Autor: Schmitz, Kenneth L.

Buch: The Gift: Creation

Titel: The Gift: Creation

Stichwort: 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 ...

Textausschnitt: 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)

120a 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)