AS Part (b). ‘Aristotle’s idea of the four causes has no weakness’. Discuss. (10)

1. AS Part (b). ‘Aristotle’s idea of the four causes has no weakness’. Discuss. (10) Strengths of the four causes: • By dividing the concept of cause into four Aristotle made it possible to think in new and more complex ways. [Essentially he is asking how we explain the existence of things the (be) cause of things.] So he is providing a way of developing more complex explanations of reality. His thought was particularly important to the development of Christian thought in the middles ages thought the work of St. Thomas Aquinas.

2. AS Part (b). ‘Aristotle’s idea of the four causes has no weakness’. Discuss. (10) Strengths of the four causes: 2. The final cause allows us to consider the purpose a thing has as part of its reason for existing. This suggests that life is directed toward a goal and is imbued with meaning and significance on both a personal and cosmic scale.

3. AS Part (b). ‘Aristotle’s idea of the four causes has no weakness’. Discuss. (10) Strengths of the four causes: 3. The final cause allows Aristotle to explain how the ultimate reality can bring about all movement in the universe without undergoing change and so remain perfect. The Prime Mover (God) creates movement by being the attractive perfection (pure actuality and simplicity) toward which all things aim. This allows a connection between God and creation that was not possible for Plato’s Form of the Good and points to a guiding hand pervading creation.

4. Weaknesses of the four causes 1. While it is true that Aquinas valued the work of Aristotle it is a weakness from Aquinas’ point of view that Aristotle limited efficient causes to the world of things and did not apply it to the Prime Mover. For Aquinas, God, the Prime Mover, is the efficient, formal and final cause of all things. For Aristotle, God can only be the final cause of things otherwise his perfection would be undermined.

5. Weaknesses of the four causes 2. Modern science, which is only interested in matter and its efficient causes, finds talk of a formal cause in things to be unnecessary to explain them. The atheist biologist, Richard Dawkins, doubts that formal causes exists. A supporter of Plato would also have difficulty with the idea that the formal cause of things can be found within them. For, Plato the formal cause of things are recollected in the intelligible realm of the Forms and not discovered in the material realm of sense experience.

6. AS Part (b). ‘Aristotle’s idea of the four causes has no weakness’. Discuss. (10) Weaknesses of the four causes 3. Modern science has equal difficulty with the notion of a final cause. Aristotle thought that it was part of the final cause of heavy things to fall because they were thought to fall faster than lighter things. However, Galileo showed that all things fall at the same rate. It is resistance that make some things (feathers) fall slower than others (rocks) Dawkins and Freud reject the idea that there is a hidden force in nature guiding it toward some purposeful goal. For them there is only random events with no design or purpose.

7. AS Part (b). ‘Aristotle’s idea of the four causes has no weakness’. Discuss. (10) 4. There may well be features of the universe which the four causes do not explain. It has been argued that it is difficult to see how a flash of lightning might fit into all of the four causes. 5. The Prime Mover might also be said to be an exception to the four causes. It may have a formal cause in that it is pure act (with no potential left), simplicity and perfection but it has no material or efficient cause and no final cause other than itself.

8. (10) Weaknesses of the four causes From a Christian viewpoint the Prime Mover can be criticised since it can never act in creation or answer prayer. Who decides what the final cause of a thing is? i.e. horses? If us then no ultimate final cause running through things.

9. (10) Part B question ‘Aristotle’s theory of the four causes is convincing.’ Discuss