Aristotle's Three Corollaries on Causes and Nature as Form

Orientation #

He begins “after Aristotle has distinguished the four kinds of causes” on the handout (bottom of page one and first paragraphs of page two), so the distinction itself was done last time (prev. lecture). He recalls an earlier discussion of Empedocles and contrary causes (“when we were studying Empedocles”). No statement about next time; the recording breaks off mid-sentence. The previous class went through the four kinds of cause with their examples and their historical emergence; the next continues the pairings of the causes and turns toward final causality in nature.

The class, in order #

1. What a corollary is (“to borrow a word from geometry”) #

The statements that follow the distinction of the four kinds are “corollaries” in the geometer’s sense: something that “falls out” from what has already been seen. At least the first two follow directly from recognizing four kinds of cause.

2. First corollary: many causes as such of the same thing (“many causes, as such, of the same thing”) #

Point: because there are as many as four kinds of cause, one thing can have several causes as such, not merely by accident.

• “As such” is opposed to accidental: the house builder who happens to be a pianist is a cause of my house, and so “the pianist” is a cause of my house, but the pianist as such is not.
• Wooden chair: the wood as such, the carpenter as such, sitting as such, the shape as such are all causes of the chair, each in a different way.
• Aristotle’s own example: the sculptor’s art and the bronze are causes of the statue as statue (not accidentally), yet not in the same way, one as matter, the other as “whence the motion”.
• “It happens that there are many causes”: he reads this as not asserting that everything has all four (in geometry one may speak only of formal causes), only that it can happen, and not by accident.
• Warning against a false dichotomy, his “stock example”: a student walking across campus toward Taylor Dining Hall at noon. Cause of his motion: nerve impulses and contracting muscles, or eating his lunch? Both, one as mover, the other as that for the sake of which. “People who don’t understand the four kinds of causes and this first corollary” make “the most serious mistake” of deciding which one is the cause.

3. Second corollary: two things causes of each other (“two things can be causes of each other”) #

Point: two things can be causes of each other, but only by different kinds of cause; it would make no sense to say “I am your father and you are my father”. Examples, each showing mover vs. end:

• Exercise for the sake of health or strength: exercise is a cause of health as mover/maker; health is a cause of exercising as that for the sake of which.
• Ask someone on Main Street whether intercourse causes the baby or the baby causes intercourse: he answers the obvious one, because the mover is the cause “more known to us”; but if they had intercourse for the sake of a baby, the baby is also a cause, as end.
• The bad student who studies to pass the exam: studying causes passing (mover); passing causes studying (end). “See how subtle that is.”
• From the discourse of reason: multiplying length by width causes my knowing the area; knowing the area is “in some way responsible” for my multiplying.
• The syllogism: we naturally call the premises the cause of the conclusion (reasoning defined as coming to know or guess a statement through, i.e. because of, other statements). But bringing the premises together produces the sight of the conclusion (mover), while seeing conclusions is why one goes around putting premises together (end).
• The prayer “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee”: is she full of grace because the Lord is with her, or the Lord with her because she is full of grace? Could be both: being full of grace is like a disposition to receive the Lord, and disposition is reduced to the material cause; the Lord is the efficient cause of grace. “A lot to be thought about there.”
• Counter-case where reciprocity fails: the good defined as what all desire; the Socratic question, is it good because we want it or do we want it because it is good? Answer: we want it because it is good, not vice versa. So there one is cause of the other but not the reverse, unlike exercise and strength. He stresses this is “the most interesting” corollary and that it “especially brings out that they’re different kinds of causes”; people who see one direction of causing and don’t understand this corollary reject the reverse.

4. Third corollary: the same is cause of contraries (“the same is the cause of contraries”) #

Point: a modification of the earlier probable rule that contrary causes have contrary effects and vice versa; the same thing can be held responsible for contraries, though with some contrariety remaining.

• The rule recalled from Empedocles: earth, air, fire and water coming together vs. being separated; one reasonably guesses contrary causes. Butter becoming hard vs. soft: you look for contrary causes and find cold makes it hard, hot makes it soft.
• Aristotle’s example: the steersman is responsible for the ship’s safety if he attends to his job, and for the wreck if he does not (the oil spill in Alaska, where the man let a neophyte take over). Praised for one, blamed for the other.
• Guard duty: alert, I cause the camp’s safety (“we give them a warm reception”); asleep or off to see my girlfriend, I am held responsible for its destruction.
• Applied to students: presence (of mind as well as body) causes learning, absence causes ignorance, “so I can hold you responsible.”
• The contrariety that remains: present vs. absent, doing his duty vs. not. Why it is ordered last: the first two corollaries follow explicitly from the distinction of kinds (many causes because many kinds; mutual causes because different kinds), whereas this one is “not so tied up” with it.

5. The last paragraph: the four kinds taken broadly, first matter (“fall into four most manifest ways”) #

Point: returning to the four kinds, Aristotle does not judge which is best but shows how each can be understood in a very broad way.

• Matter: syllables of undivided sounds, matter of vessels, then examples from nature (earth, air, fire, water as causes of bodies for the Greeks), then “the parts of the whole”: any whole composed of parts is from them and they are in it, so even immaterial things can have this kind of cause, in a broad sense.
• Hence “the premises of the conclusion” are added at once. Aristotle elsewhere calls the premises the mover; here they contain the matter of the conclusion. Every B is A, every C is B, so every C is A: the subject C and predicate A are parts of the conclusion already found in the premises, so the premises have something of the aspect of matter, though not matter in the ordinary sense (logic is an immaterial science).
• Middle term B is not a part of the conclusion but unites C and A, so it is more like mover or maker; this was compared earlier to energy [unclear phrase in recording, “fire a bit fire a bit”], something both matter and mover. The premises thus have something like maker and something like matter.
• Further broad uses: genus and differences as the matter of a definition; soldiers as the matter of the army; the nine orders of angels, or seraphim, cherubim and thrones as the “matter” of the first hierarchy, in a very loose sense, as parts (created rather than come-to-be, but parts nevertheless).
• Form correspondingly broadened: “what was to be, the whole, and the putting together”; e.g. the order of the universe as its form.

6. Mover and end broadened (“the seed, the medical doctor and the advisor”) #

• Mover: instead of “father” now “the seed” (from nature); then two examples from reason, the doctor and the advisor, corresponding to making vs. doing, i.e. art (right reason about making) vs. prudence or foresight (right reason about doing). The doctor comes first perhaps because the physician is more like nature (“physician” from the Greek word for nature).
• Footnote on creation: God as creator is reduced to mover or maker, though creation is not a motion and starts from no pre-existing matter; the sense of maker is generalized to include the creator.
• End: “the end and the good of others.” “Extremely important for the whole of philosophy.” The definitions differ (end: that for the sake of which [something is or is done]; good: what all desire, from the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics), but Aristotle identifies them there and here. Connection: we desire means only because we desire the end, so primarily we desire the end; if something is good people aim at it, and aiming at it is a sign it is (or is thought) good. This is part of why the good is “in things”, tied to what a thing is, and not “relativist wishy-washy” in the modern sense. The end is best; the means is good only secondarily, with reference to the end.
• “Makes no difference to call it a good or an apparent good”: not that it doesn’t matter which you pursue, but that one always pursues what seems good; sometimes real, sometimes only apparent; the apparent good is desired because it resembles the truly good, so ultimately one desires the true good. Summary of the reading’s structure: enumeration and definition of the four kinds; the three corollaries; return to the four kinds taken broadly.

7. Dividing the four causes into two and two (“the rule of two or three”) #

Point: with more than two or three members, divide into twos or threes; this can be done in several ways, and no one way is the correct one; each reveals something by what it joins and separates.

• Illustration: men, women, boys, girls divided by sex (men and boys vs. women and girls) or by maturity (men and women vs. boys and girls).
• He counts seven divisions of the four causes: three into two-and-two, four into one-and-three. Only the three two-and-two divisions are treated before the recording ends.

1. Matter and form vs. mover and end: inside causes vs. outside causes (form taken as opposed to matter; “have to qualify that a bit”). “An important distinction.”
2. Matter and mover vs. form and end. A student’s suggestion: the mover shapes the form, the end determines it. His own reason: matter and mover are at the beginning in time, form and end at the end (“what was to be”). Support: in the “fifth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V] matter appears under the third meaning of beginning and mover under the fourth, while form and end come under “limit” or “end”. Carpenter and wood at the beginning, form [transcript: “the city”, likely “the end”] at the end. This is why the Greek natural philosophers (Pythagoras “that odd bird”, Anaxagoras) talk mostly of matter and mover: a cause is thought of as a beginning, and form and end seem more like ends, though there is a sense in which they too are beginnings.
3. Form and mover vs. matter and end. Form and mover go together easily: the mover produces the form and makes something like itself (dogs produce dogs), same in kind though not in number; the artist produces the form he has conceived in his mind. Matter and end at first seem wholly disparate, but are coupled in definition and demonstration: Aristotle says a definition can be the beginning, the conclusion, or a demonstration “in a different position”.
   • Knife defined by end (a tool for cutting) or by matter/parts (blade and handle); demonstrate one from the other: a tool for cutting needs a blade and a handle to be held, therefore a knife is a tool composed of blade and handle. Or combine: a tool composed of blade and handle for the sake of cutting.
   • Posterior Analytics I: demonstration defined first from the end (a syllogism making us know the cause, that it is the cause, and that it cannot be otherwise), then from the kind of premises it is from (the matter or parts); one reasons from the first to the second.
   • Definition of definition: from the end, speech making known distinctly what a species is; from the parts, speech composed of the genus and differences; reason from the first to the second, or make “one grand definition”.
   • Marriage: a society for generating, nourishing and educating children (end); such a society must be composed of a man and a woman, who alone can generate (parts); or combine both into a complete definition. So all three two-and-two divisions “reveal something”; the recording ends here, before the one-and-three divisions.

His words #

• corollary; a statement that “falls out” from what has already been seen (borrowed from geometry).
• as such; opposed to accidental (pianist vs. house builder).
• mover or maker; the third kind of cause, “whence the motion”, “whence the beginning of change or rest or motion” [ed.: efficient cause].
• that for the sake of which; his definition of end, adding if you want “something is or is done”.
• the good; “what all desire, what all want”.
• reasoning; “coming to know or guess a statement through other statements”, where “through” means “because of”.
• disposition; reduced to the material cause.
• art; “right reason about making”; prudence or foresight; “right reason about doing”.
• “fifth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V].
• definition from the end vs. definition from the matter or parts.
• rule of two or three; divide larger numbers of items into twos or threes.
• inside causes vs. outside causes; matter and form vs. mover and end.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Physics, Book II (inferred), handout pp. 1-2: the three corollaries and the closing paragraph on the four kinds (“all the causes just now spoken of fall into four most manifest ways”; “the end and the good of others”; “a good or an apparent good”).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, beginning: the good as what all desire; identification of end and good.
• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, Book I: two definitions of demonstration; definition as beginning, middle or conclusion of a demonstration.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics (“fifth book of wisdom”): meanings of “beginning” and of “limit/end”.
• The “Hail Mary” prayer; Empedocles (earlier class); Pythagoras and Anaxagoras.

His questions #

• Is the cause of the student’s walking across campus the nerve impulses and muscles, or eating his lunch? Both, one as mover, the other as end; do not choose.
• Is exercise the cause of health, or health the cause of exercise? Both, by different kinds of cause.
• Is intercourse the cause of the baby, or the baby the cause of intercourse? The man on Main Street gives the mover, more known to us; but if done for the sake of a baby, the baby is also a cause, as end.
• Is she full of grace because the Lord is with her, or the Lord with her because she is full of grace? Could be both: disposition (material) and efficient cause.
• Is it good because we want it, or do we want it because it is good? We want it because it is good; here the causing runs one way only.
• Does what makes butter hard make it soft? No; contrary effects lead us to look for contrary causes (cold, hot).
• What does Aristotle add when he comes back to the four kinds? Is it a judgment of which is best? No; he shows how each kind can be understood very broadly.
• What is the basis for dividing matter and form against mover and end? Inside causes vs. outside causes.
• Why put matter and mover together against form and end? They are at the beginning in time; form and end at the end.
• In what way do form and mover go together? The mover produces the form and makes something like itself, the same in kind.