Stichwort: Kausalität

Autor, Quelle: Lonergan, Collection: Papers bei B. Lonergan

Titel: Wirkursache - Influx

Index: Wirkursache als Influx

Kurzinhalt: When one thinks of efficient causality as influx and attempts to analyse the causal series (A is efficient cause of B, and B is efficient cause of C), one may arrive at any of three opinions. First ...

Text: 1 Efficient Causality and the Causal Series

52b To grasp the author's position, it is necessary, even at the cost of considerable space, to find a more general viewpoint than he presents. The fundamental issue is the nature of the reality of efficient causality; that is, What is the reality which, if existent, makes the proposition, A is the efficient cause of B, true, but which, if nonexistent, makes it false? There are two answers. One may affirm that the desired necessary and sufficient condition is a causally efficient influence proceeding from A to subject of) B. On the other hand, one may consider the foregoing either a mere modus significandi or else sheer imagination, to affirm that the required necessary and sufficient condition is a real relation of dependence in B with respect to its ground and source, its id a quo, A. In this view, the reality of efficient causality is the relativity of the effect qua effect; one also may say that it is the relative element in the Aristotelian actio, actus huius ut ab hoc; that is, B is an act pertaining to A inasmuch as it is from A. (Fs) (notabene)

1.1 Efficient Causality as Influx

54a When one thinks of efficient causality as influx and attempts to analyse the causal series (A is efficient cause of B, and B is efficient cause of C), one may arrive at any of three opinions. First, one may say that in such a causal series there are two and only two instances of influx and so two and only two real instances of efficient causality: from A to B, and from B to C; but there is no third influx from A to C; accordingly, mediate causality is not a true species of causality but merely a name for the combination of two other instances. However, one may dislike this conclusion and desire to make the mediate causec really and truly a cause. Hence, secondly, one may say that in the causal series there are, at least at times, three instances of influx and so three instances of efficient causality: not only from A to B, and from B to C, but also a third from A to C; simultaneously both A and B exert an influx to produce C. Now while this makes A the efficient cause of C not only in name but also in reality, it does so by making A the immediate cause of C; mediate causality is not saved. Hence, thirdly, one may say that there is a real difference between B as effect of A and B as cause of C, and this real difference is what explains the reality of mediate efficient causality; first, an influx from A gives B'; secondly, an influx from A gives B"; thirdly, an influx from B" gives C. Thus efficient causality thought of as influx yields three views of the causal series, and one may note that there is some resemblance between these three views and the views respectively of Durandus, Molina, and Banez.d I shall not say that Durandus, Molina, Banez, or any of their followers arrived at their positions in the foregoing manner. I am not engaged in history but in listing theoretical possibilities, and merely draw attention to a resemblance among three possibilities ano three historical opinions. (Fs) (notabene)

1.2 Efficient Causality and Relation of Dependence

55a As there is an alternative view of efficient causality, so also there is an alternative analysis of the causal series. Distinguish between the series properly so called and the merely accidental series: the latter is illustrated by Abraham begetting Isaac, and Isaac, Jacob, where evidently Abraham does not beget Jacob; the former is illustrated by my moving the keys of my typewriter, and my typewriter typing out these paragraphs, where evidently I am more a cause of the typed paragraphs than the typewriter is. Now in the accidental series there are only two real relations of dependence on an id a quo: B depends on A, C depends on B; but the relation of C to A is not of causal dependence but of conditioned to condition. On the other hand, in the proper causal series, there are three real relations of dependence with respect to an id a quo: B depends on A, C depends on B, and C depends on A even more than on B. Since there are three real relations of dependence, there are three real instances of efficient causality, and, as it appears, the instance of merely mediate causality (which causes such trouble when thinking is in terms of influx) turns out to involve more dependence, and so more causality, than the apparently immediate instance. This leads to an examination of the notion of immediacy. What is it? A first answer is in terms of space and time; but this necessarily is irrelevant, for there are causes and effects outside space and time. A second answer is in terms of proximity in the enumeration of terms in the causal series; but terms have their place in the series inasmuch as they are causes of what follows and instruments or means with respect to what precedes; and so we are brought to the etymology; the 'immediate' involves a negation of a medium, a middle, a means; and such a negation may be either 'not being a means' or 'not using a means'; what is not a means may be termed immediate immediatione virtutis; what does not use a means may be termed immediate immediatione suppositi; the former is what has first place in the proper causal senes; the latter pertains in turn to each preceding term in the proper causal series. (Fs) (notabene)

55b Now with this analysis of the causal series, different views may arise when one asks the grounds of affirming that God, any created cause, and the created cause's effect form a proper causal series. Three sets of grounds have been offered; the first regards only immanent acts and so from its lack of universality has fallen into desuetude; the second regards all created causes and, indeed, as causes; the third is equally universal, for it regards all created causes, but it regards them, not as causes, but as conditioned. An argument for the first view may be put as follows: When I see, I act and so am an efficient cause; but when I see, I add to my own ontological perfection; to enable me to make such an addition I must receive a physical premotion; and only God can be the cause of such premotions in the general case. The second view proceeds more generally: Only absolute being is the sufficient ground for the production of being; hence, insofar as it produces being, every created cause must be an instrument; further, this instrumentality affects the created cause as cause, for there is a real difference between potentia agendi and ipsum agere, and that real difference is in the created cause as such; but it cannot be produced by the created cause, for nothing can add to its own perfection; and it must be attributed to God, for it involves the production of being, and only God is proportionate to that. (Fs) (notabene)

Kommentar (tt/12/jj): potentia agendi -> gemäß der Natur der kontingenten Ursache; ipsum agere -> mit dem "göttlichen" Zusatz als Vermögen, etwas ins Sein zu setzen.

56a The third view regards the created cause, not as cause, but as conditioned.e As in the second view, only infinite being is the proportionate cause of being, of the event as event, of the actual emergence of the effect, of the exercise of efficiency; hence, all finite causes are instruments, naturally proportionate to producing effects as of a given kind, but not naturally proportionate to producing effects as actual occurrences. However, this limitation is operative, not through some entitative and remediable defect in the created cause (for the only remedy would be to make it infinite), but through the manifest fact that finite causes are all conditioned. Since no finite cause can create, it must presuppose the patient on which it acts, suitable relations between itself and its patient, and the noninterference of other causes. Over these conditions the finite cause has no control, for the conditions must be fulfilled before the finite cause can do anything. Next, though the conditions are finite entities and negations of interference, though the conditions of the efficiency of one finite cause may be fulfilled by suitable operations and abstentions on the part of other finite causes, still it remains that all the other finite causes equally are conditioned. Hence, appeal to other finite causes can do no more than move the problem one stage further back; it can do that as often as one pleases; but never can it solve the problem. The only solution is to postulate a master plan that envisages all finite causes at all instants throughout all time, that so orders all that each in due course has the conditions of its operation fulfilled and so fulfils conditions of the operation of others. But since the only subject of such a master plan is the divine mind, the principal agent of its execution has to be God. Demonstrably, then, God not only gives being to, and conserves in being, every created cause, but also he uses the universe of causes as his instruments in applying each cause to its operation, and so is the principal cause of each and every event as event. Man proposes, but God disposes. (Fs) (notabene)

1.3 Critique of Views on Efficient Causality

57a Such are six views on the issue. I believe that the first three are easily refuted, that the fourth and fifth involve fallacies, that the sixth is demonstrated validly. The troublesome question for anyone who would defend any of the first three views is whether the influx is a reality. If it is not a reality, then efficient causality is not a reality but only a thought or, perhaps more accurately, a bit of imagination. But if the influx is a reality, it would seem that there must be an infinity of influences for each case of efficient causality. For if the influx is a reality, it must be produced itself; that production would involve a further influx, and that influx a further production. One might wish to say, Sistitur in primo.f But why? Either the influx is or it is not really distinct from what it produces. If it is, there is an infinite series. If it is not, then influx is just another name for the effect. At this point, the defender will urge that the influx is indeed a reality, that there are not an infinity of influences for each effect, and the reason is that the influx is a different type of reality from the effect - the type that eliminates the infinite series. But what type is that? I know only one, the real relation. There is no real efficient causality of efficient causality, and so on to infinity, because the reality of efficient causality is the reality of a real relation, and 'relatio relationis est ens rationis.'g It should seem that the first three views, while they differ profoundly on the reality of mediate efficient causality, have in common the source of their differences, namely, a failure to think out what is the reality of efficient causality as such. (Fs) (notabene)

57b The fourth view (the first on the second concept of efficient causality) involves a fallacy. When I see, it is true that I act in the sense that grammatically 'I' is subject of a verb in the active voice. But that does not prove that ontologically I am the efficient cause of my own seeing. Nor is it likely that anyone will find a proof that I am. For both Aristotle and Aquinas, external sensation has its efficient cause in the sensible object. Again, for both, 'intelligere est pati.' Again, for both, 'appetibile apprehensum movet appetitum,' and in later Thomist doctrine of the will, the act of willing an end is effected quoad exercitium actus by God. (Fs)
58a The fallacy of the fifth position lies in affirming that the real difference between potentia agendi and ipsum agere is a reality added to the agent as agent; in fact, that reality is the effect, added to the patient as patient (motus est in mobili, actio est in passo), and predicated of the agent as agent only by extrinsic denomination; it has to be so, for otherwise either metaphysical laws have exceptions or else a motor immobilis would be a contradiction in terms; nor is it possible to demonstrate that, while action as action is predicated of the agent by extrinsic denomination, still created action as created is predicated of the agent by intrinsic denomination; what alone is demonstrable about created action as such is that it is conditioned, and that happens to be the premise of the sixth view. (Fs) (notabene)

Stichwort: Kausalität

Autor, Quelle: Rhonheimer, Natur als Grundlage der Moral

Titel: Autonomie : Vorsehung wie Teilursache : Universalursache

Index: Universale Ursache: wirksam in jeder partikularen Ursächlichkeit

Kurzinhalt: Die menschliche Vorsehung, seine personale Autonomie, verhält sich zur göttlichen Vorsehung wie eine partikulare Ursache zur Universalursache; ... und ordnet auch die Wirkungen der die ordinatio seiner Vorsehung vermittelnden Zweitursachen

Text: 197a Tatsächlich liegt hier ja das entscheidende Verständnisproblem; Thomas denkt eben nicht anthropomorph. Er wahrt voll und ganz die radikale Verschiedenheit der göttlichen von der menschlichen Kausalität, so weit diese Verschiedenheit menschlichem Sprechen überhaupt zugänglich ist. Die "causa secunda" ist nicht als autonomes Ausführungsorgan eines als Rahmenordnung gedachten Regierungsplanes gedacht; Gott konzipiert den Plan seiner Vorsehung vielmehr aufgrund seiner Allmacht selbst. Dessen Ausführung ("executio") überläßt er zwar nicht einfach den vernünftigen Geschöpfen, aber er läßt diese an der Ausführung dieses Planes dadurch teilhaben, daß er ihnen die Fähigkeit der Teilhabe an der providentia vermittelt; die ordinatio divina erstreckt sich dabei jedoch weiterhin auf alle Akte des Geschöpfes. Die menschliche Vorsehung, seine personale Autonomie, verhält sich zur göttlichen Vorsehung wie eine partikulare Ursache zur Universalursache.1 Mit diesem Verhältnis ist gemeint: Die Kausalität der menschlichen Vorsehung ist in der Kausalität der göttlichen Vorsehung selbst enthalten; die Partikularursache bezieht sich dabei auf einen Teil, während die Universalursache nicht einen anderen, wenn auch übergeordneten Teil zum Gegenstand hätte, sondern die ganze Wirkung. Die universale Ursache ist also in jeder partikularen Ursächlichkeit anwesend, wirksam, ja ermöglicht diese zweite erst. Die zweite ist ebenfalls wirkliche Ursächlichkeit, aufgrund eingestifteter Fähigkeit, aber nicht in unabhängiger Weise, sondern partizipativ, begründet und getragen von der Erstursache, deren Wirksamkeit zugleich im Innersten der Zweitursache präsent ist.2 (Fs) (notabene)

197b Damit ist vorderhand noch nicht mehr gewonnen, als die Verhinderung falscher, weil anthropomorpher, Vorstellungen. Ich kenne nur eine Stelle, in der Thomas explizit gegen ein anthropomorphes Mißverständnis Stellung bezieht, und zwar in seinem "Compendium Theologiae ad fratrem Reginaldum". Dort heißt es: "Obwohl die göttliche Leitung der Dinge bezüglich der Ausführung der Vorsehung vermittels Zweitursachen geschieht, ist aufgrund des Gesagten klar, daß dennoch die Disposition oder ordinatio der göttlichen Vorsehung sich unmittelbar auf alles bezieht. Denn er ordnet das Erste und Letzte nicht, indem er andere mit der Ordnung des Konkreten (ultima) und Einzelnen beauftragt; so geschieht es unter Menschen, wegen der Schwachheit ihrer Erkenntniskraft (.. .)."3 Und deshalb kann Thomas sagen: "Oportet quod ordinatio providentiae ipsius se extendat usque ad minimos effectus"4; Gott, betont der hl. Thomas, kennt und ordnet auch die Wirkungen der die ordinatio seiner Vorsehung vermittelnden Zweitursachen, denn "andernfalls würden sie aus der Ordnung seiner Vorsehung herausfallen".5 (Fs) (notabene)

Stichwort: Kausalität

Autor, Quelle: Joseph Bernhart, Thomas, Aquin von, Gott und Schöpfung

Titel: Kausalität - Akt, Potenz

Index: Wirkung in der Ursache: formell, virtuell, eminenterweise

Kurzinhalt: ... daß in der Erfassung des Seins nach Akt und Potenz das Kausalitätsprinzip begründet ist, das von Thomas in seiner ganzen Strenge festgehalten wird. Es lautet: keine Wirkung ist ohne Ursache; was immer geschieht, hat seine Ursache. Ihm verwandt ...

Text: LXXXa Darum gilt auch: ein bloß Mögliches kann sich nicht aus sich selber wirklichen, es muß durch ein anderes, schon Wirkliches, gewirklicht werden (omne, quod est in potentia, reducitur ad actum per id, quod est actu ens). Hier ist zu bemerken, daß in der Erfassung des Seins nach Akt und Potenz das Kausalitätsprinzip begründet ist, das von Thomas in seiner ganzen Strenge festgehalten wird. Es lautet: keine Wirkung ist ohne Ursache; was immer geschieht, hat seine Ursache. Ihm verwandt sind die Sätze: Aus nichts wird nichts; die Wirkung ist immer in gemäßem Verhältnis zu ihrer Ursache und so die Ursache zu ihrer Wirkung; nichts ist in der Wirkung, was nicht eher irgendwie in der Ursache gewesen ist, sei es formell, nach seinem eigentümlichen Begriff (wie das erzeugte Lebewesen im erzeugenden), sei es virtuell, der hervorbringenden Kraft nach (wie das Kunstwerk im Künstler), sei es eminenterweise, einer höheren, überragenden Vollkommenheit nach (wie die Vollkommenheit eines Geschaffenen auf höhere Weise in der Vollkommenheit des Erschaffenden ist); endlich, die Ursache einer andern Ursache ist selbst auch die Ursache des von dieser andern Verursachten, also was ein anderes dazu bestimmt, eine Wirkung hervorzubringen, ist selber auch Ursache dieser Wirkung. - Man wird immer und überall bei Thomas, offen oder verborgen, der als Akt und Potenz erfaßten Struktur des Seins und Werdens begegnen, und wer sich nicht gleich ihm mit dieser Grundsicht in alles Geschöpfliche erfüllt hat, wird weder sein gleichermaßen statisches wie dynamisches Weltbild noch seine begriffliche Schauung der Wirklichkeit Gottes und der Ubernatur verstehen. (Fs; tblVrw)

Stichwort: Kausalität

Autor, Quelle: Schindler, David C., Jun, The Catholicity of Reason

Titel: Kausalität: Platon (kommunikation) - Galilieo (Kraft, zeitliche Abfolge)

Index: Kausalität 5a; K. als Kraft; Platon: parousia; Descartes: "Reformation" d. Philosophie (Dualismus, Zerstörung d. Imagination); Galileo: "Reformation" d. Physik (Definition: K.); zeitlich Abfolge zw. Ursache und Wirkung; Platon: K. als Kommunikation ...

Kurzinhalt: Galileo ... the only thing joining cause and effect, as we saw, is succession in time and space. Physical motion ... (mechanistically understood) by its nature is not something that can be shared; it is atomistic of its essence.... extrinsic ...

Text: Cause as Force

129a The light of our discussion so far will set into relief the differences between Cartesian rationalism and the so-called rationalism or spiritualism of the Greek and Christian Neoplatonists. In the first place, Descartes explicitly distinguishes between body and spirit as between two things: the res cogitans and the res extensa,1 In this, he is much closer to the Manichees, or in any event to the materialist philosophers of late antiquity, than to the Platonic or the Augustinian tradition.2 One might object that Descartes is using the term "res" here in a wholly equivocal sense, since the mind is clearly for him in no way a "thing" like matter extended in space, which is precisely why it becomes so difficult for him to explain how they would interact in a living human being. Though it would not be difficult to show how this objection is mistaken, it is in any event beside the point. The crucial thing is this: the body for Descartes is no longer image, which is to say that it is no longe expressive of a meaning which, as meaning, cannot be body in any sense. (Fs)

130a Descartes' relationship to the world of the senses is therefore quite radically different from what we saw in Plato. For Plato, truth is present (parousia) in sense experience, if not qua sense experience, so that transcending the senses means seeing them as images, i.e., "windows" of meaning. Body is meaning-ful, we recall, precisely by not being meaning itself, or, rather, substituting for it. For Descartes, by contrast, everything qualitative (i.e., expressive of meaning) in sense experience must simply be set aside as subjective, for reasons we will investigate in just a moment. What is left is nondescript "stuff," bereft of any nature and reduced to its measurable dimensionality, perceivable by the mind alone.3 It is noteworthy, in relation to our general theme, that this stripping of sensible objects precisely of their sensibilia coincides with the elimination of the imagination as an essential part of the soul.4 We suggested at the outset that the imagination operates as a sort of middle term connecting the body and the soul and for that very reason connecting man and the world. Lacking an imagination, Descartes reduces the real to a pure mathematical abstraction, which neither he nor anyone else will ever encounter. Arguably, Descartes finally resolves the haunting problem of knowing whether the world exists in the Meditations simply by eliminating the world. (Fs) (notabene)

130b Now, these observations regarding Descartes echo criticisms that have been made of his philosophy for centuries. But we wish to suggest that this destruction of the imagination in Descartes is not the introduction of the problem, but rather itself an expression of a deeper transformation that was to have a far more pervasive impact on Western civilization than even Cartesian dualism, and that is the Scientific Revolution. Descartes' "reformation" of philosophy, through the introduction of a method that would allow indifferently anyone to make progress in the understanding that was previously reserved for the few,5 is itself a repetition of Galileo's reformation of physics through the introduction of a technique that allows experiment to take the place of insight:

Profound considerations of this sort belong to a higher science than ours. We must be satisfied to belong to that class of less worthy workmen who procure from the quarry the marble out of which, later, the gifted sculptor produces those masterpieces which lay hidden in this rough and shapeless exterior.6

131a Our thesis has been that an appreciation of the meaningfulness of the senses rests on the primacy of goodness and beauty in the order of causality and therefore of understanding. It is no doubt true that the roots of this loss of primacy lie quite deep — one might point to goodness's loss of explanatory power in the new political philosophy of Machiavelli,7 to the ascendancy of power over goodness in the nominalist theology of divine attributes, or even to the medieval appropriation of an Aristotelianism that separated goodness and truth because it had little place for beauty8 — but, however that may be, Galileo's work gives the reformation of causality decisive and culture-changing expression. (Fs)

131b The heart of the matter lies in Galileo's reinterpretation of causality in strictly dynamic terms. According to Galileo, "that and no other is in the proper sense to be called cause, at whose presence the effect always follows, and at whose removal the effect disappears."9 The difference between cause as defined here and in the classical view is striking. Cause for Galileo is not what accounts for an effect, but what produces an effect, and indeed does so wholly through direct, material contact. Moreover, the only relationship that holds in an essential way between cause and effect is temporal succession. It would require another generation or so before it was discovered, by David Hume, that such a relationship is not in fact intelligible in the strict sense, as we shall see in the next chapter. But Galileo already himself recognizes that this view of causality — which to be sure unlocks the door to a new character of the material world, namely, one that, in its predictability, allows a kind of mastery never before possible — comes at the price of renouncing insight into the essence of things. As he says, for example, while we might inquire into the "essence" of the thing, it is

not as if we really understood any more, what principle or virtue that is, which moveth a stone downwards, than we know who moveth it upwards, when it is separated from the projicient, or who moveth the moon round, except only the name, which more particularly and properly we have assigned to all motion of descent, namely gravity.10 (Fs) (notabene)

132a An "effect" is not an image; it does not reveal the nature of its cause. To produce the effect, the cause must be of the same order as the effect, and thus has to be equally material. Cause and effect fall on the same horizontal line, which means, as we saw, that there can be no manifestation of meaning: revelation necessarily implies a hierarchy, insofar as what reveals must be in some fundamental sense subordinate to what it reveals. Investigating effects, therefore, does not teach us anything about the causes, no matter how precise and thorough our knowledge of the effects may be. Thus, as Galileo explains, the word "gravity" is a mere name. We do not know what it is. We are left, instead, with the task of calculating the quantity of the motion it produces through controlled observation of its effects. (Fs) (notabene)

132b For Plato, goodness is the paradigm of causality because it represents self-communication, and, since all other causality reflects to some degree this ultimate causality, what principally characterizes cause, as we saw, is the communication of form. For Galileo, by contrast, we might want to say that force is communicated from cause to effect, as revealed in the motion produced in the effect. But in the strictest terms, we would have to deny that anything is communicated. Communication implies that something is shared, that there is something that therefore unifies the communicants. According to the mechanistic view of causality we find in Galileo, however, nothing is "shared": the only thing joining cause and effect, as we saw, is succession in time and space. Physical motion (mechanistically understood) by its nature is not something that can be shared; it is atomistic of its essence. One thing can set another in motion, but the connection between them is extrinsic; it is the nature of force to operate from the outside — as opposed to, say, attraction, which operates simultaneously externally and internally. (Fs) (notabene)

Stichwort: Kausalität

Autor, Quelle: Schmitz, Kenneth L., ExNihilo

Titel: Sein - Kausalität

Index: Schöpfung - Geschenk; ex nihilo; Sein - Prinzipien v. Kausalität; Wirkursache: omne agens agit inquantum est actu; Exemplarurs.: omne agens agit sibi simile (inquantum est actu); Finalurs.: omne agens agit propter finem; Moderne: Unintelligibilität v. K.

Kurzinhalt: As a result, causality itself became so reduced that it became strictly unintelligible within the reduced horizon of discourse, and eventually lost its explanatory power... causality itself became so reduced that it became strictly unintelligible ...

Text: 118a The metaphysical axioms of causality are suffused and transformed by this most determinative plenitude of act, so that they bespeak an absolute energy (energeia). There are three principal axioms. First, the axiom of agency or effectivity: omne agens agit inquantum est actu, every agent acts insofar as it is in act.1 Moreover, what the agent communicates is precisely, act; for an agent is an agent insofar as it makes something to be actual. It follows, therefore, that what is received from an agent must be just this: act. Second, the axiom of similitude: omne agens agit sibi simile, every agent acts so as to produce what is like itself.2 This axiom is often called the principle of formal causality, or more correctly, of exemplar causality. These designations, while correct, are liable to mislead at the metaphysical level of causality. For St. Thomas adds: inquantum est actu.3 That is to say: every agent acts so as to produce what is like itself insofar as it is an agent and in act. Furthermore, it is through the very act, which the recipient has received and which the agent has communicated, that the recipient becomes like the agent. So that the very process of approximation (assimilatio) of recipient to agent is an affair shot through with act. Third, it is less obvious that the axiom of finality also is to be regarded in terms of act: omne agens agit propter finem, every agent acts for the sake of an end.4 If we are to counteract the prevalent modern reduction of finality to human conscious purpose, it is important to notice that the end may be sought for by the agent either in a knowing manner or by virtue of the very nature of the agent. Our present interest in the axiom, however, is to touch only that point at which act bears properly upon this teleological principle. For it does touch upon it; if only in that it speaks of an agent, and therefore of a being insofar as it is both in act and acting. Now, the end for the sake of which the agent takes up its activity determines both whether there is to be action or not, and that this be done rather than that. Natural things are fixed upon pre-determined results, for the most part, and there is little doubt about the outcome, providing that all of the conditions are in place. In those acts over which man has control, the human agent is faced with alternatives. Most generally stated, there is a double facet: (1) whether to do or not to do; and (2) whether to do this rather than that.5 Both of these are factors that preside, so to speak, over actuality and inactuality. For to do or not do is determinant of whether there is to be actual activity and its result or not; and to do this rather than that is determinant of whether one thing is to be actual rather than another. (Fs; tblStw: Kausalität)

120 a The three axioms of metaphysical causality have not had an easy time in modern thought. Their widespread rejection or neglect is linked to a redirected interest in motion. The revival of atomism in the late 16th and early 17th centuries (Gassendi, Hobbes' corpuscularism) contributed to the reduction of the various sorts of motion distinguished by Aristotle (generation and corruption, alteration, growth and displacement) into a single kind of motion: the movement of particles, whose causation was that of combination and segregation. The rise of mechanism at the same time reinforced this reduction of motion to the displacement of physical bodies (Hobbes, Descartes, de la Mettrie). The chief opponent to atomism and mechanism in the latter part of the 17th century was Leibniz, who sought also to recover a kind of finality, and who did reinstate a version of the Stoic vis activa. But this same Leibniz in his Monadology and elsewhere undermined the communicative sense of agency entirely, by upgrading a kind of exemplar causality to the exclusion of all real relations of causation between the monads. Windowless, they mirrored the other monads and the Supreme Monad. In the question of origins, of course, the communicative sense of causality is central. It is not strange, however, in an era initiated by a revolution in astronomical theory (the displacement of heavenly bodies) and attended by the mathematization of physics (the displacement of terrestrial bodies), that scientific intelligence should quite generally withdraw from an investigation of reality in terms of act and potency, or from causality in terms of the communication of the act of being (influxus entis). What is important, nevertheless, is that the reduction of motion was accompanied by a rejection of all causality except that which was both observable and sufficient to account for motion as displacement. It was certainly detrimental to the continuation and cultivation of a philosophy of act; but also for the cultivation of scientific intelligence and culture as well. (Fs)

121a The reduction affected the other axioms, too. The metaphysical principle of similitude is embedded in the whole context of causality conceived as the communication of act. Francis Bacon provides a barometer and bellwether of the new intellectual climate and of the withdrawal from the context of metaphysical causality as the communication of act. He strives for a new understanding of nature, but is not yet ready to quite abandon the old. Of the claim that God created the world, he holds that this is a matter of sound religious belief. He concedes, too, that there may well be some faint trace of God's hand in the world, some residue of his creative activity; but he thinks that it is too faint for unaided reason to use it as a sure ladder in mounting a proof for the existence of God. The old maxim that God leaves some sign of himself upon the face of creation is too obscure and doubtful to be a philosopher's aid. David Hume carried the argument even further, of course, holding that any knowledge we might claim of God from nature would be simply an isomorphic likeness of nature itself. A similar and complementary account could be given of the axiom of finality. It, too, fell during the heydey of mechanism, and was either abandoned entirely (Spinoza) or reclaimed for human subjectivity (Kant). It was another line of withdrawl of metaphysical discourse, understood in terms of a philosophy of act, from the study of nature. The fate suffered by the axioms of similitude and finality was concomitant with that suffered by the axiom of effectivity; for the three make up a single conception of agency. As a consequence, the understanding of agency was altered. With the abandonment of the principle of similitude especially, the residual understanding of effectivity or production underwent a radical reduction. It was no longer understood to be the communication of act in the constituting of a being, and came to be understood, rather, as the initiation of a displacement by impulse. As a result, causality itself became so reduced that it became strictly unintelligible within the reduced horizon of discourse, and eventually lost its explanatory power. The formulation of laws replaced it as a mode of explanation. The empirical emphasis upon sense perception was made by Aristotle and St. Thomas in order to arrive at the understanding of reality through the intellectual discovery of the intelligible natures of things. With the denial of formal causality, however, there could be no natures to discover; hence Moliére's travesty. Empiricism has other motives for its stress upon the sensible, for it seeks to describe behaviour. (Fs) (notabene)

Stichwort: Kausalität

Autor, Quelle: Schmitz, Kenneth L., ExNihilo

Titel: Sein - Kausalität, Kommunikation

Index: Schöpfung - Geschenk; ex nihilo; Sein - Kausalität; reduktionistisches - metaphysisches Verständnis von K.; K. als influx entis (Kommunikation); assimilatio ad causam; Partizipation - Kausalität; Akt als Klammer d. 3. Prinzipien von K.

Kurzinhalt: ... the communication of act draws together the three axioms of metaphysical causality: the agent acts insofar as he is in act, the agent acts for the sake of communicating act, and the agent produces its resonance insofar as its effect is in act.

Text: 123a In short, then, the lines between agent and patient, between cause and effect, were initially blurred (F. Bacon), then reduced to impulse (Hobbes), then to regularities (Hume), or at the last either broken entirely (Leibniz) or rescued by Kant who placed them as a priori structures in and of the human mind. Much of this has had its positive results, for our theoretical understanding as well as for our practical use. I have not rehearsed these generally known facts in order to sound another belated chorus of doom. On the contrary, at the beginning of our modern age a new possibility of analysis and a new mode of discourse claimed a certain freedom from the metaphysical analysis and the ontological discourse in order to serve other interests and to perform another work. But interests can develop discourse that either rules out or makes all but impossible the horizon needed for the discussion of questions at once deeper and broader than those that have occupied much of our intellectual effort since the early modern times. The sketch, then, will have served its purpose, if it sets in relief still new and untapped possibilities open to a recovery and development of a metaphysical analysis and an ontological discourse that finds in nature as well as in man both interiority and depth. (Fs; tblStw: Kausalität) (notabene)

123b I have been talking of this new possibility by its old name: analysis in terms of a potency and act that has been carried beyond Aristotle by St. Thomas towards the absolute consideration of act. "Whatever is present in a thing from an agent must be act."6 Causality is communication of being as act, the inflowing of being (influxus entis) from the agent and by virtue of the agent. The link that holds the three axioms together is their expression of and relation to act. The role of act is decisive, since it clarifies the nature of the likeness between agent and recipient: an effect need not resemble its cause in some definite way; it need only resemble it in some way. Here again, we have the paradox of the coincidence of the commonality of the likeness and the actuality of the determinacy. In asking, Whether the perfections of all things are in God?, St. Thomas traces the line of similitude (assimilatio) between agent and recipient, cause and effect, giver and receiver.7 Any determinacy (perfectio) present in an effect, he tells us, must be found in its productive cause: this is the axiom of agency. Nevertheless, that co-presence of agent and recipient need not require the same isomorphic formality in both, as when an organism reproduces another of its own kind and likeness. The degree of unlikeness that can be tolerated between agent and recipient may be very great indeed. Thus, the sun reproduces its "likeness" in the greening of plants. The burgeoning plant is not at all like the sun in any strict sense of a figural resemblance; it does not even behave like the sun. Nevertheless, there is a communication between them, as every gardener knows. For if we remove the plant from the sunlight, it whitens and dies. The greening disappears; for if the cause fails, the effect fails. If the cause is there, the "likeness" is there, but it is not primarily a resemblance. It is a being-present, a presencing of the cause to the effect in the moment of causation and throughout it. We have, then, not an analogy of likeness in any ordinary sense of the term; but we do have a life-line that communicates a presence. It thereby establishes an analogy of community, at whose origins there is the non-reciprocal communication of agent to recipient. Receptivity, not reciprocation by interaction, is the first response of this community. This community of co-presence by which the effect is related to its cause discloses the proper nature of that which is communicated in and through ontological causality: the gift that is in the power of every agent to give is act. Agency communicates act. "It is through act that any thing becomes like unto its cause (assimilatio ad causam);" and this act is nothing other than existential act (ipsum esse, being itself).8 This "likening" in regard to being comes about through the participation of the effect in the power that flows from the agent and its agency; for participation is the same relation as causality, looked at from its reception. And so, the communication of act draws together the three axioms of metaphysical causality: the agent acts insofar as he is in act, the agent acts for the sake of communicating act, and the agent produces its resonance insofar as its effect is in act. (Fs)