Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Relationen; Kategorie - Ursache; Aristoteles: Rückführung der Kategorien zur Kenntnis von Ursachen: Substanz -> Form (Materie), actio u. passio -> Bewegung und Relation; Kategorien - Akkzidenz

Kurzinhalt: 2 The predicaments are not causes... There is a progression from the predicaments to a knowledge of causes. Thus, in Metaphysics, Book VII, substance is reduced to form as to a cause of being ...

Textausschnitt: 2 The predicaments are not causes.

723a The predicaments express the ultimate kinds or categories of beings, and ultimate categories are not ultimate causes. [Our reasons for this are the following.]

[a] In Aristotle there are the ten predicaments which we listed above, but also four causes, namely, final cause, agent, matter, and form. (Fs)

[b] Again, Aristotle treated the ten predicaments only in a work on logic, while he investigated causes in his Metaphysics, Physics, De caelo et mundo, De generatione et corruptione, De anima, and so on. (Fs)

[c] In science there is a serious disagreement about causes, but no such disagreement about nominal definitions or descriptions of appearances. For more than twenty centuries the ten predicaments have remained unchallenged and unchanged. On the contrary, extrinsic causes and especially intrinsic causes have been the subject of great controversy - for example, whether there is a real distinction between potency and act, between matter and form, between essence and existence, between substance and accidents. (Fs)

[d] There is a progression from the predicaments to a knowledge of causes. Thus, in Metaphysics, Book VII, substance is reduced to form as to a cause of being; in Book VIII, material substance is reduced to matter and form; in Book XII, Aristotle posits separate substances, which are forms without matter. In addition, Aquinas made a real distinction between essence and existence and therefore was able to distinguish between God and angels in terms of intrinsic causes, for he affirmed that an angel is a form that is not its existence, whereas God is a form that is his existence. (Fs)

[e] In Physics, Book III, Aristotle reduced action and passion to motion and relation. He defined action as a motion of this thing as being from it, and passion as a motion of this thing as being in it. Now motion is not restricted to only one predicament, since it is found in place, in quality, and in quantity; and the relation of motion either to the agent or to the patient does not seem to be predicamental, since he is discussing motion, not substance. (Fs)

[f] In Physics, Book IV, place is reduced to the immobile first boundary of the container, and time is reduced to the number and measure of motion in terms of before and after. (Fs)

[g] Nine of the predicaments are reduced to a single real intrinsic cause, namely, to accident, that is, to that to which it is proper to be in another. (Fs)

[h] Substance that is the first predicament does not mean the same as substance defined as that to which it is proper to be per se. For predicamental substance is divided into first (this man, this ox) and second (man, ox). Now it does not at all belong to second substance to be per se; for second substance is a universal, and it does not belong to a universal to be per se but only in another, that is, in the mind. Nor does it belong only to first substance to be per se; for first substance is a supposit, which already is per se, and it belongs to a substantial individual essence, which is not a supposit, to be per se. (Fs) (notabene)