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Dennis Des Chene (St. Louis): Suarez on Propinquity and the Efficient Cause
Zajímavý článek, především analýza DM 18.8 (srv. 06.09.2010 a 01.08.2011). Pokud dobře rozumím, Suarez se snažil obhájit Tomášovo pojetí (pace Scotus), že veškerá účinná příčinnost se děje "nablízko" či nutně skrze médium. Pojmově připravil bezděky půdu pro mechanicismus. Shrnutí B. Hilla z úvodu:
"Des Chene examines the formal characters attributed to efficient causation by Suarez. He indentifies four formal characters of efficient causation:
- the temporal priority of causes to effect;
- the principle of no action at a distance;
- the proportionality of the intensity of the effect to the strength of the total cause;
- the necessity of the effect given the occurrence of the cause.
Des Chene argues that these 'formal characters can be retained even as the principles of natural philosophz are transformed because they are independent of efficient causality's putative nature.' He turns his attention to Disputation 18.8, where Suarez addresses the propinquity and proportionality of causes to effects. The question Suarez addressed there were: can causes immediately act on things distant from it, and if not how can they mediately act on distant things? Suarez's answer to the first question is easy and staightforward - no. It is answering the second that requires much more work. Suarez's model for causal interaction at a distance requires causal action within a medium. But this account leads to two conceptual puzzles: (1) the difficulty of determining the sphere of action of bodily causes and (2) the rectilinear propagation of the influence of light. Suarez's account of the medium is especially important, according to Des Chene, because of its connection to Descartes' mechanistic account of bodily interaction. Because Descartes reduced all bodily causal interaction to immediate contact, Descartes' account of bodily causation made Suarez's model unnecessary, essentially dissolving it." (p. 9-10)
Des Chene (obecný úvod):
“In the Principles, Descartes declared that of the four Aristotelian causes, he would retain only one: the efficient. … Descartes’ claim would lead one to believe that he preserved the efficient cause—that hre at least we find continuity with the Aristotelian tradition. But it is reasonable to wonder whether, when from a foufould classification htree memebers are removed, the fourth can ramain unaltered.” p. 89.
Helen Hattab (Houston): Suarez's Last Stand for the Substantial Form (viz 03.06.2011)
Obecný metodologický úvod (opět pozapomenutá vlastní scholastická po-Suareziánská tradice):
"At first glance the metaphysical disputations devoted to natural causation seem to be the least likely place to look for evidence of Francisco Suarez as transformative figure inthe history of Western thought. Suarez's ponderous treatments of each of the four Aristotelian causes do not indicate an awareness of, or interest in the concurrent revivals of atomism and other rivals to Aristotelian natural philosophy. Nonetheless a cloeser examination suggests that his thoroughgoing efforts to revise, bolster, and systematize this part of the Scholastic edifice set the stage for the eventual replacements of Aristotelian natural philosophy by mechanism. I propose that Suarey can be seen as the tragic hero in the unfolding drama we call the scientific revolution: in working tirelessly and brilliantly to save Scholastic Aristotleinism, he so transformed it that the path for its dethronement emerged.
However seeing just how his innovations might have had this effect is exceedingly difficult. Indeed just separating his innovations from mere reinforcements of the party line already poses a challenge. The layers of Scholastic commentary in which Suarez shrouded his contributions to the existing Scholastic debates and positions seamlessly blend novelty and tradition. Unlike the early moderns, who announced the novelty of their views with the sharp blows of a trumpet, Suarez quietly but steadily worked behind the scenes to significantly alter the Aristotelian framework within which he operated. Identifying and understanding the groundbreaking changes he so subtly introduced thus require that we read the Metaphysical Disputations with three eyes, so to speak. One must look backwards to the Scholastic tradition to which Suarez responded, another must look forward to the early moderns who succeded him, and the third must scrutinize his texts and relate them to what the other two eyes see." (p. 101)
Hlavní téma - substantiální forma:
"To make this task a little more manageable I will limit myself to that most reviled and ridiculed of all Scholastic entities, the substantial form. [ p. 101] ... Writing for an audience that was exposed to numerous doubts about the existence of substantial forms as well as natural philosophies seeking to replace substantial forms with other principles, Suarez provided a very different justification for the substantial form. ... Unlike the medieval commentators, Suarez did not begin with the distinction between the generation simpliciter of corporeal entities and accidental changes, such as a body becoming white or cold. Nor did he establish the existence of prime matter at the same time that he argues for the substantial form. Instead Suarez built up his argument for the substantial form from the immortality of the rational soul." (p. 102)
"One other feature of Suarez's account of the substantial form deserves mention before we delve ino the details and implications of Suarez's arguments for the existence of substantial forms. Thomas referred to the form of a substance in at least three different but closely related senses: (1) the form that actualizes the matter of a matter/form composite and causes it to be, for example, my individual soul; (2) the non-accidental form constituting the essence of a substance, in my case, my human form versus accidents like tallness; and (3) the definition that enables us to know a substance's essence and advance our scientific knowledge by means of demonstrative syllogisms. In Disputation 15 Suarez clearly separated these into (1) the physical form; (2) the metaphysical form; (3) the logical form. In addition he treated the physical form as the only true substantial from, downgrading the others to forms in a metaphorical sense. As the arguments we will next examine illustrate, this has the effect of privileging the role that substantial froms played in natural philosophy, as opposed to the forms appealed to in logic and metaphysics, and of emphasizing empirical arguments for the existence of the substantial form. This in turn has important implications for the advent of mechanism." (p. 104)
I. The existence of substantial forms
"We can draw several conclusions from this examination of Suarez's a posteriori arguments in favor of the substantial from. First the amount of space devoted to such arguments and the number of objections and counter arguments addressed indicate that empirical arguments against the substantial form were both common and taken seriously at the time. Second, unlike Thomas', Suarez's arguments for the existence of substantial forms in inanimante bodies were neither heavily dependent on Aristotle's texts nor on specific metaphysical doctrines. ... They were based on empirical observations, inferences to the best explanation, and methodological principles like 'one should not multiply entitties beyond necessity.' ... Finally, despite the fact that our skeptical, post-atomist rejection of natural kinds and real qualities prevents us from embracing them, these arguments represent the best of the time and would probaly have been convincing to most of Suarez's contemporaries." (p. 109)
"One has to keep in mind that during the period that Suarez was writing his Metaphysical Disputations, a consistent atomist or mechanistic physics had yet to be developed and so alternative explanatory principles to the elements, forms substances, and accidents of Scholastic Aristotelianism were rather limited. It is true that alchemists had already replaced Aristotle's four elements with their own and the Neoplatonists ahd adherents of natural magic appealed to forms emanating from the celestial sphere and occult qualities to explain certain phenomenta that resisted the Scholastic explanations, but they all operated within a basic non-mechanistic explanatory framework that utilized elements, forms, and the substance/accident distinction. Within this broadly Aristotelian framework Suarez's arguments in favor of the substantial form appear to triumph over its detractors. Nonetheless by separating and privileging the physical sense of form over the metaphysical and logical senses, by granting the impossibility of observing this substantial form, and by establishing its existence primarily by abduction from obseved effects, Suarez inadvertently undemined the case for substantial forms independently of this general framework. Once severed from the machinery of Scholastic logic and metaphysics, the substantial form hung only by the slender thread of fit between observation and theory. With the development of mechanical theories in natural philosophy that could explain the same effects, that thread by which Suarez defended substantial forms soon snapped. Indeed it took only a few decades after the publication of the Metaphysical Disputations for Descartes to declare substantial forms redundant by showing that an abduction to mechanical principles accounted for the same observed effects. Whereas Suarez arguments certainly did not aim at this result, indirectly his strategy of arguing for the actual existence of substantial forms independently of metaphysical and logical ground made it possible." (p. 110)
II. The causality of substantial form as the formal cause of substance
"... in Suarez's hands the substantial form has been transformed into something quite different from what we find in Thomas. First of all it is not an act of existence perfecting matter and causing it to be. Rather the substantial from is an incomplete substance, which through the mode of its union with another incomplete substance (matter) formally causes a composite to be. Form and matter are equal partners in this union for Suarez. The substantial form is not prior to the matter by its action. In fact it does not even exercise formal causality by its action ... For Suarez formal causality did not spring from a dynamic, emergent form that gives being to matter and orders its potencies to their ends. Formal causality is static; consisting merely in the manner of union that an already existing substantial form has with an already existing matter. ... Suarez's circumscribing of the role of the formal cause the union of the composite is consistent with and may in fact have prepared the ground for the subsequent de-emphasis of formal causation in natural philosophy. " (p. 114)
III. The role of accidents in educing substantial forms
"... While specific historical links still need to be identified, from a purely conceptual standpoint it is not surprising that the post-Suarezian era included a range of attempts to bring atomist and corpuscularian explanations of cartain types of phenomena into a broader Aristotelian framework." (p. 117)
IV. Conclusion
"There are different ways in which philosophies can be transformative. Post enlightenment histories of philosophy tend to emphasize the transformative effect of philosophers responsible for methods, arguments, and results that stand out due to their novelty. Hence we keep coming back to Descartes' method of doubt, his cogito, and his dualism as well as Kant's critical method, his transcendental deductions, and his transcendental idealism. Until very recently historians of philosophy tended to ignore the scaffolding that makes the erection of such new systems possible. However, to advance in our understanding of the history of philosophy it is equally important to acknowledge the role of historical philosophers who provided such a scaffolding, no matter how quickly it was discarded once the new systems tooks hold. Suarez's contribution to modernity does not lie in novel methods or bold new types of argument. In no way did he anticipate Descartes' method of doubt or his cogito. Suarez remained firmly rooted in the methodologies of Scholastic Aristotelianism, marshalling the authorities on both sides of each issues and proceeding in true disputatonal style towards a resolution. Yet his contribution is no less important to our understanding od the advent of modern philosophy. As seens, the results of his disputations wre novel as compared to his predecessors and they provided a launching pad for later, more radical innovations. It is hard to imagine a mechanistic philosophy like Descartes' taking root in more traditional Thomist soil. However with Suarez's redefinition of the substantial form as an incomplete substance; his clear demarcation between the physical substantial from and the metaphorical forms of logic and metaphysics; his emphasis on empirical justifications of the substantial form; his reduction of formal causality to the mode of the union of the substantial form; his consequent privileging of material and efficient causality; and his weakening of the distinction between substantial and accidental change and the proportionateness requirement - Suarez provided fertile soil for the introduction of mechanical principles and explanations to do the work that substantial forms had done. Independently of how one assesses the value of the Scholastic approach to philosophy, one must acknowledge Suarez as one of its most ingenious and innovative, albeit tragic proponents. Tragic, because in his attempts to rescue the substantial form he made possible the means by which ir would be quickly replaced with mechanicism." (p. 118)
“In the Principles, Descartes declared that of the four Aristotelian causes, he would retain only one: the efficient. … Descartes’ claim would lead one to believe that he preserved the efficient cause—that hre at least we find continuity with the Aristotelian tradition. But it is reasonable to wonder whether, when from a foufould classification htree memebers are removed, the fourth can ramain unaltered.” p. 89.
Helen Hattab (Houston): Suarez's Last Stand for the Substantial Form (viz 03.06.2011)
Obecný metodologický úvod (opět pozapomenutá vlastní scholastická po-Suareziánská tradice):
"At first glance the metaphysical disputations devoted to natural causation seem to be the least likely place to look for evidence of Francisco Suarez as transformative figure inthe history of Western thought. Suarez's ponderous treatments of each of the four Aristotelian causes do not indicate an awareness of, or interest in the concurrent revivals of atomism and other rivals to Aristotelian natural philosophy. Nonetheless a cloeser examination suggests that his thoroughgoing efforts to revise, bolster, and systematize this part of the Scholastic edifice set the stage for the eventual replacements of Aristotelian natural philosophy by mechanism. I propose that Suarey can be seen as the tragic hero in the unfolding drama we call the scientific revolution: in working tirelessly and brilliantly to save Scholastic Aristotleinism, he so transformed it that the path for its dethronement emerged.
However seeing just how his innovations might have had this effect is exceedingly difficult. Indeed just separating his innovations from mere reinforcements of the party line already poses a challenge. The layers of Scholastic commentary in which Suarez shrouded his contributions to the existing Scholastic debates and positions seamlessly blend novelty and tradition. Unlike the early moderns, who announced the novelty of their views with the sharp blows of a trumpet, Suarez quietly but steadily worked behind the scenes to significantly alter the Aristotelian framework within which he operated. Identifying and understanding the groundbreaking changes he so subtly introduced thus require that we read the Metaphysical Disputations with three eyes, so to speak. One must look backwards to the Scholastic tradition to which Suarez responded, another must look forward to the early moderns who succeded him, and the third must scrutinize his texts and relate them to what the other two eyes see." (p. 101)
Hlavní téma - substantiální forma:
"To make this task a little more manageable I will limit myself to that most reviled and ridiculed of all Scholastic entities, the substantial form. [ p. 101] ... Writing for an audience that was exposed to numerous doubts about the existence of substantial forms as well as natural philosophies seeking to replace substantial forms with other principles, Suarez provided a very different justification for the substantial form. ... Unlike the medieval commentators, Suarez did not begin with the distinction between the generation simpliciter of corporeal entities and accidental changes, such as a body becoming white or cold. Nor did he establish the existence of prime matter at the same time that he argues for the substantial form. Instead Suarez built up his argument for the substantial form from the immortality of the rational soul." (p. 102)
"One other feature of Suarez's account of the substantial form deserves mention before we delve ino the details and implications of Suarez's arguments for the existence of substantial forms. Thomas referred to the form of a substance in at least three different but closely related senses: (1) the form that actualizes the matter of a matter/form composite and causes it to be, for example, my individual soul; (2) the non-accidental form constituting the essence of a substance, in my case, my human form versus accidents like tallness; and (3) the definition that enables us to know a substance's essence and advance our scientific knowledge by means of demonstrative syllogisms. In Disputation 15 Suarez clearly separated these into (1) the physical form; (2) the metaphysical form; (3) the logical form. In addition he treated the physical form as the only true substantial from, downgrading the others to forms in a metaphorical sense. As the arguments we will next examine illustrate, this has the effect of privileging the role that substantial froms played in natural philosophy, as opposed to the forms appealed to in logic and metaphysics, and of emphasizing empirical arguments for the existence of the substantial form. This in turn has important implications for the advent of mechanism." (p. 104)
"Whereas Thomas simply left us with two different types of substantial forms (rational souls, which are subsisting incorporeal form, and inhering, perishable material forms that are educed from matter), Suarez, by basing his main argument for all substantial forms on the immortality of the rational soul, treated the subsisting incorporeal from as the model for all substantial froms and redefined them accordingly. This anticipates Descartes's characterization of all substantial froms, including the material ones, as little soul like substances attached to matter and could explain why Descartes takes the creation ex nihilo of the soul to be represtantative of the production of all substantial forms." (p. 104)
"The Thomists had to carve out a space for a non-inhering incorporeal form among corruptible corporeal forms to account for the immortality of the rational soul. In section one of Disputation 15 [srv. 01.09.2010 a 01.08.2011], Suarez instead treated the rational soul, a rather unusual type of substantial form, as paradigmativ and was thus faced with the challenge of showing that non-rational creatures likewise have something akin to a rational soul in them." (p. 105)
"Thus Suarez's strategy of defending the substantial form from the stronghold of the immortal rational soul had the potential to undermine the necessity of positing substantial forms in corruptible corporeal substances." (p. 105)
"The Thomists had to carve out a space for a non-inhering incorporeal form among corruptible corporeal forms to account for the immortality of the rational soul. In section one of Disputation 15 [srv. 01.09.2010 a 01.08.2011], Suarez instead treated the rational soul, a rather unusual type of substantial form, as paradigmativ and was thus faced with the challenge of showing that non-rational creatures likewise have something akin to a rational soul in them." (p. 105)
"Thus Suarez's strategy of defending the substantial form from the stronghold of the immortal rational soul had the potential to undermine the necessity of positing substantial forms in corruptible corporeal substances." (p. 105)
"We can draw several conclusions from this examination of Suarez's a posteriori arguments in favor of the substantial from. First the amount of space devoted to such arguments and the number of objections and counter arguments addressed indicate that empirical arguments against the substantial form were both common and taken seriously at the time. Second, unlike Thomas', Suarez's arguments for the existence of substantial forms in inanimante bodies were neither heavily dependent on Aristotle's texts nor on specific metaphysical doctrines. ... They were based on empirical observations, inferences to the best explanation, and methodological principles like 'one should not multiply entitties beyond necessity.' ... Finally, despite the fact that our skeptical, post-atomist rejection of natural kinds and real qualities prevents us from embracing them, these arguments represent the best of the time and would probaly have been convincing to most of Suarez's contemporaries." (p. 109)
"One has to keep in mind that during the period that Suarez was writing his Metaphysical Disputations, a consistent atomist or mechanistic physics had yet to be developed and so alternative explanatory principles to the elements, forms substances, and accidents of Scholastic Aristotelianism were rather limited. It is true that alchemists had already replaced Aristotle's four elements with their own and the Neoplatonists ahd adherents of natural magic appealed to forms emanating from the celestial sphere and occult qualities to explain certain phenomenta that resisted the Scholastic explanations, but they all operated within a basic non-mechanistic explanatory framework that utilized elements, forms, and the substance/accident distinction. Within this broadly Aristotelian framework Suarez's arguments in favor of the substantial form appear to triumph over its detractors. Nonetheless by separating and privileging the physical sense of form over the metaphysical and logical senses, by granting the impossibility of observing this substantial form, and by establishing its existence primarily by abduction from obseved effects, Suarez inadvertently undemined the case for substantial forms independently of this general framework. Once severed from the machinery of Scholastic logic and metaphysics, the substantial form hung only by the slender thread of fit between observation and theory. With the development of mechanical theories in natural philosophy that could explain the same effects, that thread by which Suarez defended substantial forms soon snapped. Indeed it took only a few decades after the publication of the Metaphysical Disputations for Descartes to declare substantial forms redundant by showing that an abduction to mechanical principles accounted for the same observed effects. Whereas Suarez arguments certainly did not aim at this result, indirectly his strategy of arguing for the actual existence of substantial forms independently of metaphysical and logical ground made it possible." (p. 110)
II. The causality of substantial form as the formal cause of substance
"... in Suarez's hands the substantial form has been transformed into something quite different from what we find in Thomas. First of all it is not an act of existence perfecting matter and causing it to be. Rather the substantial from is an incomplete substance, which through the mode of its union with another incomplete substance (matter) formally causes a composite to be. Form and matter are equal partners in this union for Suarez. The substantial form is not prior to the matter by its action. In fact it does not even exercise formal causality by its action ... For Suarez formal causality did not spring from a dynamic, emergent form that gives being to matter and orders its potencies to their ends. Formal causality is static; consisting merely in the manner of union that an already existing substantial form has with an already existing matter. ... Suarez's circumscribing of the role of the formal cause the union of the composite is consistent with and may in fact have prepared the ground for the subsequent de-emphasis of formal causation in natural philosophy. " (p. 114)
III. The role of accidents in educing substantial forms
"... While specific historical links still need to be identified, from a purely conceptual standpoint it is not surprising that the post-Suarezian era included a range of attempts to bring atomist and corpuscularian explanations of cartain types of phenomena into a broader Aristotelian framework." (p. 117)
IV. Conclusion
"There are different ways in which philosophies can be transformative. Post enlightenment histories of philosophy tend to emphasize the transformative effect of philosophers responsible for methods, arguments, and results that stand out due to their novelty. Hence we keep coming back to Descartes' method of doubt, his cogito, and his dualism as well as Kant's critical method, his transcendental deductions, and his transcendental idealism. Until very recently historians of philosophy tended to ignore the scaffolding that makes the erection of such new systems possible. However, to advance in our understanding of the history of philosophy it is equally important to acknowledge the role of historical philosophers who provided such a scaffolding, no matter how quickly it was discarded once the new systems tooks hold. Suarez's contribution to modernity does not lie in novel methods or bold new types of argument. In no way did he anticipate Descartes' method of doubt or his cogito. Suarez remained firmly rooted in the methodologies of Scholastic Aristotelianism, marshalling the authorities on both sides of each issues and proceeding in true disputatonal style towards a resolution. Yet his contribution is no less important to our understanding od the advent of modern philosophy. As seens, the results of his disputations wre novel as compared to his predecessors and they provided a launching pad for later, more radical innovations. It is hard to imagine a mechanistic philosophy like Descartes' taking root in more traditional Thomist soil. However with Suarez's redefinition of the substantial form as an incomplete substance; his clear demarcation between the physical substantial from and the metaphorical forms of logic and metaphysics; his emphasis on empirical justifications of the substantial form; his reduction of formal causality to the mode of the union of the substantial form; his consequent privileging of material and efficient causality; and his weakening of the distinction between substantial and accidental change and the proportionateness requirement - Suarez provided fertile soil for the introduction of mechanical principles and explanations to do the work that substantial forms had done. Independently of how one assesses the value of the Scholastic approach to philosophy, one must acknowledge Suarez as one of its most ingenious and innovative, albeit tragic proponents. Tragic, because in his attempts to rescue the substantial form he made possible the means by which ir would be quickly replaced with mechanicism." (p. 118)
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