The Importance of the Question of Final Causality: Natural Philosophy and Ethics

Orientation #

He refers back to “something we saw today”: where the end is a cause, it is the cause of the other causes. Near the middle he proposes to say “a little bit next time” about Aristotle’s further distinctions of causes, then luck and chance, then the misunderstandings, before the arguments for and against; the recording in fact goes on to the distinctions of causes and then returns to review the importance of the question (“I was mentioning it last time”). The transcript begins mid-sentence. The previous class treated the four causes and their pairings; the next continues the question whether nature acts for an end, the misunderstandings of final causality, and the customs of the modern world.

The class, in order #

1. Custom stronger than argument (“argument or custom”) #

Point: most people are moved to deny that nature acts for an end more by custom and misunderstanding than by argument, so these must be examined before the arguments.

• Socrates in the Apology fears the anonymous accusers more than Meletus and Anytus, whom he can cross-examine; the anonymous accusers he cannot confront. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire”: hearing over and over that a politician is crooked makes us think there must be something wrong with him. This shows the force of custom.
• Question he puts to students: which is stronger in our thinking, argument or custom? Answer: custom, rightly. Reasons: (1) custom acts on the mind before we can reason; (2) custom produces a habit, a second nature, especially what is customary from birth; (3) when we begin to reason we take the customary as a starting point, so custom governs the reasoning too.
• Max Planck: the older physicists are not convinced of new ideas; they die off and the new generation is taught them from the start. If custom beats argument even in scientists, “what about the rest of us?”
• Paston letters (14th century, he thinks): a daughter beaten daily until she agrees to marry the rich old man; the historian says one should not think the Pastons cruel, since what else would one do? What one age takes for granted shocks another, and vice versa.
• Plan: first the customs of the modern world and the misunderstandings that incline people to the negative; these do not decide the question, but they explain why people lean one way. Then the arguments for and against, weigh them, and whichever side one takes, go back and answer all the arguments of the other side. His handout reproduces Aristotle’s text arguing that nature acts for an end, restates and expands the arguments, gives the arguments against, and (since he agrees with Aristotle) answers those.

2. Importance of the question for natural philosophy (“the very end and goal of natural philosophy”) #

Point: the question touches the end of natural philosophy, and the end is the most important thing in any science.

1. The goal of natural philosophy (from the beginning of the course) is not just to know how natural things are but to know their causes.
2. The end is one of the four kinds of cause, so whether nature has ends is part of whether knowing natural things includes knowing their ends.
3. Nothing in a science is more important than its end; therefore this question pertains to what is most important in natural philosophy.
4. Further: where the end is a cause it is the cause of the other causes being causes, so it has a primacy among the four (repeated at a student’s request).

• Examples: is it part of understanding the eye to know it is for seeing, the ear for hearing, the heart for pumping blood, or is that irrelevant?

3. Importance for ethics and human life (“your whole life depends upon this course”) #

Point: the fundamental question of ethics, the end of human life, depends on whether nature acts for an end.

• If nature acts for an end (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle), one asks whether man has an end by nature, what it is, and how best to achieve it. If not, man and his parts, being by nature, have no end; either man has no purpose or he invents one freely (Sartre and that tradition), with no basis in man.
• Concrete pressings on students: “I think I’ll cut off your arm” to improve his hazy anatomy. Is it only a matter of who is stronger, or does the arm belong to the student? The arm is natural, not artificial: if nature acts for an end one can argue nature made the part for the whole; if not, the arm is no more for the student than for his knowledge of anatomy, a matter of whim.
• Deceiving the whole class and leaving them deceived: is he abusing their minds? Only if the mind is by nature for knowing truth rather than for being deceived; to misuse is to go against a thing’s purpose.
• Grinding a student for garden fertilizer: is the student for something nobler? Only if nature made man for something better. “I don’t like lobsters, so what?”

4. Importance for the arts that help nature, and for theology (“the arts that help nature”) #

Point: medicine and logic get their rules from nature’s end; deny the end and they become arbitrary.

• Medicine helps nature achieve its end (helping the woman give birth) and so takes its parameters from nature; without natural ends it becomes completely open.
• Logic: some modern logicians call its rules arbitrary like the rules of Monopoly. For Socrates (the intellectual midwife, comparing himself to medicine), Plato and Aristotle, logic helps reason reach its natural end, truth; studying when a syllogism’s conclusion follows is for knowing truth and not being deceived.
• Theology: if nature acts for an end and nature has no mind (as one may eventually conclude), it points to a greater mind, as Anaxagoras and others said.
• Summary order of importance: natural philosophy, ethics and the whole of life, the arts that help nature, theology; “in some ways the most important question” of their lives.

5. What reading 13 contains (“reading 13 is Aristotle’s arguments”) #

Reading 13 gives Aristotle’s five arguments that nature acts for an end; from the bottom of page 3, the three main arguments against; then his restatement of Aristotle (dividing the third argument into two); and from the middle of page 6, his replies to the arguments against. He proposes first to treat Aristotle’s further distinctions of causes, then luck and chance (“obscure causes”), then the misunderstandings and customs, before the arguments.

6. Aside on pedagogical order: when to bring in God’s causality (“too much, too much too soon”) #

A student asks whether the intellect is moved by God. Answer: eventually, in wisdom or theology, one sees that even active abilities are moved by God, but in On the Soul III the contrast is between the agent intellect and the possible intellect, related as agent to matter; bringing God in there would confuse the student. Likewise Aristotle in natural philosophy distinguishes natural philosophy from mathematics without bringing in wisdom; only in the sixth book of Wisdom are all three distinguished, since earlier the distinction is not necessary. Similarly creation vs. change belongs to theology, not natural philosophy. This is prudence. Thomas’s commentaries bring such things in early (beginning of the Physics commentary distinguishes the three sciences), but commentaries are written more for the teacher who has already gone through the material; a student reports being told the outlines help but the commentaries are for those already through. “Mr. Confucius says too much is as bad as too little.”

7. Causes before and after (“cause before or after”) #

Point: within each kind of cause there is an order of prior and posterior, and it is the real order, not the merely notional one, that matters.

• Movers: locomotive pulling car pulling car. Ends: drugstore for aspirin, aspirin for the headache, headache for study, study for knowing. Matter: proton and electron as matter of the atom, atom as matter of the molecule.
• Aristotle argues in Natural Hearing VII–VIII that not every mover is a moved mover, so there is an unmoved mover; at the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics, that not every end is for a further end, so there is a first end; in the second book of Wisdom, that there are first causes in each kind. Other parts of philosophy see this for one kind: mover and matter in natural philosophy, end in ethics, form in logic.
• Distinction: before/after in reality (many causes) vs. before/after only in our understanding, more general or more particular, of one and the same cause: the obstetrician, the medical doctor, the man of art delivered the baby (one man); made of oak, of wood, of matter (the “genus”). Thomas distinguishes these two in his commentary. The real order is “much more interesting.”
• Michelangelo and the Pietà: hammer and chisel are also causes insofar as moved by his hands, moved by something inside him. “Why did I hit you? Because I was angry” — work back to the first cause.

8. Cause as such and accidental cause; luck and chance (“the cause as such and the accidental cause”) #

Point: kath’ hauto / per se cause vs. kata symbebekos / accidental cause, with accidental causes distinguished on the side of the cause and on the side of the effect.

• On the side of the cause: the house builder is cause of the house through possessing the art; if he happens to be a pianist, “a pianist built my house” is true but the pianist is only an accidental cause, since not as pianist.
• On the side of the effect, the stock example: the gardener digging a hole to plant strikes what seems a rock, an old chest, a pirate’s treasure. Digging was the cause of his becoming wealthy, but not as such, and it does not happen for the most part, “otherwise people would be digging in the ground all the time.” This is the accidental cause meant by luck or chance: a cause of what happens rarely, as a result of an action done for an end, and not intended.
• His own: crossing at the Café de la Ville [as heard] in Quebec to eat at the Montcalm restaurant (student reduction), someone yells “Professor” — a man not seen in ten years, there on vacation. Also the traffic “accident”: going to the grocery store through a green light is the accidental cause of being hit.
• Chance vs. luck: luck (Latin fortuna) is chance in human affairs; chance is broader and occurs in nature: the lioness [as heard: “mother lion”] chasing dinner runs where her lost cub wandered and recovers it, not for the most part and not for that end.
• Footnote: English “happiness” comes from “hap,” luck; “happy-go-lucky” originally near-synonyms; Latin bona fortuna; Greek eutuchia in the Poetics; Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona uses “hap.” It reflects the popular notion that happiness is being in the right place at the right time.

9. The removens prohibens and responsibility (“the one removing or taking away what prevents”) #

Point: a second accidental cause on the side of the effect, differing from luck in having a necessary order.

• Knock down the pillar and the roof falls: he is held responsible, yet he is not as such the cause of the roof falling; something else brings it down, the pillar was preventing it. Latin causa removens prohibens.
• Contrast: shooting at a target in the backyard while a student, thinking of philosophy, wanders behind it: bad luck, not responsibility. Releasing the handbrake so the car rolls into the lake: responsible, though not the cause as such. “Responsible” is tied to the word “cause.”
• Why the difference: luck is a cause of what happens rarely; the roof falling when the pillar is removed does not happen rarely. A student notes it is not accidental in the same sense as the pianist; he agrees: piano playing contributes nothing to house building, digging has something to do with the discovery but rarely and unintended, here the connection seems necessary. Compare Natural Hearing I: you are necessarily ignorant before you learn, but ignorance as such is not the cause of learning; the accidental can in some way be necessary.
• Application to the bad: nobody intends the bad as bad (the bank robber robs “because that’s where the money is”). Thomas, in the commentary on an Epistle of St Paul, gives two ways pride causes deception: (1) it makes us not want to believe or listen to a wiser man, removing what would prevent mistakes, given the weakness of our mind (a near-necessary order); (2) the proud man, overestimating himself, applies his mind to judging what he cannot judge, seeking the excellence of being judge and so being deceived accidentally. Hence accidental causes matter for luck and chance and for understanding the causes of the bad.
• Luck and chance seem to some mere names for ignorance; they are not, but they are obscure because accidental. Anything can follow from an action: Cermak [ed.: ASR “Sarah Mack”] went to Florida to make peace with Roosevelt after opposing him in the convention and got the bullet intended for Roosevelt; a drugstore roof in Centertown collapsed; the man who hit a woman’s car (before no-fault insurance), was sued, and they fell in love and got engaged (“I wouldn’t recommend it”). Some say Adam and Eve’s sin was wanting by their own reason to avoid these accidental things rather than depend on God, since an infinity of things can happen; asked whether Thomas or the Fathers say this, he says both would, Thomas most clearly since he knows what luck and chance are.
• Student example: building the fifth house on the block without intending it: luck is spoken of when something good or bad happens.
• Romeo and Juliet: “I am fortune’s fool.” Romeo, secretly married, tries to stop the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt; the unintended result is Mercutio’s death, then Tybalt’s, then exile. Much on fortune in those plays.

10. Review: the importance of the question, with new additions (“come back now to the question”) #

He reviews segments 2–4 in the same order; only what is new is noted here.

• The chair: the carpenter makes the chair for the sake of sitting, so his causality as mover depends on sitting; by shaping the wood he makes the matter the matter of a chair and brings in the form. Hence the end is the causa causarum, “the cause of the causes”; where it is a cause it is the most fundamental.
• Added: front teeth for biting, back teeth for chewing; achieving the end as individuals, families and nations; “just a matter of opinion, as people say nowadays.”
• “You don’t know what to do with yourself until you answer this question”: a baby with a ballpoint pen puts it in his mouth; not knowing man’s purpose, you no more know what to do with yourself.
• Adds cutting off the head to study the brain.
• “Thank God people don’t act always in accord with their ideas”: Brothers Karamazov, the older brother back from university with wild ideas, the “younger stupid brother” acts on them and kills the father, which shocks the older brother into examining his ideas.
• The recording breaks off at “Okay. Now.”

His words #

• custom; acts on the mind before reasoning, produces a habit like a second nature, and supplies the starting points of reasoning
• Natural Hearing; his name for Aristotle’s Physics [ed.: Physics]
• Wisdom; his name for the Metaphysics [ed.: Metaphysics]
• arts that help nature; medicine and logic, which help nature reach its end, vs. arts that do not
• intellectual midwife; Socrates’ comparison of himself to the medical art
• active abilities; [ed.: active potencies]; active intellect vs. possible intellect, as agent to matter
• cause before and after; prior and posterior within one kind of cause, either in reality (many causes) or only in our understanding (one cause named more or less generally)
• cause as such / to itself; Greek kath’ hauto, Latin per se, through itself: the house builder as house builder
• accidental cause / by happening; Greek kata symbebekos: the pianist who built the house
• luck; chance in human affairs; Latin fortuna, bona fortuna; Greek eutuchia
• chance; broader than luck, found also in nature; a cause of what happens rarely as a result of an action done for an end, not intended
• hap; the root of “happiness,” meaning luck
• causa removens prohibens; the cause removing what prevents: the pillar, the handbrake
• responsible; tied to the word “cause”
• causa causarum; the end as “cause of the causes,” the cause of the other causes being causes

Texts #

Read in class

• Berquist handout, reading 13 (described: Aristotle’s five arguments, three counter-arguments from p. 3, his restatement, replies from p. 6)

Mentioned

• Plato, Apology (anonymous accusers, Meletus and Anytus)
• Aristotle, Physics I (ignorance before learning); VII–VIII (unmoved mover); the treatment of luck and chance (Physics II, inferred)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, beginning (a first end)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics II (first causes in each kind); VI (distinction of the three sciences)
• Aristotle, On the Soul III (agent and possible intellect)
• Aristotle, Poetics (eutuchia)
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on the Physics, beginning (three sciences); commentary distinguishing before/after in knowledge and in reality
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on an Epistle of St Paul (two ways pride causes deception)
• Max Planck (new ideas adopted as old physicists die off)
• Paston letters
• Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (“hap”); Romeo and Juliet (“I am fortune’s fool”)
• Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov
• Sartre; Anaxagoras; Samson and the pillars

His questions #

• Which is stronger in our thinking, for the most part, argument or custom? Custom, because it acts before reason, forms a second nature, and supplies reason’s starting points.
• Is it part of understanding the eye to know it is for the sake of seeing? Yes; knowing the causes, including the end, is the goal of natural philosophy.
• If I cut off your arm for my anatomy, is it just a question of who’s stronger? Only if nature makes the part for the whole is the arm for the student; deny natural ends and it is whim.
• If I set out to deceive you, am I abusing your mind? Only if the mind is by nature for truth; to abuse is to go against a thing’s purpose.
• Why not grind you up for fertilizer? No answer is possible unless nature made man for something better.
• Is the intellect moved by God? In wisdom or theology, yes; in On the Soul III one stays with agent vs. possible intellect so as not to confuse the student.
• Was digging a hole to plant something as such a way of becoming a millionaire? No; it is an accidental cause of what happens rarely, which is luck.
• If I knock the pillar down, am I really the cause of the roof coming down as such? No; something else brings it down, but I removed what prevented it and am held responsible.
• Am I responsible if you happen to be behind the target when I shoot? No; that is bad luck, since it happens rarely and was not intended.
• Is it Thomas or the Fathers who say Adam and Eve wanted to avoid the accidental? Both would, Thomas most explicitly since he knows what luck and chance are.