The beginning of Aristotle's metaphysics is a historical overview with a philosophical intention. In the search to understand the principles and causes of reality, Aristotle identified, for example, in the Milesian Presocratics, matter as being the cause of the universe. He found in Plato and in the Pythagoreans numbers and Ideas as the determining form of beings. He also saw in Anaxagoras the us as the ultimate end of all things.
This entire trajectory, in fact, aims to seek arguments for its own etiology or study of causes. Aristotle thus brought together the various existing models, synthesizing them into his own theory of four causes. Are they:
- Material Cause – what a being is made of, the matter of being;
- Formal Cause – the form, the essence, the characteristic that determines and classifies beings;
- Efficient or Motor Cause – principle of movement, that which gives rise to beings;
- Final Cause – the reason, why something was done, exists, etc.
According to Aristotle, all beings, everything that exists, includes these four causes, necessarily. Thus, if we take a marble statue of a man as an example, we can see the matter it is made of (marble – material cause), the form it takes (the contours of man - formal cause), what started the movement (the sculptor's action - efficient cause) and the end for which it was produced (contemplation - cause Final).
To understand Aristotelian etiology it is necessary to know the distinction he makes between Act and power. Act is the form assumed by a being at a given moment, its realization (update of potency) according to an end inherent to the being. Potency is that in which it is possible for any being to transform itself by virtue of its own end. So a seed is a power of the tree. This one, when performing the end of the movement, updated its potency. Therefore, the act is the form that beings must reach through movement, with the aim of perfection. And potency is the matter that sustains the transformation, the becoming.
This way of understanding reality allows us to conceive the unity of being even though movement is possible. This is because the substance of being has not been altered, nor is movement as an illusion, nor does it imply an immobile unity (a baby is different from a man; seed is different from tree, etc.). The principle of identity is reserved for the act that gives form to beings. Thus, knowledge takes place from the form that is universal.
By João Francisco P. Cabral
Brazil School Collaborator
Graduated in Philosophy from the Federal University of Uberlândia - UFU
Master's student in Philosophy at the State University of Campinas - UNICAMP
Philosophy - Brazil School
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/filosofia/etiologia-na-metafisica-aristotelica.htm
