot be pawned off, the buck must stop somewhere.     

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NOTES:

1)
Μετὰ ταῦτα ὅτι οὐ γίγνεται οὔτε ἡ ὕλη οὔτε τὸ εἶδος,   (35)
λέγω δὲ τὰ ἔσχατα. πᾶν γὰρ μεταβάλλει τὶ καὶ ὑπό
(1070a) τινος καὶ εἴς τι· ὑφ’ οὗ μέν, τοῦ πρώτου κινοῦντος· ὃ δέ, ἡ
ὕλη· εἰς ὃ δέ, τὸ εἶδος. εἰς ἄπειρον οὖν εἶσιν, εἰ μὴ μόνον
ὁ χαλκὸς γίγνεται στρογγύλος ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ στρογγύλον
ἢ ὁ χαλκός· ἀνάγκη δὴ στῆναι.

2)
Note that I have flip flopped (again!) on the translation of the last sentence, owing to considerations laid out above.

More Questions Surrounding Infinite Regress

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In the last post I was puzzled as to why in the very beginning of Lamda 3, Aristotle has chosen to say that, “if not only bronze comes to be round but also the round comes to be and the bronze comes to be,” then there will be an infinite regress as a consequence.  (Dhananjay has some helpful and clarifying things to say in the comments.)

After these things, [one must observe] that neither matter nor form comes to be, I mean the ultimate ones.  For everything undergoes change as something and by something and into something.  The by something is the initiating mover, the something is the matter, and the into which is the form.  Therefore they continue into an infinite regress, if not only bronze comes to be round but also the round comes to be and the bronze comes to be.  Indeed, these must stop. (My translation, Metaphysics 1069b35-1070a4) (1).

Note that I have changed the unwritten subject in the last line to, “Indeed, these must stop,” on the basis of Dhananjay’s translation.  This gives better sense, and “these” must refer to the round and the bronze.

On a related note, is the “Indeed, these must stop” simply a restatement of the first sentence, “After these things, [one must observe] that neither matter nor form comes to be, I mean the ultimate ones“?  That is, are the ultimate ones, usually translated as “proximate [form and matter]” simply the stopping point, from which (working backward as we are in the context of a supposed infinite regress) all change will occur?

More broadly, is the term τὰ ἔσχατα, “the proximate form and matter” simply a stipulation of definition?  On reflection I think the answer is no, for there is a argument for why this is so, by both explaining the necessary elements of the process of change, and of course, the infinite regress itself.

Are 1070a2-3, ὁ χαλκός and τὸ στρογγύλον, (bronze and the round) examples of 1069b35, ἡ ὕλη οὔτε τὸ εἶδος (matter and form)?  This seems to clearly be yes, but does little, for me, to clarify the intent of the first sentence in the passage.

Perhaps most intriguingly to me, why in the sentence, “For everything undergoes change as something and by something and into something” is the order subject, agent, form (SAF) while in the next, explanatory sentence, “The by something is the initiating mover, the something is the matter, and the into which is the form,” the order is agent, subject, form (ASF)?

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Notes:

(1) Μετὰ ταῦτα ὅτι οὐ γίγνεται οὔτε ἡ ὕλη οὔτε τὸ εἶδος,   (35)
λέγω δὲ τὰ ἔσχατα. πᾶν γὰρ μεταβάλλει τὶ καὶ ὑπό
(1070a) τινος καὶ εἴς τι· ὑφ’ οὗ μέν, τοῦ πρώτου κινοῦντος· ὃ δέ, ἡ
ὕλη· εἰς ὃ δέ, τὸ εἶδος. εἰς ἄπειρον οὖν εἶσιν, εἰ μὴ μόνον
ὁ χαλκὸς γίγνεται στρογγύλος ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ στρογγύλον
ἢ ὁ χαλκός· ἀνάγκη δὴ στῆναι.