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29. - Cause

from C

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Tad M. Schmaltz
Edited by
Karolina Hübner  and
Justin Steinberg
Karolina Hübner
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Justin Steinberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

In his Physics, Aristotle distinguishes between four different kinds of causes (aitia): material, formal, efficient, and final. Especially as articulated in later commentary, paradigmatic examples of material and formal causality include the contributions of “prime matter” and “substantial form” to the composition of a hylomorphic material substance. The efficient cause is something distinct in reality from the effect it produces, whereas the final cause is that for the sake of which the effect is produced.

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The Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon , pp. 71 - 76
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Recommended Reading

Burgersdijk, F. (1660). Institutionum logicarum libri duo. Gillis Valckenier and Casparus Commelijn.Google Scholar
Carraud, V. (2002). Causa sive ratio: La raison de la cause de Suárez à Leibniz. Presses Universitaires de France.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carriero, J. (2005). Spinoza on final causality. Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, 2, 105–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curley, E. M. and Moreau, P.-F. (eds.), Spinoza: Issues and Directions. Brill. Articles by Bennett and Curley on teleology.Google Scholar
Garrett, D. (1999). Teleological explanation in Spinoza and early modern philosophy. In Gennaro, R. J. and Huenemann, C. (eds.), New Essays on the Rationalists (pp. 310–35). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gueroult, M. (1974). Spinoza, 2 vols. Aubier-Montaigne.Google Scholar
Viljanen, V. (2008). Spinoza’s essentialist mode of causation. Inquiry, 51, 412–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, M. (1999). Spinoza’s causal axiom (Ethics I, Axiom 4). In Wilson, , Ideas and Mechanism: Essays on Early Modern Philosophy (pp. 141–65). Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zylstra, S. (2023). Spinoza, emanation, and formal causation. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 61(4), 603–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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