Nada Amin 21L.448J Revised Essay #1 Page 1 of 3
10/11/06
Revision Notes: I talked with Dr. Haas about my first paper, and he agreed with your suggestion
of abandoning the dialog form and instead writing a straightforward essay, because the dialog
wasn’t essential to the discussion. I decided to focus on Aristotle’s Four Causes, and it seemed a
little artificial and unnecessary to include references to Alice or Candide.
Aristotle’s Four Causes
Today, understanding Aristotle’s doctrine of the Four Causes requires some effort, because our
modern notion of “cause” differs from Aristotle’s. By giving a careful account of the Four Causes
and explaining the relationship among them, we can appreciate Aristotle’s thinking despite our
modernity.
First of all, we need to clarify what Aristotle means by “cause”, because it is not what we mean
by “cause”. In its modern usage, a cause is an event, which brings about other events, which we
call its effects. For Aristotle, CAUSE has a broader meaning, as it is applicable not only to events
but to almost anything. In the Aristotelian sense, a CAUSE is an explanatory factor: it is what we
answer when asked a “why” question.
The Four Causes, then, classify the ways we can answer a “why” question about a thing. With his
doctrine, Aristotle disambiguates the senses of CAUSE and distinguishes four kinds:
(1) Material CAUSE (“that out of which a thing comes to be and which persists”1),
(2) Formal CAUSE (“the statement of essence”),
(3) Efficient CAUSE (“the primary source of the change”),
(4) Final CAUSE (the end or ‘that for the sake of which’ a thing is done”).
1 Aristotle. Physics. Translated by Robin Waterfield, and edited by David Bostock. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999. (Selections)
