Hi... !
I was writing something about Martinism and the weird way in which Pasqually uses the Four Causes of Aristotle, reading them from a Platonic point of view (which, by the way, would be unacceptable by Aristotle).
The four causes of Aristotle could be resumed as:
1) FIRST CAUSE: The material cause: “that out of which”, e.g., the bronze of a statue.
2) SECOND CAUSE: The formal cause: “the form”, “the account of what-it-is-to-be”, e.g., the shape of a statue.
3)THIRD CAUSE: The efficient cause: “the primary source of the change or rest”, e.g., the artisan, the art of bronze-casting the statue, the man who gives advice, the father of the child.
4) FOURTH CAUSE: The final cause: “the end, that for the sake of which a thing is done”, e.g., health is the end of walking, losing weight, purging, drugs, and surgical tools.
_________________
A second definition of the Four Causes of Aristotle:
1. Material cause = "that out of which" = marble, wood, etc. Now "matter" (= hyle) is only an analytic concept, that is, a way of talking. You never see simple "matter"; it is only a way of talking about a thing that must go along with its partner, "form." You only ever see real things, that is, things that are, for Aristotle, matter that has
already been formed, by natural or artificial means. For instance, the wood of the table was naturally formed as a tree, then artificially formed by the succession of workers who worked on it, under the direction of the "architect" who made the blueprint of the table.
2. Formal cause = the "look" (= eidos) of the thing as it is meant to be. When realized in matter, this form will be the same as the idea in the mind of the architect.
3. Efficient cause = "that from which" = the mental vision of the architect prior to any actual work.
4. Final cause = "that for the sake of which" (= telos), the final, finished product in its complete and perfect state. Only because it is the completed state is this the "goal" of the process in any sense of subjective aim.
__________________________________
Well, I was reading Pasqually and his weird use of the four causes... and I thought of other neo-platonic thinker who were anti-aristotelic and used a "modified" version of the four causes (Plotinus and Porphyry, of course)... and much later Giordano Bruno.
And in a dialogue by Bruno I found something interesting (On Cause Principle and Unity):
DICSONO: Anyone who reasons well will clearly see that it is impossible
for the former continually to make everything, without there being something
which can become everything. How can the world soul (I mean, all
form), which is indivisible, act as shaper, without the substratum of dimensions
or quantities, which is matter? And how can matter be shaped?
Perhaps by itself? It seems we can say that matter is shaped by itself, if
we want to consider as matter the universal formed body and call it
‘matter’, just as we would call a living thing with all its faculties ‘matter’,
distinguishing it, not by the form, but only by the efficient cause.
TEOFILO: No one can keep you from using the term ‘matter’ as you
wish, just as the same term covers different meanings in various schools.
But I know that your way of considering it is only apt for a technician or
physician strictly within his practice, for example that physician who
reduced the universal body to mercury, salt and sulfur, a thesis that reveals
the stupidity of his desire to be called philosopher more than some divine
talent for medicine [reference to Paracelsus]. The aim of philosophy is not simply to arrive at the distinction of principles which is realized physically by the separation
which results from the power of fire, but also to arrive at that distinction of
principles to which no material agent can, since the soul, which is inseparable
from sulphur, mercury and salt, is a formal principle; that principle is
not susceptible to material qualities, but totally dominates matter and is not
touched by the experiments of the alchemists, whose divisions are limited
to the three aforesaid elements, and who recognize another kind of soul,
apart from this world soul, which we must define here.
_________________________________
The opinion of Bruno was that alchemy confuses takes the Second Cause as if it was the First Cause and that this is a mistake... or, at least, that Alchemy can only investigate up to the Second Cause, but remains ignorant of the First Cause (God, in Bruno's ways of reforming the theory of Aristotle).
What do you think?