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Chapter 8 ST. THOMAS, METAPHYSICS, AND FORMAL CAUSALITY I. The Problem of the Causes As I have elsewhere had occasion to remark, St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle can, if carefully controlled, provide precious indications of how a Thomistic metaphysics ought to be constructed.1 In the present paper I wish to expose and to some degree explore one such indication. Aristotle, in Metaphysics 3, presents problems which the metaphysical inquirer ought to have in mind, so that in his thinking he will aim at a definite goal and thus will be able to see when the task has been truly accomplished.2 The first problem presented is whether the consideration of the four types of cause pertains to one science or to many and diverse sciences. This question presupposes what had been said in the introductory books, namely that the sought-after science of wisdom would be knowledge of the first and highest causes. St. Thomas also relates it to the last words of Book 2, which raise the same issue . And this, says St. Thomas, is to ask whether it belongs to one science, and especially to this one, to demonstrate by means of all the causes, or rather is it the case that diverse sciences demonstrate from diverse types of cause. St. Thomas sees this problem raised in first place because it deals with the very method3 of the science itself. Aristotle had said in Book 2 that before undertaking to learn a science, one ought to be clear about its method.4 131 1. Cf. my article, “Being per se, Being per accidens and St. Thomas’ Metaphysics,” Science et Esprit 30 (1978), pp. 169–184. Henceforth I will refer to St. Thomas’s Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle as “CM,” citing book, lectio, and the paragraph number from the Cathala-Spiazzi edition, Rome/Turin, 1950: Marietti. 2. Cf. CM 3.1 (340–341) and Aristotle, Metaph. 3.1 (995a34–62). 3. The Latin word is “modus.” I use “method” somewhat reluctantly to translate this word. Method, as involving the notion of pathway, would be more the “ordo” of the science . Modus is a more qualitative conception. 4. CM 3.2 (346). After giving a list of the problems, Aristotle undertakes to spell them out as problems one by one. Our question, on the method of the science, is discussed by St. Thomas in lectio 4. St. Thomas, in all his discussions of the problems of Book 3, concludes each one with a brief statement of the solution eventually taught by Aristotle later in the Metaphysics. Needless to say, these brief presentations of the Aristotelian conclusions make most interesting reading. However, the presentation as regards the first problem is of special interest because St. Thomas tells us that Aristotle never expressly answers it. He says one can gather the answer from what Aristotle says in various places, and he proceeds to explain what he has gathered to be the answer: For he determines in Book 4 that this science considers ens inasmuch as it is ens: and so it belongs to it to consider the primary substances, and not to natural science , because above mobile substance there are other substances. But every substance either is ens through itself, if it is form alone, or else, if it is composed out of matter and form, it is ens through its own form; hence, inasmuch as this science undertakes to consider ens, it considers most of all the formal cause. But the primary substances are not known by us in such a way that we know about them what they are, as can in a way be had from those things which are determined in Book 9: and thus in the knowledge of them the formal cause has no place. But though they are immobile according to themselves, nevertheless they are the cause of motion of other things after the manner of an end; and therefore, to this science, inasmuch as it undertakes to consider the primary substances, it especially pertains to consider the final cause, and also in a way the moving cause. But [it pertains to it to consider] the material cause, according to itself, in no way, because matter is not universally5 a cause of ens, but rather of some determinate kind, i.e. mobile substance. But such causes pertain to the consideration of the particular sciences, except perhaps that they are considered by this science inasmuch as they are contained...

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