Metaphysics it is a collection of different books on the same subject written by Aristotle. Andronicus of Rhodes, one of the last disciples of the Lyceum of Aristotle, was who organized and classified these writings, giving them the name by which we know them today. The fourth book of these writings brings, right at its beginning, the following words:
“There is a science that considers being as a being and the skills that are incumbent upon it as such. It does not identify with any of the particular sciences: in fact, none of the other sciences considers universally being as being, but delimiting a part of it, each one studies the characteristics of this part." |1|
This definition of Aristotle may be a first and more general elucidation of what is Metaphysics: an area of Philosophy or, as he called it, a general science, a kind of master science or mother science of all sciences. Before the classification of Andronicus of Rhodes, Aristotle himself called his studies in Metaphysics “First Philosophy
” because it is a set of knowledge independent of any empirical activity and any sensory experience.Do not stop now... There's more after the advertising ;)
While areas of knowledge, divided into their specialties, study only a particular specialty, that is, a part of the whole, Metaphysics would be responsible for studying the whole. We can also say, generally speaking, that Philosophy is the study of being as being, that is, it is the study of relationships of how things are, how they rationally organize themselves beyond human will and the material existence of the world.
Although Aristotle is considered a thinker systematic which was known for classifying areas of knowledge in the ancient world, we must recognize that there are relationships between such areas. Aristotle's studies of First Philosophy are related, several times, with the Aristotelian logic, that it is also an a priori philosophy or a type of philosophy that is independent of sensible experience and practice. Later, in book four of Metaphysics, Aristotle says that:
"It is evident, therefore, that the study of being as a being and of the properties that refer to it belongs to the same science, and that the same science must study not only the substances, but also their properties, the opposites mentioned, and also the anterior and posterior, the genus and the species, the whole and the part and the other notions of this type." |2|
Notions such as genus, species, parts and whole not only appear in Metaphysics, but also in the book Categories, a small treatise on logic written by Aristotle. The passage from Metaphysics mentioned above also points us to central themes of the First Philosophy, or Metaphysics, which would be dedicated to the understanding of the notion of substance, which would be a kind of connection that fits the objects of the world into their respective forms metaphysical.
Theory of the four causes
THE four-cause theory it is based on the principle of cause and effect and is, in fact, the first historical record of this metaphysical and logical principle, which can also be called the principle of causality. According to the principle of causality, for everything that happens in the world (effect), there is a previous event that would have given rise to it (cause), with the exception of what Aristotle called “uncaused cause”, which we will address to follow.
According to Aristotelian Metaphysics, there are four fundamental causes that explain the origin of everything we know in the world. Are they:
material cause: refers to the matter from which something is made, such as the marble in a marble statue, or the wood in a wooden chair.
formal cause: is the form that a certain object or being has. This cause is also, in a way, its conceptual definition, since a chair must have the form of chair, and a marble statue representing a Greek god, such as Dionysus, must have the form of that character.
final cause: as the name implies, this cause concerns the purpose or reason for existing of a particular being or object. Taking the example of the chair, its ultimate cause is to serve as a seat.
efficient cause: would be what gave rise to a particular being or object, that is, its first cause. In the case of the statue of Dionysus, the efficient cause would be the sculptor. In the case of the famous Monalisa canvas, its efficient cause would be the painter Leonardo da Vinci.
First motionless engine
The notion of the first immobile engine, or simply immobile engine, is, in short, the uncaused cause we talked about in the previous topic. O scholastic philosopher Thomas Aquinas related this immobile engine concept to the Judeo-Christian idea of God, since this first mover would be a first cause of all causes, or the origin of everything, which would not have been originated by anything or anyone. The concept of an immobile engine appears in book XII of Aristotle's Metaphysics and was conceived through an intellectual regression reasoning.
Aristotle, thinking about the principle of causality and the practical experience that makes us understand that everything that happens has a beginning, operates a regression of thoughts and finds that, if we understand that for everything in the world there is a prior cause, there must be an initial moment where there would no longer be prior causes or, otherwise, we would fall into a species in loop infinite. This initial moment, which causes movement but is not moved by anyone, is the first motionless motor, or that which gives impulse but is not propelled.
This notion is one of the most important in ancient Metaphysics as it has the weight of explaining the first origin of the entire universe through philosophical reasoning.
Substance, form, matter, act and potency
By distancing himself from the Platonic idealist theses and the immobilist theses of Parmenides, Aristotle faced a philosophical problem: the thinker conceives the existence of forms (which would be ideal) and of matter, which would be changeable. Both, in the Aristotelian theory of knowledge, are true and have validity, unlike the Platonic conception of knowledge, which would be composed, in its truth, only by ideas or shapes. THE substance it would be the fitting link between the notion of form and the notion of matter, that is, substance is what allows matter to adapt to a certain form. However, assuming that forms are immutable and matter is changeable, there would be a problem of adapting matter to their respective forms or concepts. To solve this, Aristotle introduced the notion of distinction between act and potency.
According to the philosopher, all material beings and objects exist in two forms, one actual and one potential. Act would be the current form, what matter is now, and potency it would be a special form that matter keeps within itself, that is, a “becoming” or a “can become”. All current matter can be transformed into its potencies. When a given being transforms itself into its potency, it can be said that it has updated itself, that is, it has become a new matter in action.
To exemplify this reasoning, we can borrow the idea that a seed exists as a seed, that is, it is a seed in action, but it also holds a potency within itself: the possibility of becoming a plant. When the seed sprouts and grows, it updates itself, taking on a new form and transforming its matter.
|1| Aristotle. Metaphysics. 2nd ed. translation, introduction and comments by Giovanni Reale. São Paulo: Loyola Editions, 2002, p. 131.
|2|_______ Metaphysics. 2nd ed. translation, introduction and comments by Giovanni Reale. São Paulo: Loyola Editions, 2002, p. 141.
by Francisco Porfirio
Philosophy teacher