IMP 009 Leth Fink - Suárez On Aristotelian Causality PDF

Surez on Aristotelian Causality
Investigating Medieval Philosophy
Managing Editor
John Marenbon
Editorial Board
Margaret Cameron
Simo Knuuttila
Martin Lenz
Christopher J. Martin
VOLUME 9
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/imp

Edited by
Jakob Leth Fink
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Surez on Aristotelian causality / edited by Jakob Leth Fink.

pages cm. -- (Investigating medieval philosophy, ISSN 1879-9787 ; VOLUME 9)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-29215-4 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-29216-1 (e-book : alk. paper) 1. Su?rez,
Francisco, 1548-1617. 2. Causation. 3. Aristotle. 4. Su?rez, Francisco, 1548-1617. Disputationes metaphysicae.
I. Fink, Jakob L., 1977- editor.
B785.S824S78 2015
122.092--dc23
2015000785
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual Brill typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering
Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities.
For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 1879-9787
isbn 978-90-04-29215-4 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-29216-1 (e-book)
Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and
Hotei Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior written permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided
that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive,
Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa.
Fees are subject to change.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents
AcknowledgementsviI
Note to the Readerviii
List of Contributorsx
Introduction1
Jakob L. Fink
1 Surez on Aristotelian Causality23

Jakob L. Fink
2 Material Causality Dissolving a Paradox: The Actuality of

Prime Matter in Surez43
Erik kerlund
3 Formal Causality: Giving Being by Constituting and Completing64

Kara Richardson
4 Efficient Causality: The Metaphysics of Production84

Stephan Schmid
5 Final Causality: Surez on the Priority of Final Causation121

Sydney Penner
Bibliography149
Index Locorum159
Index Nominorum164
Index Rerum167
Acknowledgements
The present volume contains the proceedings from a seminar held at the Centre
for the Aristotelian Tradition, University of Copenhagen in February 2012. The
seminar was made possible by a generous grant from the VELUX Foundation,
the main sponsor of the Centre for the Aristotelian Tradition. I wish here to
thank the foundation for this.
The Introduction was written at the Danish Academy in Rome. The Academy
and its director Marianne Pade provided wonderful working conditions for
this. Thanks.
For comments and support, I would like to thank my colleagues at the Centre:
David Bloch, Sten Ebbesen, Heine Hansen and Ana Mara Mora-Mrquez.
Thanks are also due to Jacob Schmutz who, from as far away as Abu Dhabi,
offered generous support and advice in the process of bringing the proceed-
ings into print. Thanks also to Mrs. Marcella Mulder our editor at Brill, you are
(as always) helpful and swift; and to the anonymous referee for numerous use-
ful suggestions.
Jakob Leth Fink

Copenhagen, November 2014
Note to the Reader
Editions
All quotes from and references to Surezs Disputationes Metaphysicae are to

the text of the first edition (Salamanca, 1597). Spelling has been standardized
(&=et, =ae, eius=ejus etc.) and abbreviations of single words have been
spelled out. Punctuation has not always been adopted.
The text of the Disputationes Metaphysicae in the Vivs edition, Opera
omnia, vols. 2526 (Paris, 18511861) contains significant misprints and other errors,
but is today the more easily available edition of the text (repr. Hildesheim,
2009).
Abbreviation
dm (Disputationes Metaphysicae) is the only abbreviation used in this volume.
References
References to dm follow the standard manner: disputation, section, article.

Added to this is a reference in [square brackets] to volume and page in the
Vivs edition. Thus:
15.2.16 [25.504]
refers to disputation 15, Section2, article 16 in the Salamanca edition, with the
corresponding text in vol. 25 of the Vivs edition page 504.
Since there is not always correspondence between the numbering of sec-
tions and articles in the Salamanca edition and the Vivs edition, an additional
piece of information might be added in cases of disagreement among the edi-
tions. The example just given is a point in question. It will be referred thus:
15.2.16 (Vivs 15.2.17) [25.504]
meaning: disputation 15, Section 2, article 16 in the Salamanca edition, but

disputation 15, Section2, article 17 in the Vivs edition, with the corresponding
text in vol. 25 of the Vivs edition page 504.
Note To The Reader ix
Translations
Unless otherwise noted translations from Latin and Greek are by the author of
the chapter in question.
Italics
Unless otherwise indicated italics in quotes from Surez are from the Salamanca
edition.
List of Contributors
Jakob Leth Fink

Ph.D. (2009) University of Copenhagen, holds a position as Research Fellow at
the University of Gothenburg in the Representation and Reality in the
Aristotelian Tradition Project. Editor of The Development of Dialectic from Plato
to Aristotle (Cambridge, 2012) and, with Heine Hansen and Ana Mara Mora-
Mrquez, Logic and Language in the Middle Ages: A Volume in Honour of Sten
Ebbesen (Leiden, 2013).
Sydney Penner
Ph.D. (2011) Cornell University, is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Cornell
University. He is the author of several papers on Francisco Surezs philosophy,
including on his accounts of free will and the metaphysics of relations.
Kara Richardson
Ph.D. (2008) University of Toronto, is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse
University. Author of several articles on causation in Medieval Aristotelian
philosophy, she is currently at work on a book-length project, which examines
Avicennas use of the modal terms to define the causal relation.
Stephan Schmid
Ph.D. (2010) is Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the Chair for Theoretical
Philosophy at the Humboldt-Universitt zu Berlin, where he teaches classes in
Early Modern and (Late) Medieval Philosophy as well as in contemporary ana-
lytic philosophy, focusing mainly on topics of metaphysics (modality, causality,
ontology), epistemology (skepticism), and philosophy of mind (intentional-
ity). He is the author of Finalursachen in der frhen Neuzeit (Berlin, New York,
2011) and co-editor with Barbara Vetter of Dispositionen (Berlin, 2014).
Erik kerlund
Ph.D. (2011) from the University of Uppsala on the dissertation Nisi temere
agat. Surez on Final Causes and Final Causation. Previously connected to the
Uppsala-based Understanding Agency project. Currently holds a position as
deputy director of studies and lecturer in philosophy at The Newman Institute
(Uppsala).
Introduction
Jakob L. Fink
1 Theme and Aim of the Volume
Interest in the metaphysical thought of Surez has increased in recent years.

Not surprisingly the Metaphysical Disputations has taken its due part of the
attention although scholars are also on the move with respect to the psychol-
ogy, ethics and political philosophy of the Spanish Jesuit.1 The present volume
is devoted to causality, a special topic in Surezs metaphysics, and more spe-
cifically to Surezs interpretation of the four Aristotelian causes and their role
and relevance as a part of his metaphysics as this is found in the Metaphysical
Disputations (1597). In spite of the recent renewed interest in Surez there
seems to be nothing quite like the present volume available to the scholarly
world and so, as editor, I hope this collection of essays will help throw some
light on a striking black spot in the renewed philosophical investigations into
the metaphysics of Surez.
It would be absurd to claim that nothing has been written on Surezs inter-
pretation of Aristotelian causes. A swift survey reveals that a number of studies
have been devoted to formal and efficient causality in particular, and the final
cause is also not without its champions. However, no comprehensive account
of Surezs view of Aristotelian causality in all of its four main aspects exists;
and no account of Aristotelian causality as an essentially metaphysical prob-
lem in the Metaphysical Disputations has been produced. In fact, treatment of
one or more Aristotelian causes (usually the formal and efficient) is sometimes
thought of in terms of Surezs natural philosophy and not in terms of his meta-
physics.2 The present volume offers the first attempt at a comprehensive
account of Surez on Aristotelian causality in the Metaphysical Disputations.
The five chapters approach Surez as a philosopher in his own right. This
means, first of all, that the authors disregard religious concerns and follow
Surez when he maintains that his metaphysics proceeds by way of the natural
1 See Francisco Surez and His Legacy: The Impact of Surezian Metaphysics and Epistemology
on Modern Philosophy, ed. Marco Sgarbi (Milan, 2010), Interpreting Surez: Critical Essays, ed.
Daniel Schwartz (Cambridge, 2012) and The Philosophy of Francisco Surez, eds. Benjamin
Hill and Henrik Lagerlund (Oxford, 2012).
2 In Hill and Lagerlund, eds., The Philosophy of Francisco Surez, p. iii, the chapters dealing
with causality (efficient and formal) are categorized as Natural Philosophy.
koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015|doi 10.1163/9789004292161_002

2 Fink
light, that is, by way of mans incomplete and fallible capacity to reason. Surez
certainly bestows great importance on Christian faith, and his arguments are
often motivated by concerns for revealed (Christian) truth, but he sets himself
the task of confirming its conclusions by argument and reason thus exposing
himself to philosophical investigation and scrutiny. Secondly, approaching
Surez as a philosopher in his own right means that the chapters focus directly
on his arguments irrespective of whether they became important to later phi-
losophers or not. We investigate Surez not as a transitional figure in the history
of philosophy, but, as stated already, as a philosopher in his own right. This
means, among other things, that Surezs immediate philosophical contempo-
raries and his Scholastic predecessors (just as his philosophical heirs in Early
Modern philosophy) are only to a limited extent taken into account.3 A clearer
impression of the contribution of this volume will emerge from the following
short outline of two current positions in contemporary Surezian studies.
2 The European Current
The focus on Surez as a transitional figure in the history of metaphysics posi-

tioned somewhere between the Scholastics and Kant is ubiquitous. It is not,
therefore, particularly indicative of the European current. Nonetheless, a number
of monographs expounding this view of Surez have emerged from primarily
French and German scholars.4 tienne Gilson played a decisive role in forming
this current. Gilson places Surez as an important middle man between Scholastic
3 For outlines of the historical developments with respect to causality see Jacob Schmutz, La
doctrine mdivale des causes et la thologie de la nature pure, Revue Thomiste 101 (2001),
pp. 21764; John Marenbon, The Medievals, in The Oxford Handbook of Causation, eds.
Helen Beebee et al. (Oxford, 2009), pp. 4054 and Kenneth Clatterbaugh, The Early
Moderns, in The Oxford Handbook of Causation, eds. Helen Beebee et al. (Oxford, 2009),
pp. 5572.
4 See for instance Jean-Franois Courtine, Suarez et le systme de la mtaphysique (Paris,
1990); Ludger Honnefelder, Scientia transcendens: Die Bestimmung der Seiendheit und
Realitt in der Metaphysik des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (Hamburg, 1990); Rolf Darge,
Surez transzendentale Seinsauslegung und die Metaphysiktradition, (Studien und Texte
zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters) 80 (Leiden and Boston, 2004) to mention just the
most prominent examples. The essays collected in Hill and Lagerlund focus, also, on
the transitional nature of Surezs philosophy, see Benjamin Hill, Introduction, in The
Philosophy of Francisco Surez, eds. Hill and Lagerlund, p. 5. For an American, though anti-
Gilsonian, specimen see Jos Pereira, Surez: Between Scholasticism and Modernity
(Milwaukee, 2007).
Introduction 3
metaphysics and early modern pre-Kantian transcendental philosophy (Wolff).

He points out that Surez marks an important point in the development of meta-
physics, because he leads up to a conception of this discipline as pure ontology.5
According to Gilson, Surez moves towards a concept of being as essence
uncompromised by existence (being as pure essence). In spite of considerable
objections to Gilsons view, especially from Spanish scholars,6 European research
on Surez seems to have followed Gilsons main tenet and so have focused on the
parts of the Metaphysical Disputations that support the view of metaphysics as a
science studying pure essences, which amounts to a focus on the transcendentals
in a quite narrow sense of this term.
For the purposes of the present volume Gilsons focus is problematic, in spite
of the otherwise great merits of his work, in that it appears to promote a certain
view of ontology that has little room for causality. It is at any rate noticeable
that the most extensive treatments of Surezs metaphysics that have been pro-
duced in Europe, those by Courtine, Darge and Honnefelder already men-
tioned, all of them almost completely ignore the role of causality in Surezs
metaphysics. In practice this means that the Metaphysical Disputations are
treated rather unequally. Disp. 211 and 2853 claim the greater share of atten-
tion whereas disp. 1227 on causality (and the remaining disp. 1 and 54) are
almost entirely neglected as relevant parts of Surezs metaphysics.7 The upshot
of all this is that the work that actually has been devoted to causality approaches
the topic in a piece meal fashion: one of the four causes, usually the efficient or
formal, is singled out and rarely seen in relation to the remaining ones or to the
metaphysical project of Surez as a whole.8
5 tienne Gilson, Ltre et lessence, 3rd ed. (Paris, 2008), p. 144. Gilson claims that the final step
of separating essence and existence has not yet been taken by Surez, but that his thought
goes in this direction.
6 See in particular Jos Hellin, Existencialismo escolastico suareziano I, Pensamiento 12
(1956), pp. 15778 and Existencialismo escolastico suareziano II: La existencia es lo principal
en el ente, Pensamiento 13 (1957), pp. 2138.
7 This approach to the Metaphysical Disputations is widespread also among historians of phi-
losophy. Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy 3 (1963; repr. New York et al., 1993),
p.361, is one noticeable example. In his great history of philosophy, he jumps from treating
disp. 25 to treating disp. 28ff. and merely mentions the treatment of causality in a phrase or
two (p. 355). See also John A. Trentman, Scholasticism in the Seventeenth Century, in The
Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, eds. Norman Kretzmann et al. (Cambridge,
1982), pp. 81837.
8 See the articles by Dennis Des Chene, Surez on Propinquity and the Efficient Cause, in
The Philosophy of Francisco Surez, eds. Hill and Lagerlund, pp. 89100; Helen Hattab,
Surezs Last Stand for the Substantial Form, in The Philosophy of Francisco Surez, eds. Hill
4 Fink
Recently, this narrow view of Surezs ontology has been strongly ques-
tioned on two scores. First of all, it has been pointed out that Surezs ontology
is anything but pure in the sense suggested by Gilson.9 Secondly, the fact that
the investigation of causality has been undertaken with little heed to Surezs
broader metaphysical position has not gone unnoticed. Scholars such as
Vincent Carraud and, especially, Robert Schnepf have been arguing this point
in recent works and, correctly it seems to me, objected to it.10 In terms of aims
and scope the present volume owes a lot to these more recent developments.
The view of Surezs metaphysics appears to be changing. It is my hope that
this collection contributes to this process.
3 The American Current
By and large, the American current shares with its European counterpart the
view of Surez as a transitional philosopher. One striking consequence of this
is that efficient causality receives quite a lot of attention whereas material or
final causality are rarely considered. Symptomatic in this respect, though not a
specimen of American scholarship, is the study of Vincent Carraud which, in
fact, seems to be heavily influenced by another of Gilsons works.11 However, if
and Lagerlund, pp. 10118; Mauricio Lecn, Resultancia, Formas e Inmanencia en

Francisco Surez, in La causalidad en la filosofia moderna: De Surez a Kant precrtico, eds.
Agustn Echavarra and Juan F. Franck, (Cuadernos de Anuario Filosfico) 246 (Navarra,
2012), pp. 1727; Gilles Olivo, Lefficience en cause: Surez, Descartes et la question de la
causalit, in Descartes et le moyen ge, eds. Jol Biard and Roshdi Rashed (Paris, 1997), pp.
91105; Christopher Shields, The Reality of Substantial Form, Metaphysical Disputations
XV, in Interpreting Surez: Critical Essays, ed. Schwartz, pp. 3961; and those mentioned in
Section3 below (The American Current).
9 See Marco Forlivesi, Impure Ontology: The Nature of Metaphysics and Its Object in
Francisco Surezs Texts, Quaestio 5 (2005), pp. 55986. Also useful in terms of critically
assessing Gilsons position is Daniel Heider, The unity of Surezs metaphysics, Medioevo
34 (2009), pp. 475505.
10 Vincent Carraud, Causa sive ratio: La raison de la cause, de Suarez Leibniz (Paris, 2002),
p. 106 and Robert Schnepf, Die Frage nach der Ursache (Gttingen, 2006), p. 238, n. 173 and
Zum kausalen Vokabular am Vorabend der wissenschaftlichen Revolution des 17.
Jahrhunderts: Der Ursachenbegriff bei Galilei und die aristotelische causa efficiens im
System der Ursachen bei Surez, in Kausalitt und Naturgesetz in der frhen Neuzeit, ed.
Andreas Huttemann (Studia Leibnitiana) Sonderheft 31 (Stuttgart, 2001), pp. 1546.
11 Carraud, Causa sive ratio influenced by, among others, tienne Gilson, Notes pour
lhistoire de la cause efficiente, Archives dhistoire doctrinale et littraire du moyen ge 29
(1962), pp. 731.
Introduction 5
we return to the other side of the Atlantic, for a while, the focus on efficient cau-
sality is strongly present in the work of Alfred J. Freddoso, who has been a promi-
nent figure in North American research into Surez and causality,12 while scholars
such as Dennis Des Chene, Robert Pasnau and others have treated Aristotelian
causality in the mediaeval and early modern traditions more broadly.13
Freddoso offers excellent accounts of the mediaeval conception of Aristotelian
causality and the occasionalist rival to mainstream Aristotelian analyses of cau-
sation (see Section4.2 below). But a further quite noticeable feature of Freddosos
work is its grand philosophical ambition. Freddoso offers far more than a histori-
cal account of efficient causality in the Metaphysical Disputations. He presents,
in fact, a philosophical defence of the way in which Surez interprets efficient
causality accompanied by heavy attacks on contemporary empiricist positions
on causality.14 Here is not the place to try to assess how well Freddoso argues
his case. I will confine myself to noticing that it is unclear to me to what extent
his defence of a Surezian efficient causality depends on some Christian dog-
mas, for example concerning the world as created ex nihilo by a God whose
causal interference in the world, in natural phenomena and the actions of ratio-
nal agents, is not up for discussion. From a purely philosophical perspective, the
value of his defence seems to me to consist in the critical questioning to which
his position allows him to submit contemporary empiricist theories about cau-
sation. But here is not the place for such a discussion.
Among American scholars there are also some broader investigations of
Aristotelian causality and early modern philosophy. These do not concern Surez
exclusively, but they contribute excellently to our understanding of the broader
12 See Alfred J. Freddoso, Medieval Aristotelianism and the Case against Secondary
Causation in Nature, in Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism, ed.
Thomas V. Morris (Ithaca, ny, 1988), pp. 74118; Gods General Concurrence with
Secondary Causes: Why Conservation Is Not Enough, Philosophical Perspectives 5 (1991),
pp. 55385; Francisco Surez, On Efficient Causality: Metaphysical Disputations 17, 18, and 19,
trans. Alfred J. Freddoso (New Haven, 1994), pp. xiiixx; Gods General Concurrence with
Secondary Causes: Pitfalls and Prospects, The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly
68 (1994), pp. 13156; Francisco Surez, On Creation, Conservation, and Concurrence:
Metaphysical Disputations 20, 21, and 22, trans. Alfred J. Freddoso (South Bend, in, 2002),
pp. xicxxiii.
13 Dennis Des Chene, Physiologia: Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian
Thought (1996; repr. Ithaca, ny: 2000) and Robert Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes: 12741671
(Oxford, 2011). See also the studies on Descartes and early modern philosophy by Tad
Schmaltz, Descartes on Causation (Oxford, 2008), pp. 948 and Walter R. Ott, Causation
and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy (Oxford and New York, 2009).
14 Francisco Surez, On Creation, Conservation, and Concurrence, trans. Freddoso,
pp. lixlxxiii.
6 Fink
philosophical frame within which his interpretation of Aristotelian causality

should be seen. This means, by and large, that they share the view of Surez as a
transitional figure in metaphysics and, to a certain extent, natural science with
all the complexities such a transitional role implies.15 Again, the outcome is a
certain forward looking way of reading Surez, which is obviously legitimate, but
results in a somewhat uneven treatment of his position with respect to
Aristotelian causality and metaphysics.
4 Aristotelian Causes and Aristotelian Causality
One obvious challenge facing any interpreter of Aristotelian causes and

Aristotelian causality is to give a reasonably coherent account of what these,
Aristotelian causes and causality, are. The challenge comes about partly
because Aristotle is not as clear on this question as one would have liked and
partly because his understanding of causes and causality differs more or less
strongly from later views. He gives his most detailed statement concerning the
meaning of the term cause in Physics 2.3, and offers other, less detailed and
sometimes less clear, statements elsewhere.16 Here is not the place to give thor-
ough accounts of the Aristotelian causes and causality, so I shall confine myself
to indicating, as briefly as possible, the main features and problems connected
to these issues so as to give some idea about the challenges facing Surez in his
interpretation of Aristotelian causality.
4.1 The Four Causes

In Physics 2.3, Aristotle treats the term cause in connection with natural pro-
cesses of coming-to-be, ceasing-to-be and other kinds of change. Even if his
scope in discussing the term is not limited to natural things, it is nevertheless
particularly relevant in the study of nature, it seems. In order to acquire knowl-
edge about generation, destruction and every natural change, Aristotle says,
we will have to grasp the because of what of each thing ( )
15 Des Chene, Physiologia, p. 64, for example, points out that Aristotelian notions about sub-
stantial form and finality continue to haunt Descartes and constantly threaten to re-sur-
face in his philosophy of nature. From another angle, Ott, Causation and Laws of Nature
shows how both Aristotelian and mechanistic natural philosophy stays committed to a
certain view of natural causation and logical necessity.
16 Aristotle, Generation of Animals 1.1.715a47, Physics 2.7.198a22, Posterior Analytics
2.11.94a2024, cf. Physics 3.7.207b3435 and Metaphysics 1.3.983a2627.
Introduction 7
and this is to grasp the first cause ( ).17 As it stands, this seems to be
a claim concerning the epistemology of explaining natural processes. A cause
(), in the relevant sense, seems to correspond to a proposition that answers
because of what or why something is the case. However, as scholars have
often pointed out, an Aristotelian cause is not merely a propositional item and
does not only correspond to the propositional content of a because so and so
answer. A cause is also something real, an entity as it were, or an ontological
item.18 This will be clearer as we proceed.
There are four main ways to answer a because of what question; we might
perhaps say, that such an answer has four aspects (aspect here renders the
Greek term for which a dictionary will give something like turn, direc-
tion, way, manner or fashion). Aristotle thinks that there are four such ways
in which the term cause is used:
In one way the thing already in existence from which something comes to
be is said to be a cause, for example bronze [sc. is said to be a cause] of
the statue or silver of the bowl and their respective genera. In another
way the form and the model [sc. are said to be a cause] and this is the
account of the essence and its genera [sc. Aristotle gives mathematical
ratios as an example]. Furthermore, the first origin of change or rest [sc.
is said to be a cause], for example the one who has reached a decision is
a cause [sc. is guilty of or responsible for the decision] and the father is
a cause of the child and quite generally the producer is the cause of the
product and the changer of that which is changed. Finally, the end is said
as a cause and this is that for the sake of which as in the case of exercise
for the sake of health. For because of what does he exercise? In order to
be healthy, we will answer, and in saying thus we believe wehave given
the cause [sc. of his exercising or the reason for it] (my italics).19
17 Aristotle, Physics 2.3.194b1723.

18 See the discussion in Julius M. Moravcsik, What Makes Reality Intelligible? Reflections
on Aristotles Theory of Aitia in Aristotles Physics: A Collection of Essays, ed. Lindsay
Judson (Oxford, 1991), p. 33.
19 Aristotle, Physics 2.3.194b2335:
,
,
...
, ,
, .
,

, . The text is found almost verba-
tim in Metaphysics 5.2.
8 Fink
This text raises any number of questions, philosophical as well as terminologi-

cal, but I will contain myself to a few general remarks concerning the difficul-
ties connected to the doctrine of the four causes. Let us, first, briefly state what
each of them seems to be, while for now disregarding their later famous medi-
aeval names.
1. That from which ( ). The stuff or material (), in a broad sense, that
persists through a process of change is called that from which the thing
comes to be, ceases to be or changes. Aristotles examples suggest that he
thinks in terms of complex matter such as bronze, the organs of a living
organism and the basic elements in nature (earth, water etc.).20 Occasionally,
he extends the term that from which to cover also types of propositions so
that premises can be called the matter of the conclusion of an argument.21
All these examples of stuff are complex because they already exhibit a struc-
ture or form. The reason is that stuff is a relative, that is, relative to some
form; there is no such thing as unstructured matter (for brief remarks on
prime matter, see Section5 below).22 Aristotle couples his notion of stuff
with his notion of potentiality. This is of paramount importance within the
later Aristotelian tradition.23

2. The form ( ). In a minimal sense an objects form is its outward shape,
corresponding more or less to the term which Aristotle also uses to
designate form.24 More strictly speaking the form is the basic determinative
structure of an object, what identifies the object as exactly this object.
Aristotle talks of this as the account of the essence ( )

and as the account of the substance ( ).25 Since stuff, as we
have just seen, is relative to form, these two notions should be correlatives.
In other words, form should be relative to some stuff be it merely intelli-
gible stuff (Iwill not go further into the can of worms opening up here).26
Aristotle points out that form is only conceptually separable from stuff (

[sc. ] ).27 Crucially, this does not
mean that form and stuff are ontologically indistinct, they are not identical
20 E.g. Aristotle, Generation of Animals 1.1.715a911.

21 Aristotle, Physics 2.3.195a1719 and, perhaps, Posterior Analytics 2.11.94a2425.
23 See e.g. Aristotle, On the Soul 2.1.412a910 for stuff/potentiality and form/actuality.
24 Aristotle, Physics 1.7.190b1720, 2.1.193a2831.
25 See above, n. 19 and Generations of Animals 1.1.715a5.
26 The study of what is separate belongs to metaphysics, see Physics 2.2.194b1415.
Introduction 9
causes, but correlative causal factors you cant have one without having
the other, it seems. As stuff is coupled with potentiality so form is coupled
with actuality by Aristotle.
3. The first origin of change or rest (
). Whatever initiates movement (in a very broad sense) or change is
called the first origin of change or rest; or sometimes simply what first moved
[sc. something].28 As the examples from Physics 2.3 make clear Aristotle
acknowledges a wide range of such initiators of movement: agents, producers
of both natural and artificial things (if producer is the right term for parents)
and any object, it seems, that causes movement or rest in another object. A
first origin of change in this sense is often, but not always, external () in
a way that neither stuff nor form are.29 The carpenter is external to the table
he produces, whereas the wood and its shape are not external to the table.
4. The end ( ). Aristotles example of exercising for the sake of health
could suggest that the end is mainly a relevant causal factor within the
sphere of human purposive agency. That is, however, not his position. It is
just that human agency and production are particularly clear instances of
end-directed things or processes. We do not quite understand because of
what a machine exists until we understand for the sake of what it was
made. So the end of a thing is intimately connected to the function it per-
forms. But this is also true of natural things. Aristotles showcase example is
the organs of an animals body. He believes that the kidneys, liver and so
forth perform their function for the sake of something (sustaining and sup-
porting the life of a living organism). He does not believe that they do so,
because some supreme being designed them to perform their respective
functions. But he is quite willing to appeal to functions when considering the
end as a relevant causal factor for natural things.30 The ultimate end of an
artefact seems to be external to the artefact. Ultimately, the end of my coffee
machine is human pleasure of a certain kind, I take it, while its immediate or
relative end is simply to make good coffee (to perform its function well).31
28 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 2.11.94a22: .

30 See, e.g., Aristotle, Parts of Animals 1.5.645b1420. For discussion of Aristotles teleology
and the line I have taken here, see Robert J. Hankinson, Cause and Explanation in Ancient
Greek Thought (Oxford, 1998), pp. 14053.
31 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6.2.1139b13. For an interesting discussion, see Wolfgang
Wieland, Poiesis: Das Aristotelische Konzept einer Philosophie des Herstellens, in Kann
Man Heute noch Etwas anfangen mit Aristoteles? eds. Thomas Buchheim et al. (Darmstadt,
2003), pp. 22832.
10 Fink
This is not the picture with respect to natural things. Aristotle points out that
among natural things it often happens that the form and the end are identi-
cal. There is no further end, or purpose, to an oak tree than simply being an
oak tree. Thus, the end is not external with respect to natural things.32
In histories of philosophy these four ways in which something can be said to con-
stitute a cause are spoken of as the four causes I did so myself just a few pages
up and Aristotle does so (see above, n. 16). But since, as we have just seen, stuff
and form are only conceptually separable, since form and end are often identical,
and, finally, since even the first origin of change or rest might fall together with
form and end,33 it seems questionable how justified we are in speaking about
four causes and not just two (form/origin of change/end+stuff) or simply one
cause with four aspects () to it. Recent interpreters find a way out by sug-
gesting that Aristotle takes the causes as co-extensive.34 This is a neat suggestion,
but it still leaves a number of questions to be addressed. Some of these are of
particular importance to Surez and will be given here in headlines:
How do the four causes differ from each other? If we accept that Aristotle
takes the causes as co-extensive, we would nevertheless still like to know
what each of them is more precisely. This is not only a question about
giving defensible accounts of each or satisfactory definitions. It is also a
matter of discerning the distinct ways of causing of each. It is worrying in
this respect that Aristotle on some occasions appears to offer distinct
models of causation for one and the same cause.35
Is the list of causes exhaustive? Aristotle offers no sufficiency proof for
the four causes (as he does for the four predicables in the Topics for exam-
ple). He notes that no previous philosophers have come up with further
causes and apparently leaves the matter at that.36
32 Aristotle, Physics 2.7.198a2227. For final causes as immanent in natural things, see
Hankinson, Cause and Explanation, p. 127.
33 See Aristotle, Physics 2.7.198a2227.
34 See Christopher Shields, Aristotle (London and New York, 2007), p. 91: Aristotle is thinking
of these causes as co-extensive. That is, in some frameworks, final, formal, and efficient
causal explanations will designate the same feature of the world. If form is only conceptu-
ally separable from stuff, I see no reason why stuff should be excluded from the list here.
35 David Charles, Teleological Causation in the Physics, in Aristotles Physics: A Collection of
Essays, ed. Lindsay Judson (Oxford, 1991), pp. 10128, argues that the four causes doctrine
threatens to break down, because Aristotle operates with two distinct models of final
causation.
36 Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.7.988a1823, cf. 1.3.983b36. See Topics 1.45 for the sufficiency proof.
Introduction 11
Priority among the causes? Some passages suggest that Aristotle gives one
or more causes priority with respect to the others (the form and the end rank
high as causes whereas the stuff usually ranks low).37 So the questions here
would be: what is his position with respect to priority among the causes and
why does he take this position? The priority question is anything but simple.
For there are rival notions of priority, ontological, conceptual, temporal,
and accounting for each is exceedingly difficult. Furthermore, the term
cause is itself said in many ways according to Aristotle, which might in fact
make the question of priority among the causes futile or misleading.38
These, and other questions, confront contemporary scholars no less than they
confronted Surez.
4.2 Aristotelian Causality

Arguably, cause and effect make up the most relevant causal categories in con-
temporary discussions about causality. In Aristotle, the pair of terms correspond-
ing most adequately to cause and effect would seem to be agent ( )
and patient ( ).39 This observation is borne out by a remarkable pas-
sage of the Physics. Aristotle here equates three causal locutions or three differ-
ent ways to describe a process of coming-to-be. The passage argues the point
that coming-to-be can and should be qualified in various ways; but incidentally
Aristotles statement bears nicely on agent and patient as relevant causal terms
also. In opposition to some previous philosophers, Aristotle says:
We assert, on the other hand, that [sc. the locutions:] (a) coming-to-be
from what is or from what is not or (b) what is not or what is acts on
something or is acted on or (c) this something comes to be some particu-
lar thing are in one way no different from [sc. the locutions] the doctor
acts on something or is acted on or something is or comes to be from a
doctor (letters inserted by me).40
37 Aristotle, Parts of Animals 1.1.639a1121 gives the end priority, later though, form is given
priority with respect to matter and then the end is brought back on the table, see
1.1.640b2241a14.
38 See Aristotle, Metaphysics 5.2.1013b36.
39 Or acting () and suffering (). The terms are introduced into the argument
of Physics 1 at 1.5.188a3134; treated more fully in On Generation and Corruption 1.7.
40 Arist., Physics 1.8.191a34b2: ,
,

12 Fink
It is apparently legitimate to think about causality in terms of an agent doing

something to a patient, since (b) seems to be just as accurate an expression of
what happens in a process of coming-to-be or ceasing-to-be as (a) and (c). So
no doubt, Aristotle is prepared to think about causality in agent-patient terms
and to the extent that these terms correspond to cause-effect we are justified
in offering a model of Aristotelian causality in which cause and effect pre-
dominate. Such a model of causality is, I think, favoured by contemporary
Aristotelian scholars. But it is a problematic model, as the following brief dis-
cussion will show.
On the basis of Physics and On Generation and Corruption contemporary schol-
ars will typically offer an account of Aristotelian causality similar to this one:
Aristotelian Causality (ac): Agent (a) causes Patient (p) to become F from
being not-F at time (t).41
ac says nothing about what the causal relata are, what types of agents and
patients are implied or, for that matter, what types of F obtain on this model of
causality. But the norm seems to be that of one substance (a) causing acciden-
tal change (F) obtaining in another substance (p) or one substance causing
some state of affairs (F) obtaining in itself (in this case the same substance is
both agent and patient). In so far as contemporary scholars are hesitant about
taking objects as causal relata, instead of events or states of affairs for example,
ac will seem less attractive. But nothing in ac demands that the causal relata
must be objects, and even if Aristotle favours substances as causal relata, his
examples show that he is prepared to include a wide range of other phenom-
ena as causal relata also (including events).42 Crucially, the term agent does
not necessarily imply intentionality on the part of the agent. A stone may well
act as an agent on this model of causality, but it does not act intentionally.
Finally, ac says nothing about the agents temporal priority to the patient (or
the temporal priority of cause to effect). Agent and patient operate simultane-
ously with one another (Aristotles builder building).
41 Freddoso, Medieval Aristotelianism (see above, n. 12), p. 79: Typically, substances (agents)
act upon other substances (patients) to bring about or actualize or produce states of affairs
(effects).. Also Freddoso, Gods General Concurrence with Secondary Causes: Why
Conservation Is Not Enough (see above, n. 12), p. 557. Stephen Makins thought-provoking
account of Aristotelian causation, though focused on causal resemblance, seems to me to
be committed to this model also, see An Ancient Principle about Causation, Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society 91 (1991), p. 142.
42 Hankinson, Cause and Explanation (see above n. 30), pp. 13235.
Introduction 13
According to Aristotle, any account of causality should be able to answer sat-

isfactorily because of what something is the case (see above, Section4.1:
). In order to be satisfactory, all four Aristotelian causes should
figure in the answer. The reason is, it appears, that only then have we reached
the point where further because of what questions are made pointless. But in
one respect, at least, ac fails to comply with this demand. The problem is that
ac is modelled on and favours Aristotles third cause, the first origin of change or
rest (the efficient cause in mediaeval terms). Stuff, form and the first origin of
change can all be fitted into ac with reasonable ease: roughly, the first origin of
change takes the place of the agent (a), the stuff takes the place of patient (p)
and the form takes the place of F (the property or state of affairs) exhibited by p.
But where does the end fit into ac? In so far as form and end are identical in
natural phenomena, the end can be included in ac. But obviously form and end
do not coincide in artefacts in this way. It seems that ac cannot give a satisfac-
tory causal explanation of an artefact, because it does not answer for the sake of
what the artefact is made. With respect to artefacts, ac leaves a because of what
question unanswered. Perhaps the problem with ac is that it takes its cue from
later philosophers emphasis on cause and effect causality. Be this as it may, it
seems to me that contemporary Aristotelian scholars still need to discover an
adequate formulation of Aristotelian causality. In this respect, they face a perti-
nent philosophical problem that also confronted Surez.
5 Some Mediaeval Assumptions about Causes
The famous mediaeval names for the four causes, the material, formal, efficient
and final, are properly speaking not really mediaeval. Peter Abelard (ca. 10791142)
knows them by these names (though he cites them in another sequence) and he
points out that this reckoning up of the causes goes back to Boethius, the late
ancient translator of some Aristotelian treatises.43 Abelard does not elaborate on
the four causes on the basis of Aristotles Physics and cannot well have done so,
since this text was only translated into Latin a couple of decades after he had died.
The translation by James of Venice was probably produced around the 1150s.44
43 Peter Abelard, Dialectica, 2nd ed., ed. Lambertus M. De Rijk (Assen, 1970), p. 414. Abelard
gives the causes in this sequence: efficient, material, formal and final.
44 For discussion of date and authorship of the old translation of the Physics, see Aristotle,
Physica: Translatio Vetus, eds. Fernand Bossier and Josef Brams (Aristoteles Latinus) 7.1.1
(Leiden and New York, 1990), pp. xixxvii.
14 Fink
With this text Aristotles natural philosophy, and for our purposes his account of
the four causes in particular, were made available to the Mediaeval West even
though it appears to have taken some while before it had any real impact on philo-
sophical studies.
By the time of Thomas Aquinas (12251274), however, it was a well-studied
and important philosophical text. Thomas is an excellent guide to the follow-
ing brief paragraphs concerning Surezs mediaeval assumptions. Of course,
no single author sums up the complex philosophical and religious tradition of
Surez. Even so, Thomas and his On the Principles of Nature (De principiis natu-
rae) will form the basis for the following remarks; for two reasons. First, On the
Principles of Nature concisely, and in wonderful brevity, elucidates a number of
points that Surez takes for granted in his interpretation of Aristotelian causal-
ity. Second, being a Jesuit Surez is, in principle at least, obliged to follow
Thomas in theological and philosophical matters. It should be noted, never-
theless, that the following paragraphs pretend no more than to introduce the
most important mediaeval assumptions concerning causality and to do so
with as little discussion as possible.
Intrinsic and extrinsic causes. One of the important mediaeval distinctions
applied to the four causes is that between intrinsic and extrinsic: matter and
form are called intrinsic to the thing, because they are parts constituting the
thing; the efficient and final causes, on the other hand, are called extrinsic
because they are outside the thing.45 As pointed out above (Section 4.1) in
connection with the efficient cause, Aristotle maintains that this cause is
external () in some cases, but in other cases not. Furthermore, he seems
to hold a view of final causes as predominantly immanent in things. The medi-
aeval distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic causes, thus, is not very firmly
based in Aristotles texts. Surez, nonetheless, makes good use of it in his analy-
sis of Aristotelian causality.
Primary and secondary causes. This distinction is not found expressis verbis
in On the Principles of Nature, but it is in fact there. Thomas makes clear that
the terms prior cause and posterior cause mean the same as the terms more
remote cause (causa remotior) and nearer cause (causa propinquior).46
The connection to primary and secondary causes emerges from his comments
45 Thomas Aquinas, De principiis naturae 3.352, in Opuscula philosophica, ed. R.M. Spiazzi
(Turin and Rome, 1954), p. 124: Materia autem et forma dicuntur intrinsecae rei, eo quod
sunt partes constituentes rem; efficiens autem et finalis dicuntur extrinsecae, quia sunt
extra rem.
46 Thomas, De principiis naturae 5.3601, p. 126.
Introduction 15
on The Book on Causes (Liber de causis): what is prior in all respects is [sc.
what it is] to a higher extent because naturally prior things are more perfect.
Thus, the primary cause is to a higher extent the cause of the effect than the
secondary cause.47 It is no coincidence that primary and secondary causes
play a dominant role in the commentary on the Liber de causis whose Neo-
platonic origin Thomas readily acknowledges.48 Yet, he is quite prepared to
transfer this basically Platonic distinction to all four Aristotelian causes. In
fact each of them can be a nearer or a more remote cause (and so function as
a primary or a secondary cause): bronze is a nearer cause of the statue, metal
a more remote and substance an even more remote cause, but they are all
material causes of the statue. The same holds of all the other causes accord-
ing to Thomas.49 All this is, perhaps, innocent enough (from an Aristotelian
point of view). But the story gets much more complicated if we assume that
there is an absolutely primary cause and that this is a creator God; and, of
course, Thomas is happy to do so. The assumption is that the absolutely pri-
mary cause, God, is the cause of all secondary causes. This priority relation
between God and secondary causes has heavy consequences for the mediae-
val analysis of causality:
For a secondary cause, since it is the effect of the primary cause, has its
substance from the primary cause. But that from which something has its
substance from this it also has its operating power or virtue. Thus, a sec-
ondary cause has its operative power or virtue from the primary cause.
Nevertheless, the secondary cause is a cause of the effect through its own
power or virtue.50
This position is delicate. The secondary causes depend on the primary cause
for their power to cause anything. With respect to God, all four Aristotelian
causes are secondary, because ontologically dependent on God as the primary
47 Thomas, In librum de causis expositio 1.1.24, eds. Ceslai Pera et al. (Turin and Rome, 1955),
p. 6: Quod autem est prius in omnibus est magis, quia perfectiora sunt priora naturaliter.
Ergo prima causa est magis causa effectus quam causa secunda.
48 Thomas, In librum de causis, prooem. 9, pp. 45.
49 Thomas, In librum de causis 1.1.3139, pp. 67.
50 Thomas, In librum de causis 1.1.24, p. 6: Causa enim secunda cum sit effectus causae pri-
mae substantiam suam habet a causa prima. Sed a quo habet aliquid substantiam, ab eo
habet potentiam sive virtutem operandi. Ergo causa secunda habet potentiam sive virtu-
tem operandi a causa prima. Sed causa secunda per suam potentiam vel virtutem est
causa effectus.
16 Fink
cause. But even so, (1) the secondary causes may, in their own sphere of opera-
tion, operate as more remote (primary) or nearer (secondary) causes and
(2)they do have their own power of causing. The dependency relation will later
be spelled out in terms of God conserving and concurring with secondary
causes. But the position is dangerously close to some version of occasional-
ism.51 Be this as it may, it should be clear by now that the distinction between
primary and secondary causes takes us quite far from Aristotle.
Prime matter. The notion of prime matter is one of the more controver-
sial mediaeval assumptions.52 The question is not whether Aristotle is com-
mitted to prime matter or not, or whether prime matter is necessary in
order to carry out an Aristotelian analysis of change. The controversial
point is what properties prime matter has, if any (for Surez in particular,
the question is whether prime matter exhibits some kind of actuality).
Especially Thomas and his followers are hardliners on this question, so
Thomas position is not necessarily the mediaeval position and nothing
but the mediaeval position.53 Minimally, however, mediaeval philosophers
agree that prime matter is what persists through a process of substantial
change. But apart from that, they disagree wildly on what prime matter
really is. Here is how Thomas defines it: the sort of matter which is under-
stood without any form or privation whatever, but is the subject of form
and privation, is called prime matter on account of the fact that there is no
further matter before it.54 Since something which exhibits no form is noth-
ing actually, prime matter must be pure potency according to Thomas.55
That means, on the other hand, that it cannot be known in itself, but must
be known through comparison with form. Thomas believes to find justifica-
tion for this analysis of prime matter in Aristotles Physics 1.7.191a78 and
51 tienne Gilson, Le thomisme: Introduction la philosophie de Saint Thomas dAquin, 6th

ed. (Paris, 1997), pp. 22539, gives a clear account of Thomass position.
52 According to Simplicius, In Aristotelis Physicorum libros quattuor priores commentaria, ed.
Hermann Diels (Berlin, 1882), p. 227.1921, the Stoics claimed to be in accordance with
Aristotle in positing prime matter. Thus, the introduction of this notion into the study of
Aristotle precedes the Middle Ages by centuries.
53 Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes (see above, n. 13), pp. 3740, has a useful discussion.
54 Thomas, De principiis naturae 2.346, p. 123: Illa autem materia quae intelligitur sine qua-
libet forma et privatione, sed est subjecta formae et privationi, dicitur prima materia,
propter hoc quod ante ipsam non est materia alia. See also Thomas, In duodecim libros
Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio 7.2.1292, eds. M.-R. Cathala and R.M. Spiazzi (Turin
and Rome, 1950), p. 323.
Introduction 17
Metaphysics 7.3.1029a1130.56 It is in dispute among contemporary scholars

whether or not Aristotle endorses the notion of prime matter.57
Substantial and accidental form. Thomas makes a quite important distinc-
tion right at the beginning of On the Principles of Nature. Being, he says, has
two senses: substantial and accidental being. Properly speaking, what has a
potential for substantial being is prime matter, whereas what has a potential for
accidental being is the hylomorphic compound of form and matter, in mediae-
val parlance the subject.58 What makes a potential for either substantial or
accidental being exist actually is the form. Corresponding to actually existing
substantial or accidental being is substantial and accidental form respectively:
And since form makes something exist actually it is said that form is actu-
ality. What makes something substantial exist in actuality is called sub-
stantial form and what makes something accidental exist actually is
called accidental form.59
In accordance with this distinction, Thomas also draws a line between the gen-
eration of a substance, which he calls generation simply speaking and genera-
tion of an accident, which he calls generation relatively speaking. Aristotle
seems to endorse this latter distinction in that he wants to distinguish between
generation (x coming-to-be absolutely speaking) and alteration (x coming-to-be
endowed with a certain property).60 However, he does not use substantial
form or accidental form as technical terms. For mediaeval philosophers, they
are nevertheless very important interpretational tools. Substantial form, in
particular, represents a doctrine that mediaeval philosophers felt uneasy about
and it became one of the most ridiculed pieces of scholastic doctrine among
early modern philosophers and scientists.61
56 Thomas, In octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis Expositio 1.13.118, ed. P.M. Maggilo (Turin
and Rome, 1954), p. 59 and id., In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio
7.2.128196, eds. M.-R. Cathala and R.M. Spiazzi (Turin and Rome, 1950), p. 32224.
57 And has been so since Hugh R. King, Aristotle without Prima Materia, Journal of the
History of Ideas 17 (1956), 37089.
59 Thomas, De principiis naturae 1.340, p. 121: Et quia forma facit esse in actu, ideo dicitur
quod forma sit actus. Quod autem facit esse actu substantiale, dicitur forma substantialis,
et quod facit actu esse accidentale, dicitur forma accidentalis.
60 See Aristotle, Physics 1.7.190a31b1.
61 See Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes (see above, n. 13), pp. 54973 and Des Chene, Physiologia
(see above, n. 13), pp. 5355.
18 Fink
6 Structure of the Volume
The chapters have been structured so as to follow Surezs exposition of causality

and the four Aristotelian causes. The first chapter deals with his concept of cau-
sality in general (disp. 12 and 27), the second chapter with material causality
(disp. 1314), the third with formal causality (disp. 1516), the fourth with efficient
(disp. 1722) and the fifth with final causality (2324). His treatment of the un-
Aristotelian exemplary cause (disp. 25) and his comparison of the causes among
themselves (disp. 26) will not receive separate attention in this volume.62
Chapter 1
This chapter investigates Surezs general account of causality in his introduc-
tory disp. 12. Surez offers three reasons for including a treatment of causality
in his concept of metaphysics which are interpreted each in turn. The chap-
ters leading questions are why Surez includes the study of causality in his
metaphysics and to what extent he offers a satisfactory account of Aristotelian
causality. It is argued with respect to the first question that he includes causal-
ity because the account of what a cause is (the ratio causae) figures on the
same level of abstraction from matter as the account of being (ratio entis) and
because causality is some sort of transcendental term according to Surez.
With respect to the second question it is held that Surez fails to give a satisfac-
tory account of Aristotelian causality on two specific counts.
Chapter 2
In what Robert Pasnau has called the central paradox of prime matter within
Scholastic philosophy, philosophers in this tradition had to choose between
either giving prime matter some actuality thus making it somewhat of a thing
or a substance or denying it any actuality whatsoever thus negating its very
existence. In solving, or rather dissolving, this paradox, Surez makes a distinc-
tion between a physical act, on the one hand, and a metaphysical act, on the
other. He, further, identifies the physical act as related to matter with substantial
form. Metaphysical act, on the other hand, is something that intrinsically
belongs to all existing things, in virtue of their existence; it, thus, also belongs to
62 As was clear from Physics 2.3, Aristotle thinks about formal causality, partly, in terms of
the model () (see above, Section4.1). This is probably why Surez points out
that even though Aristotle says nothing about the exemplary cause he seems to mention
it in connection with the formal cause, see dm 25 prologue [25.899]. Surez knows very
well what he is doing and that the exemplary cause is not Aristotelian.
Introduction 19
prime matter, as it is something rather than nothing. Prime matter is one and is,
further, like a substance it is a quasi substance. Surezs answer to the ques-
tion of the reality of prime matter is, in this way, embedded within his philoso-
phy as a whole, and is explained on the background of this in this chapter.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3 traces Surezs theory of the formal cause as it emerges from his
common account of cause in dm 12 and his discussion of substantial formal
causality in dm 15. Surez argues that the formal cause gives being by constitut-
ing part of the effect. In this respect, formal causality is akin to material causal-
ity. He distinguishes the substantial formal cause from the material cause as
that which completes the essence of a natural thing and makes it a member of
a certain species. Matter, by contrast, is one and the same in all natural things.
Chapter 3 also considers the question of whether Surez privileges the effi-
cient causality of the substantial form over its formal causality or construes the
substantial form as more like an efficient cause than a formal cause. To this
question, it gives a negative answer on the ground that Surez considers formal
causality as fundamental to and definitive of the substantial form and because
he accords it great importance. While Surez does emphasize the efficient cau-
sality of the substantial form in dm 18, this is not because he considers it as
more important than substantial formal causality, but rather because he takes
his Thomist and Peripatetic philosophical opponents to deny or misconstrue
the effficient causal roles played by the substantial form. Nevertheless, Surezs
arguments in dm 18 for his view that the substantial form has an efficient causal
influence in action and in the production of species-appropriate properties are
important, especially because they distinguish the efficient causality of the
substantial form from its formal causality.
Chapter 4
Surez seems to be committed to two positions with respect to causality. First,
that efficient causality is conceptually and perhaps even ontologically prior in
his theory of causation and, second, that efficient causation is highly interre-
lated with Gods actions since Gods actions are themselves instances of effi-
cient causation and according to Surezs so called concursus-theory no finite
thing can be causally active without Gods concurrence. Taking this as a starting
point Chapter 4 investigates Surezs account of efficient causality by asking:
(1)what are efficient causes and what phenomena should they explain, (2) what
does their proper way of operation, or their causality, consist in ontologically
speaking, and (3) how do efficient causes perform their distinct causality.
Surezs answers to these questions are strongly influenced by his adherence to
20 Fink
both an Aristotelian framework for causal explanations and a Christian belief

in a creator God which leads to considerable tensions in his account of effi-
cient causality. In answer to (1) this chapter points out that efficient causes
explain all kinds of processes including natural processes and human and
divine actions, in answer to (2) that the proper operations of efficient causes,
efficient causality, is to be actions and that actions are so-called modes of their
effects; and finally in answer to (3) that Surez can rebut the most pressing
criticism against agent causal conceptions of causality by arguing that the
operation of efficient causes is due to several jointly sufficient conditions. The
chapter argues that in spite of the fact that Surez does not endorse what con-
temporary philosophers call event-causality (he is committed to a form of
agent causality which could be described as res-causality), his account of effi-
cient causality is in some respects surprisingly modern and paves the way for
the nomological understanding of causation which became prevailing among
early modern philosophers.
Chapter 5
It is normally assumed that Surez favours efficient causality in contrast to a
mediaeval background favouring final causality. On the standard story Surez
thus marks a transition from an emphasis on final to an emphasis on efficient
causality. Chapter 5 questions this standard account. The chapter argues that
Surez endorses the claim of Thomas Aquinas that efficient causality presup-
poses final causality. The core of Surezs account is that a final and efficient
cause must collaborate in order for either to exercise its causality and so Surez
conceives of them as co-causes. This is most clearly so in the case of created
intellectual agents, but the general account also holds for natural agents and for
Gods transeunt actions. Having presented this picture of co-causation, Chapter 5
considers five reasons to attribute to Surez the view that efficient causation is
prior and shows how each can be questioned. Finally, some texts are presented
that suggest that Surez is instead committed to the priority of final causation,
though it is suggested that this claim of priority also does not cohere well with
the picture of mutual dependence between efficient and final causation.
7 Main Results and Further Perspectives
In addition to the overall, and general, comprehensive discussion of Surez on

Aristotelian causality, this volume offers three main results and one prospect
for further research.
Introduction 21
The Problem concerning Aristotelian Causality in Early Modern Philosophy. It

is highly interesting to witness Surezs struggle for a coherent and defensible
account of Aristotelian causality. If it is correct, as maintained in Chapter 1,
that Surez fails in his attempt at giving a ratio causae there appears to be a
significant flaw in his metaphysics quite generally and in particular with
respect to his metaphysics of causality. This should invite scholars to reflect on
the Aristotelianism of Surez and its merits and flaws with respect to under-
standing causality. More generally still, Surezs problem with Aristotelian cau-
sality invites a consideration of the problem about causality in early modern
metaphysics and natural philosophy as such.
Understanding the causality of each cause individually. Against the prevailing
focus of contemporary scholarship on efficient causality, Chapters 2, 3 and 5
defend and demonstrate the importance within Surezs philosophy of mate-
rial, formal and final causality respectively. Chapter 2 offers an account of
Surezs solution to the vexed question concerning the actuality (or lack of actu-
ality) of prime matter, whereas Chapters 3 and 5 demonstrate the necessity of
formal and final causality for a correct understanding of efficient causality.
Chapter 4, on the other hand, demonstrates that efficient causality is, according
to Surez, agent causality of a certain type, and shows why this is a defensible
way to think about efficient causality. This insistence on a specific causal role for
each Aristotelian cause sets a more accurate stage for how to think about
Surezs position with respect to efficient causality in particular and causality
more generally speaking.
The Problem of Causal Priority. The essays in this volume, particularly
Chapters 4 and 5, raise the question of priority among the four causes. The
direct result is to spell out what the main aspects of the priority question are,
that priority is said in many ways and that this explains why Surez in differ-
ent contexts assigns different causes priority, and thereby clarify in what way
the priority question should be framed so as to constitute a fruitful way to
approach Surezs position with respect to causality. This should be useful for
anyone interested in Surezs metaphysics.
Prospect for further research: The De anima commentary. The present volume
very consciously narrows its scope to the Metaphysical Disputations in order to
offer a focused investigation. One of the promising avenues in contemporary
Surez research, however, is to move on from studies focused on one particular
text or other and start piecing together a broader picture based on a wider range
of his works. For example, Surezs Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in
libros Aristotelis De anima obviously offers material relevant to an investigation
into his views on formal causality (some of the relevant points of contact are
22 Fink
indicated in Chapter 3).63 But since my editorial decision was to stay focused on
the Metaphysical Disputations, I discouraged the authors from going into this
promising, but also less focused, endeavour. Comparing the Metaphysical
Disputations to the De anima commentary and to other works, thus, remains a
prospect for future research into Surez on Aristotelian causality.
63 See e.g. Cruz Gonzles Ayesta, Sobre el Escotismo de Surez: El Caso de la Causalidad de
la especie, in La causalidad en la filosofia moderna: De Surez a Kant precrtico (see above,
n. 8), pp. 916 and, though to a lesser degree, Mauricio Lecn, Resultancia, Formas e
Inmanencia en Francisco Surez, in La causalidad en la filosofia moderna: De Surez a
Kant precrtico (see above, n. 8), pp. 1727.
chapter 1

Jakob L. Fink
1 Introduction
In this chapter I will focus on two questions: first, why did Surez think that a
treatment of the four Aristotelian causes belongs to a systematic account of
metaphysics; and second, to what extent does he offer a satisfactory account of
Aristotelian causality. These questions are related, so answering the first
(Sections26) contributes to answering the second (Section7).
2 Why Study Causality. External Reasons
Causality has not received much attention from contemporary Surezian

scholars as pointed out in the Introduction to this volume. So before looking
into why Surez thinks causality matters in metaphysics, we might indicate
why we, contemporary Surez scholars, should take an interest in causality as
an element in Surezs concept of metaphysics. One point immediately springs
to mind. Surez tells us that prior to publication of his Metaphysical Disputations
he was immersed in years of lecturing on metaphysical questions.1 Due to one
of his students in these years, Christophorus de los Cobos, we have a first rate
source as to what Surez was toiling with in these lectures and how he mas-
tered the subject of metaphysics prior to the formulation of his position in the
Metaphysical Disputations, published 1597. According to Charles Lohr, whose
meticulous work on Renaissance Aristotle commentaries is indispensable
here, Christophers manuscript2 very likely reflects the teaching of Surez in
the years 157180. Lohr points out a very noticeable fact for our present pur-
pose: Christophers manuscript reveals that in his teaching of metaphysics
prior to the Metaphysical Disputations, Surez did not include a full treatment
of causality. Surezs teaching in the period, as reflected in Christophers man-
uscript, corresponds exactly to the structure and content of the Metaphysical
1 dm, Prooem. [25.1].

2 Salamanca, Bibliotecas Universidad de Salamanca, ub 1410 (Expositio in libros metaphysicae).
I have not been able to see the manuscript myself.

24 Fink
Disputations except for the fact that the contents of disputations 1227
(De causis) were not included in his teaching.3
A few years prior to publication of his great work, Surez seems not to
have had causality within his metaphysical scope. But in the Metaphysical
Disputations he offers a massive treatment of the four Aristotelian causes and
the fifth exemplary cause. I shall refrain from any guesswork as to if or why
Surez changed his mind about the metaphysical pertinence of causality
(though we may suspect a partly Aristotelian, partly theological background
for this: Aristotelian metaphysics is not only concerned with being as such but
also with the causes of being and for this reason a methodologically self-con-
scious metaphysics should include an investigation of the causes; furthermore
Surezs God is a creator and in this sense a kind of cause).4 His decision, at
some point before 1597, to include causality in his systematic account of meta-
physics indicates, at the very least, that he came to think about causality as an
important part of his metaphysics. For this reason alone causality should enter
the picture in any account of Surezs metaphysics.
3 Why Study Causality. Internal Reasons
It is admittedly a bit dull to argue that we should take an interest in causality in

the Metaphysical Disputations simply because it is there. Surez must have had
reasons to include the treatment of causality and so the next natural move
would be to ask what these reasons were. He is most explicit about this in disp.
12 which contains his general account of causality.5 Before looking more closely
at disp. 12, it should perhaps be noted that Surez in his treatment of the
Aristotelian causes applies the same mode of exposition as in the rest of
the work. The Metaphysical Disputations proceeds from the most general (the
objective concept of being as real being and the transcendental properties of
being) to the ever more detailed: the distinction between infinite and finite
3 Charles Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries II: Renaissance Authors 2 (Florence, 1988), p. 442;
see also the more easily accessible Lohr, Metaphysics, in The Cambridge History of
Renaissance Philosophy, eds. Charles B. Smith et al. (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 61213.
4 See Foreword to the Reader (dm, Ad lectorem [25 no pagination]): I have dwelled longer than
is usual on this investigation of the causes both because of the difficulty pertaining to it and
because I deemed it most useful for all parts of philosophy and theology. (Et in hac causa-
rum contemplatione, latius quam fieri soleat immoratus sum, quod et perdifficilem illam, et ad
omnem philosophiam et Theologiam utilissimam esse existimaverim.)
5 Summarized briefly also in dm 1.2.1516 (Vivs 1.2.1718) [25.18].
Surez On Aristotelian Causality 25
being, the division of finite being into substance and accident and an investi-
gation of the mere beings of reason (like unicorns etc.) that strictly speaking
fall outside the object studied by the metaphysician, but are nevertheless inev-
itable in both metaphysics and the sciences.6
As pointed out, we find, more or less, the same procedure in the treatment
of the four Aristotelian causes. This means that in the introductory disp. 12
Surez predominantly moves on an abstract, conceptual level he states at
some points that he conducts his investigation in communi or formaliter etc.7
while in his investigations of the specific causes he digs much deeper into the
problems pertaining to each of these. I shall presently lay out the conceptual
frame within which Surez interprets the four Aristotelian causes. In chapters
25 below each author deals in more detail with one of the four causes and so
some repetition of what will be stated by me is necessary in each of the ensu-
ing chapters to set the stage for the detailed discussions there. But let me return
to the conceptual frame of disp. 12.
By conceptual I mean an a priori procedure of arguing, that is, argument on
the basis of what is sometimes called conceptual truths such as that a father
is the father of a child or that bachelors are unmarried men and so forth. To
argue on a conceptual level, then, means to joggle terms such as cause, effect,
causation and others solely on the basis of what these terms are known a pri-
ori to imply. The best way around his treatment of causality within its concep-
tual frame is simply to follow in Surezs trail in disp. 12. Here is how he
introduces the investigation of causality:
After the treatment of the essential account of being as being and its
properties, but before we descend to the divisions of being, we ought to
investigate the causes of being in detail. For even though the natural phi-
losopher investigates causes, this happens in a far too restricted and
6 See e.g. John P. Doyle, Surez on the Analogy of Being, in Collected Studies on Francisco
Surez (Leuven, 2010), p. 73: The main procedure of Suarezian metaphysics is to treat this
concept [sc. being] in general and then to divide it. On entia rationis as inevitable etc. see
Christopher Shields, Shadows of Being: Francisco Surezs Entia Rationis, in The Philosophy
of Francisco Surez, eds. Benjamin Hill and Henrik Lagerlund (Oxford, 2012), p. 60.
7 dm 12.2.1 [25.384], dm 12.2.3 (Vivs 12.2.4) [25.38485], dm 12.2.11 (Vivs 12.2.13) [25.387]. It is
always advisable to keep in mind how Surez describes his procedure (he may argue commu-
niter, formaliter or per se), since this will influence his commitment to the claims propounded.
Rainer Specht, ber den Stil der Disputationes metaphysicae, Allgemeine Zeitschrift fr
Philosophie 13.3 (1988), 3132, argues that proceeding formaliter means that the context of a
claim decides whether the claim is correct or not. In disp. 12, however, formaliter seems to
mean abstractly, a priori or something indicating a high degree of generality.
26 Fink
incomplete sense, since he employs an account of cause which implies

natural matter or combines with some movement or natural change. The
account of cause, however, is more universal and more abstract. For
in itself it abstracts from matter (both sensible and intelligible) and
for this reason the proper consideration of cause belongs to the
metaphysician.8
First a brief terminological interlude. Surez is clearly after the ratio causae in
this piece of text. It is, however, notoriously difficult to translate ratio in philo-
sophical texts, the problems pertaining to this term being similar to those of
the Greek term logos (of which ratio is the Latin translation). The term is broad
enough to leave it undecided whether we move on a logical level, so that we are
searching for a definition of cause, or we move on a psychological level, so that
we investigate the formal concept of cause, the concept whose existence
depends on the mind irrespective of whether any real being corresponds to it,
or we move on the ontological level and will be looking for the objective con-
cept of cause so as to give an account of cause as a real entity (ens). I render
ratio causae, therefore, as account of the cause since account seems broad
enough to comprise all three levels simultaneously whereas other possible
candidates such as definition, determination, conception, notion or nature
pull too far in one direction or the other. As the argument develops, it is clear
that Surez moves towards a definition of cause, which fits nicely with the idea
propounded above that he moves on a conceptual level, although he argues
that the definition he arrives at has one formal and objective concept corre-
sponding to it. On the more realist interpretation of the conceptus objectivus,
to which I subscribe, Surez should argue this, since offering a real definition
demands an accurate characterization of real being so that our subjective con-
ception of this being corresponds to its true nature.9
8 dm 12, prologue [25.372]: Postquam dictum est de essentiali ratione, et proprietatibus entis,
in quantum ens est, priusquam ad divisiones ejus descendamus, oportet de causis ejus exacte
disputare. Nam, licet physicus de causis disputet, id tamen est nimis contracte et imperfecte,
quatenus ratio causae in physica materia, vel cum aliquo motu aut physica mutatione exer-
cetur; ratio autem causae universalior est et abstractior; nam secundum se abstrahit a mate-
ria, tam sensibili, quam intelligibili; et ideo propria ejus consideratio ad metaphysicum
pertinet.
9 dm 12.2.12 (Vivs 12.2.14) [25.38788]. The mentalistrealist debate is neatly summed up by
Jorge E. Gracia, Surez and Metaphysical Mentalism: A Last Visit, American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly 67 (1993), pp. 34954.
Terminology aside, the claim in this quite compressed argument is that it

belongs to metaphysics rather than to natural science (or natural philosophy)
to study the ratio causae. For preliminary justification of this, Surez claims
that the account of cause abstracts from matter. This means, I think, that the
investigation of it proceeds through a priori reasoning, that is, on the basis of
mans rational capacity alone and with no interference from empirical data. In
this the ratio causae is similar to the ratio entis or the account of being.10
However, Surez does not state clearly how the account of the cause relates to
the account of being (ratio entis). His next string of claims clarifies on this
point. It belongs to metaphysics, Surez says, to study the account of the cause:
Firstly, because the account of cause, or causality as they say, partakes to

some degree in being and so the metaphysician ought to explain what
this account is and in what way it is. Secondly, because causality itself is
like some property of being as such. For no being has no part in some
account of cause. Thirdly, because it belongs to a science to study the
causes of its object.11
Slightly reformulated Surezs position comes out as the following claims.

Metaphysics studies the causes because (a) the account of cause (ratio cau-
sae) is a piece of real being (so the account is no mere figment of the brain
even though we cannot perceive it through our senses) and as such a piece of
real being it falls within the proper object of metaphysics and of metaphysics
only; (b) because being and cause mutually imply one another, more techni-
cally: they are said convertibly in a certain sense, and it belongs to metaphysics
to study properties of being as being that have this feature; (c) because any
science should investigate the causes belonging to its proper object, the proper
object of metaphysics, however, is real being as such, so the metaphysician
should study the causes belonging to real being as such. We might note here
that this last argument seems to offer an inadequate explanation of why the
10 As pointed out by Carraud, Causa sive ratio: La raison de la cause, de Suarez Leibniz
(Paris, 2002), pp. 11014. Carraud also notes the compressed character of the prologue to
disp. 12, see p. 117. At dm 12.2.12 (Vivs 12.2.14) [25.388] Surez furthermore remarks that
what has been said concerning the concept of being applies also to the concept of cause.
11 dm 12, prologue [25.372]: Primo quidem quatenus ipsamet ratio causae, seu causalitas
(ut aiunt) aliquem gradum entis participat; de quo oportet declarare quid et quo modo
sit. Secundo, quia ipsa causalitas est veluti proprietas quaedam entis, ut sic; nullum est
enim ens, quod aliquam rationem causae non participet. Tertio, quia ad scientiam perti-
net considerare causas sui objecti.
28 Fink
metaphysician should study the causes as causes. We would perhaps expect

that as primary science metaphysics should somehow cover its own ground
and offer accounts of the concepts it applies, but it is not clear that this is what
Surez has in mind here (see Section6 below).
It will be noted, of course, that Surez distinguishes between cause and cau-
sality in the text above. This distinction will be explained as we proceed, so let
us look at the points (a)(c) in turn (corresponding to Sections 4, 5 and 6
below).
4 The Ratio Causae
The questions Surez poses in terms of the ratio causae really are these: given
that the account of the cause is a piece of real being, then what is the account
of cause and how does it apply to the four Aristotelian causes (quid et quo
modo sit). The first is a question about how to define cause, the second is a
question about how cause, so defined, is predicated of the four Aristotelian
causes (equivocally, univocally, analogically or in some other way). Let us look
at these questions in turn.
4.1 Causa, Quid Sit?

On Aristotelian grounds, the first most general answer to the question What is
it? consists in stating the genus of whatever you want to define. Surezs initial
move is to locate the genus to which cause belongs and he does so by distin-
guishing between cause and principle. His discussion is clearly also motivated
by theological concerns with some delicate Trinitarian problems, but I will not
go into that here.12 Every cause is a principle, but not vice versa, and so cause
ought to be defined by use of principle so to speak as through a genus (tan-
quam per genus).13 A genus always carries some properties that will be shared
by all of its members. The relevant property that principle transfers to cause
confines itself to a dependency relation (as will be clearer below). Having
12 See Carraud, Causa sive ratio, pp. 11416 for further discussion. The problem is that no
member of the Trinity causes any of the other members and the trick is, it appears, to hold
that in the Trinity one may be the principle of another without being the cause of the
other, see dm 12.1.2 [25.373]. Thomas Marschler, Die spekulative Trinittslehre des Francisco
Surez S. J. in ihrem philosophisch-theologischen Kontext (Mnster, 2007), offers a compre-
hensive study of Surezs account of the trinity.
13 dm 12.1.1 [25.373].
discussed some not strictly philosophical accounts of the term principle

Surez offers the following definition:
In another and more philosophical manner of speaking a principle is the

account of some per se relation between the principle itself and that for
which it is a principle such that from the principle that for which it is a
principle in some way originates or comes forth per se.14
One thing acts as a principle for another only if it necessarily (per se), and
not accidentally, brings forth that other thing. There are two ways in which
this originating or coming forth can take place. It may happen (a) through
a positive influx, or influence, and transfer of the principles own being
(per positivum influxum et communicationem sui esse) or (b) not
through such a positive influence of being but rather due to a necessary
and per se relation to something else which is how privations and sine qua
non conditions, time or space for example, function as principles (this is
further elaborated by Kara Richardson in Chapter 3, Section1).15 With this
move, Surez tells us what distinguishes a cause from other members of
the genus principle. Causes are principles in sense (a) only. In fact, among
created beings this way of being a principle always implies dependence
and causality, and so principles operating according to (a) always assume
the ratio causae, in other words they always operate as one of the four
Aristotelian causes.16 Created beings (including for a large part, but not
exclusively, natural phenomena) exercise a sort of causality explicable by
use of the Aristotelian causes.
Having secured a genus for the term cause and having provided a specific
difference for it (the positive influx of being, to which we will return shortly),
Surez proceeds by rejecting two rival definitions of cause. This critical discus-
sion of rival definitions offers a neat occasion for Surez to elaborate on his
own definition of cause in order to reach a definition of causation. What the
four Aristotelian causes have in common is their capacity for causing (their
virtus causandi). This is their causality and causality is what formally consti-
tutes them as causes.17
14 dm 12.1.5 [25.374]: Alio igitur modo, et magis philosophico, dicitur principium ratione
alicujus habitudinis per se inter ipsum, et id cujus est principium, ita ut ex illo aliquo
modo per se oriatur.
15 dm 12.1.56 [25.374].
16 dm 12.1.5 [25.374].
17 dm 12.2.1 [25.384].
30 Fink
The first definition of cause that Surez rejects stems from Aristotles Physics
and states that a cause is that which satisfactorily answers a because of what some-
thing is or comes to be question (propter quid aliquid sit, seu fiat), the passage
from the Physics was discussed in the Introduction (Section4.1). The trouble with
this definition is that propter quid (because of what) is either too narrow or too
broad. Taken narrowly propter quid applies to final causation only whereas taken
broadly to cover all modes of causation such as from what (ex quo), through
what (per quid) or on the basis of which (a quo) it is reduced to a mere name
with no common account to back it up.18 On this definition you have either an
exclusive account of the final cause or a definition based on an equivocal element
and definitions, rather obviously, have no room for equivocal terms.
The second definition rejected by Surez is, he tells us, usually ascribed to
the Liber de causis where, however, it does not occur as he points out. On this
definition, a cause is that upon which something else follows (id ad quod
aliud sequitur). The problematic term here is follows. If taken in a strictly
logical sense as any conclusion proceeding from a set of premises, the defini-
tion applies equally to effects from which some causes could be inferred in a
backward manner. On the other hand, follows taken more broadly would turn
the definition into a definition of principle, since for example alterations fol-
low upon privations. Privations, however, are not proper causes as we saw
above, since causes always work through some positive influx of being.19 The
two rejected definitions lack focus, it seems, and Surez objects to both of
them as being rather obscure.20
His own definition of cause is an elaboration of a definition common among
some recent philosophers (aliqui moderni). These would include his fellow
Jesuits at Coimbra in Portugal according to whom a cause is that on which
something else depends per se (id a quo aliquid per se pendet).21 Surez
reformulates this definition in the following way:
Cause is a principle that per se inflows being to another thing.22
18 dm 12.2.2 (Vivs 12.2.4) [25.384].

19 dm 12.2.3 [25.384]. The Liber de causis does not have the definition. It is, however, under-
standable why some should think so, see in particular Anonymous, Liber de causis 35, ed.
Adriaan Pattin, Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 28 (1966), pp. 4647.
20 dm 12.2.2 [25.384]: obscurum est quid significet illud verbum propter quid and defini-
tiovalde obscura 12.2.3 (Vivs 12.2.4) [25.384].
21 See e.g. Commentarii Collegii Conimbricenses in Octo Libros Physicorum Aristotelis, Lib. II,
Cap. VII, Qu. I, Ar. I (Lyon, 1594), p. 241.
22 dm 12.2.3 (Vivs 12.2.4) [25.384]: Causa est Principium per se influens esse in aliud.
The crux interpretationis of this definition is inflows being (influens

esse).23 He is certainly aware of the difficulties attaching to this influxus
terminology and in an attempt to avoid some of them he points out, by way
of elimination, that per se influens esse excludes privations and acciden-
tal causes. A privation is not a proper thing (res), nor for that matter a
proper being (ens), and for these reasons the clause per se influens esse
narrows down what counts as a cause considerably, since, lacking real
being, privations cannot influence being in anything else.24 The influx
must be positive and real or, to quote a recent interpreter, [t]here must be
something in the nature of the cause by which it causes the effect; other-
wise we have a mere per accidens cause.25 In this way privations and acci-
dental causes are ruled out. However, the prominent position of influxus in
the definition of cause could lead to a too narrow understanding of the
term cause, since the influxus of being seems primarily to take place in effi-
cient causation. But the definition really should cover all four Aristotelian
causes and so Surez interprets the term inflows (influit) rather broadly
as equivalent to giving or transferring being to another thing (aequivalet
verbo dandi, vel communicandi esse alteri) and assures his reader that all
four Aristotelian causes do in fact exercise an influxus of being.26 However,
he reserves justification of this claim to his treatment of each Aristotelian
cause specifically.
As noted above, Surez believes that his definition of cause rephrases the
one preferred by some recent philosophers. The Jesuit Conimbricenses
defined a cause in terms of a dependency relation (id a quo aliquid per se
pendet). Since Surez claims to rephrase this, his per se influens esse should
also express a dependency relation. In other words, it should express the onto-
logical priority of cause to effect (A is a cause of B, if B cannot be without A but
A can be without B). That a cause is a principle that per se inflows being in
another thing means that (1) a cause is something real (ens) that conveys being
to another thing in such a way that (2) the cause can be without the effect but
the effect depends on the cause for its being.
23 For Leibnizs famous critique of this definition as a barbarism and more obscure than
what it should define, see Chapter 5 below, note 15.
24 dm 12.2.3 (Vivs 12.2.4) [25.384]: Per illam autem particulam, per se influens [sc. esse],
excluditur privatio, et omnis causa per accidens; quae per se non conferunt, aut influunt
esse in aliud. That privations are not proper res is clear from dm 12.1.6 [25.374] and that
they are not proper beings (entia) is clear from dm 54.3.3 [26.10267].
25 Dennis Des Chene, From Natural Philosophy to Natural Science, in The Cambridge
Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Donald Rutherford (Cambridge, 2006), p. 83.
26 dm 12.2.3 (Vivs 12.2.4) [25.384].
32 Fink
The dependence of the effect on the cause is a bit tricky though. If we accept,
on Surezs definition, that a cause gives or grants being to its effect we should
nevertheless be careful to note that the effect is not identical to the cause and
that once the effect has come into being it does not depend on the cause to
remain in being. Surez makes this clear by stating that a cause is a principle
that per se inflows being in or to another thing (in aliud). The pronoun aliud
forms part of his definition, because only this pronoun properly expresses
what is essentially different from something else, or so Surez believes at
least.27 Even the intrinsic causes are distinct from their effects because they,
too, inflow being to another thing (in aliud) although they are not distinct as
one thing from another (ut res a re), for more on this see Chapter 4, Section2
below.
In his attempt to offer a suitable definition of cause, suitable, that is, to cover
all four Aristotelian causes, Surez has been moving toward a definition of cau-
sality, which is what formally constitutes any cause. He defines causality, which
is equivalent to causation, in this way:
From what we have stated concerning the common account of cause it is

first and foremost gathered in virtue of what a cause in act is formally and
proximately constituted in its being a cause. This is normally called cau-
sation, or causality in general, which is nothing else than that influx, or
concurrence, by which one of the causes in its sphere of operation actu-
ally gives being to its effect.28
This, then, is how the metaphysician should answer the question causa quid
sit? This is Surezs way of accounting a priori for the term cause, his ratio
causae.
4.2 Causa, Quo Modo Sit?

Having concluded his consideration of the definitional side of the ratio
causae by asserting that cause is not a mere equivocal, which means that
cause has a formal and objective concept to back it up, Surez turns to the
question about how cause, as just defined, applies to the four Aristotelian
27 dm 12.2.10 [25.386].
28 dm 12.2.11 (Vivs 12.2.13) [25.387]: Ex his quae de ratione causae in communi diximus,
colligitur primo, quid sit id quo causa in actu formaliter et proxime constituitur in esse
causae: quod solet vocari causatio, vel causalitas in communi: hoc autem nil aliud est
quam influxus ille, seu concursus, quo unaquaeque causa in suo genere actu influit esse
in effectum.
causes.29 However, he postpones discussion of this question until the con-

cluding disputation on the relation among the causes (disp. 27).30 From his
argument in this disputation two options emerge. The ratio causae might
apply univocally or analogically to each of the Aristotelian causes; and in
fact it applies in both ways at the same time but in different respects. Surez
arrives at this result when considering the order obtaining among the four
causes. He states outright that the four Aristotelian causes are so called
analogically.31 Analogy is what many scholastic philosophers will invoke in
order to argue that quite different things are in fact identical, though in a
quite weak sense.32 On closer inspection, however, Surez has to admit that
in a certain respect cause is also said univocally albeit not of all four
Aristotelian causes.
This position is puzzling and, to my mind at least, Surez fails to argue con-
vincingly for it. Let me reproduce his argument in order to evaluate it. Cause is
said univocally of the efficient and final cause. The reason is that the definition
of causality fits both of them equally well and so there is no room for analogy
between them. Since, then, both are called causes (they have the same name)
and both have the same definition they must be univocal as this is defined by
Aristotle in the Categories.33 However, the account of cause offered by Surez
does not immediately fit the formal and the material cause. Strictly speaking,
these causes give no influx of being to their effects. Rather, in themselves they
make up the constituting components of being (they are intrinsic causes) and
so the term cause is primarily said of the efficient and only metaphorically or
through some kind of proportionality of the formal and material causes.34
That is to say: cause is said analogically, and not univocally, of the formal and
material cause. As should be clear, Surez interprets the analogy in question as
29 dm 12.2.12 (Vivs 12.2.14) [25.38788].

30 dm 12.3.22 [25.395].
31 dm 27.1.9 [25.952]: Ad quod breviter dicendum est cum communi sententia, rationem
causae non esse univocam, sed analogam.
32 Aristotle, Metaphysics 5.6.1016b3117a3 seems to envisage analogy as the weakest possible
form of unity or identity.
33 dm 27.1.11 [25.952]. See Aristotle, Categories 1.1a67. This line of thought also makes it a
moot question whether Surez ascribes priority of some kind to the efficient or the final
cause; for further discussion see Chapter 4, Section1 and Chapter 5, Section34 in this
volume.
34 dm 27.1.10 [25.952]: [M]ateria autem et forma non tam proprie influunt esse quam com-
ponunt illud per seipsas, et ideo secundum hanc rationem videtur nomen causae primo
dictum de efficiente; ad materiam autem vel formam esse translatum per quandam
proportionalitatem.
34 Fink
one of proportionality (analogia proportionalitatis) which on his, and on the

traditional mediaeval interpretation, consists in an equality of proportions
(A:B :: C:D) and is different from the so-called analogy of attribution (analogia
attributionis), which is an interpretational device used by Surez to account for
what is today sometimes referred to as focal meaning terms such as being and
others like it. The attribution in an analogy of attribution might be internal,
this is, for example, how being is attributed to substance and accident, or it
may be external as when an animal in its best condition is said to be healthy
and a vitamin is also said to be healthy this time not with reference to itself
(internally), but with respect to the health present in an animal in its best con-
dition (Latin: ad unum, Greek: ).35
Now, according to Surez in disp. 27, nothing prevents a name from being
said analogically of a plurality (analogum ad plura) but univocally of some
members of this plurality (univoce aliquibus convenire); however, he post-
pones discussion of this until his treatment of the analogy between being and
accident, as he says.36 This is, in fact, not a very precise reference. Surez is not
always quite precise in referring to himself, but he usually gives a bit more to go
by.37 On this specific occasion, however, I fear that the obscurity of the refer-
ence reveals an obscurity in the argument. Be this as it may, Surez must have
in mind his discussion in disp. 32 of how being is attributed to substance and
accident according to the so-called analogy of being (analogia entis). The
explanation offered in connection with this doctrine runs as follows: the anal-
ogy of being between substance and accident posits that both substance and
accidents are said to be through an internal denomination and through a cer-
tain relation obtaining between them.38 This, however, does not mean that a
substance compared to a substance or an accident compared to an accident
are also said to be analogically. Following a suggestion by Fonseca, Surez
maintains that even if being is said analogically with respect to the things of
which it is immediately predicated, it is nevertheless said univocally with
respect to things falling under the same genus or the same species just as
35 Jennifer E. Ashworth, Les thories de lanalogie du XII e au XVI e sicle (Paris, 2008) is the
best recent introduction to mediaeval theories of analogy; for Surez see in particular pp.
99103.
36 dm 27.1.11 [25.952]. The reference: ut inferius dicemus tractando de analogia entis et
accidentis.
37 See e.g. dm 1.5.14 [25.40]: De hac conditione satis dictum est supra, sectio 2; dm 6.9.22
[25.243]: ut sect. seq. latius explicabimus; dm 15.6.10 (Vivs 15.6.11) [25.522]: Sed huic
satisfactum est Disputat. 13. Sect.6.
38 dm 31.2.14 [26.323].
animal is said univocally of both man and horse and man is said univocally
of individual men.39 Likewise, substances among themselves or accidents
among themselves are said to be univocally,40 and so being is said of a plural-
ity (substance and accidents) analogically, namely as an analogy of attribu-
tion, but of some members of this plurality (e.g. accidents among themselves
or substances among themselves) univocally.
Whereas this is fairly clear for substances and accidents, it is not so clear
that this line of argument accounts for cause being said analogically of all
Aristotelian causes and univocally of some. First of all, the analogy between
the four Aristotelian causes seems to be proportional (see note 34 above per
quandam proportionalitatem), whereas the analogy of being, which Surez
invokes to explain how he talks analogically of all four Aristotelian causes, can-
not be proportional, as he explicitly states himself.41 So it seems he should have
argued that an analogy of proportionality might also do the job of an analogy
of attribution in the case of the term cause. However, he denies that propor-
tionality is sufficient to account for the kind of attribution at work in the anal-
ogy of being between substance and accident, and so it is not easy to see how
he could have taken this position.42 Or, the analogy is attributional, which the
locution per quandam proportionalitatem perhaps does not exclude, but in
that case the unity (or identity) in question would be accidental, as Surez is
careful to point out in another context.43 But Surez clearly claims a stronger
form of identity among the four Aristotelian causes than merely accidental
identity.
Secondly, it is weird to hold that one member of a genus is said to be what-
ever the genus is analogically whereas another member of the same genus is
said to be whatever the genus is univocally. This corresponds to the claim that
animal is said analogically of man and monkey but univocally of horse and
fish, which would be pretty strange. The point from the analogy of being was
that whereas a man and a colour are said to be analogically, Peter and Paul are
said to be [sc. man] univocally or green and red are said to be colour univo-
cally. The position that all members of a genus are called cause analogically,
but two members of this genus are called cause univocally is different from
the case with man and colour which are in different genera. For these
39 dm 31.2.20 [26.325].
40 dm 31.2.21 [26.325].
41 dm 28.3.11 [26.16].
42 dm 31.2.12 [26.32223].
43 dm 4.3.1 [25.125]: unum per se est simpliciter unum, per accidens vero tantum secundum
quid et per quandam proportionem ad unum per se.
36 Fink
reasons, Surez seems to me to fail in his attempt to apply his definition of

cause to all four Aristotelian causes. A gap remains between his definition of
cause and the four Aristotelian causes.
5 Causality is a Property of Being
The second reason for including a study of causality in the Metaphysical

Disputations, according to the prologue of disp. 12, was that causality is like
some property of real being as such (see note 11 above: proprietas quaedam
entis). Surez is not very explicit about what he means by this and his brevity
makes it difficult to pin down the systematic position of causality in his con-
ception of metaphysics. His clearest statement follows a few lines further down
in the prologue to disp. 12:
There is no being which is not either effect or cause.44
This formulation suggests that causality is some sort of transcendental term,

at least on the definition of transcendental which we find in two recent schol-
ars treatment of the transcendentals: X is a transcendental iff its notion is
included in the notion of every being.45 Now, Robert Schnepf has argued that
Surez thinks about causality as a transcendental so let me briefly summarize
his argument in what follows.46 According to Schnepf, two reasons speak in
favour of interpreting causality as a transcendental. First of all, Surez expressly
asserts that causality is like some property of being as such, because, as we
have just seen, there is no being which is not either effect or cause. This must
mean that the notion (ratio) of cause is included in the notion (ratio) of every
being (which is how Gracia and Novotn define transcendentality). Causality,
however, is not entirely similar to the convertible transcendentals one, true
or good. It is, as Schnepf argues, a disjunctive transcendental similar to
44 dm 12, prologue [25.37273]: [N]ullum autem est ens quod non sit vel effectus, vel causa.
45 Jorge E. Gracia and Daniel D. Novotn, Fundamentals in Surezs Metaphysics:
Transcendentals and Categories, in Interpreting Surez: Critical Essays, ed. Daniel
Schwartz (Cambridge, 2012), p. 21.
46 Robert Schnepf, Die Frage nach der Ursache (Gttingen, 2006), p. 237; see also Schnepf,
Zum kausalen Vokabular am Vorabend der wissenschaftlichen Revolution des 17.
Jahrhunderts: Der Ursachenbegriff bei Galilei und die aristotelische causa efficiens im
infinitefinite, actualpotential and others. In second place, there is an argu-

ment from the disposition of Surezs work. It is not a result of mere chance
that Surez places the De causis as a sequel to his treatment of the convertible
transcendentals and their opposites. He treats the causes just before introduc-
ing the first major distinction into his concept of being, the distinction between
infinite and finite being which marks the beginning of volume two (disp. 28),
because causality is a transcendental term applying to every being irrespective
of the infinitefinite divide.47 All this indicates, again on Schnepfs account,
that Surez thinks about causality as a transcendental.
But what sort of transcendental? As far as I know, Surez never explicitly
states that causality is a disjunctive transcendental. But it is, admittedly, not
easy to indicate what sort of transcendental causality would be if not a disjunc-
tive transcendental. The statement in disp. 12 that causality is like some prop-
erty of being (proprietas quaedam entis) obviously seems to suggest that
causality is a property (or passion) of being albeit a particular sort of property.
This is, I think, our best clue but it does conflict with some explicit statements
earlier in the Metaphysical Disputations in which Surez limits the term prop-
erty of being to designate only the three convertible transcendentals one,
true, good we shall return to his statement shortly. Before doing so, how-
ever, it should be noted that it would be mistaken to think that Surez always
applies his terminology consistently. Contrary to what one might expect from
a Scholastic philosopher, terms such as property (proprietas) or transcendental
(transcendentalis) are not terminologically fixed or unequivocally applied.48
This leaves room for some flexibility and a good deal of obscurity. Nonetheless,
the issue at hand is more than a mere quibble over an equivocal use of the term
proprietas. There are systematic implications in the claim that causality is a
property of being which we cannot neglect. Here is why.
Surez reduces the six traditional transcendentals (being, thing, something,
one, true, good) to three: one, true, good.49 Strictly speaking, these, and only
these, are called properties of being (proprietates or passiones entis). Disjunctive
transcendentals, however, do not qualify as genuine properties of being (num-
bering introduced by me):
47 See Schnepf, Die Frage nach der Ursache, pp. 23638.

48 See Gracia and Novotn, Fundamentals in Surezs Metaphysics, p. 21, note 5 for prop-
erty and the remarks in Rolf Darge, Surez transzendentale Seinsauslegung und die
Metaphysiktradition, (Studien und Texten zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters) 80
(Leiden and Boston, 2004), pp. 669 for transcendental and the different usage of Surez
with respect to these terms.
49 dm 3.2.3 [25.108].
38 Fink
Concerning the disjunctive [sc. transcendentals], finite or infinite and so

forth, it should be said that either (1) they are not properly speaking pas-
sions of being in general, but rather divisions of being, because they either
(1.a) essentially limit being itself, as being, or (1.b) neither of the divided
members suits being, unless as limited or determined with respect to some
special account of being as we will see with respect to infinite and finite
below; or (2) that they indicate different states of this very being, as being
actually or being potentially as we shall also have occasion to say further
below, where we will also explain in what manner a creatures existence is
not a passion of being; or indeed (3) that these disjunctive properties can
be reduced to the simple ones, as same or different to unity.50
Strictly speaking, the disjunctive transcendentals are either (1) divisions of

being, (2) indicative of states of being or (3) reducible to one of the three
proper transcendentals. If causality is, as Schnepf has argued, a disjunctive
transcendental, the question is, of course, where in this threefold division it fits
in. It is not clear to me how causality could belong to either (2) or (3). This
leaves (1) and so we could advance the suggestion that causality is a division of
being or rather that causality induces a division of being (divisio entis) between
cause and effect, and, as such, takes up a subordinate position in the ordering
of transcendental terms in Surezs metaphysics, that is, subordinate to the
three genuine properties of being (one, true, good). When in the prologue to
disp. 12 Surez says that he will treat the causes before we descend to the divi-
sions of being (priusquam ad divisiones ejus [sc. entis] descendamus) he
must mean that causality induces a division of being which is prior to the infi-
nite-finite division.51 In lack of any clear statement of his position, it would
seem that Surez places causality below the genuine properties of being, that
50 dm 3.2.11 [25.110]: De illis autem disjunctis, finitum vel infinitum, etc., dicendum est, vel
proprie non esse passiones entis in communi, sed potius esse divisiones ejus; quia vel
essentialiter contrahunt ipsum ens, quatenus ens est, vel certe neutrum membrum
dividens illi convenit, nisi ut contracto seu determinato ad specialem aliquam rationem
entis, ut de finito et infinito infra videbimus; vel certe significant diversos status ejusdem
entis, ut esse in actu, vel in potentia, ut infra etiam dicturi sumus; ubi etiam declarabimus
quomodo existentia creaturae non sit passio ejus. Vel certe hae proprietates disjunctae
reducuntur ad simplices, ut idem vel diversum ad unitatem.
51 dm 12, prologue [25.372]; full quote and translation above note 8. In the prologue to disp.
2, Surez describes the plan of his work in a similar way, dm 2, prologue [25.64]: it is
necessary first to bring out its [sc. beings] proper and adequate account and next its
properties and causes and this will take place in the first main part of this work. (neces-
sarium imprimis est, ejus [sc. entis] propriam et adaequatam rationem, ac deinde
is below the transcendentals, but nevertheless thinks about causality as a tran-

scendental property of being of some sort. His position is not clear.
Even if the position of causality in the ordering of the transcendentals
remains undetermined in Surezs account, it is nevertheless clear why it
belongs to the metaphysician to study causality. Since causality belongs to real
being as such, the adequate object of metaphysics, it falls on no other science
to investigate it. Its transcendental, or transcendental-like, character makes
causality a proper subject matter of metaphysical investigation.
6 A Science Studies the Causes of Its Object
The third, and last, reason why the investigation of the causes belongs to meta-
physics was that it falls on a science to study the causes of its object (ad scien-
tiam pertinet considerare causas sui objecti). This is a time honoured position
which one finds, for example, in Thomas Aquinas famous prologue to his com-
mentary on the Metaphysics:
It belongs, therefore, to a science to consider the proper causes of some

genus or other and the genus itself as for example natural science consid-
ers the principles of a natural body.52
The idea is not that the causes belonging to a given science are studied directly
and in themselves, the causes do not constitute the genus under investigation,
as Thomas explains, the natural body or being in general constitute possible
genera for scientific investigation.53 That it belongs to a science to study the
causes of its object, then, means that the scientist will search for the causes
pertaining to a given genus, presumably by finding and testing suitable defini-
tions, and then apply these causes as explanatory middle terms in demonstra-
tive proofs of the per se attributes of the genus.54 Surez does not fail to
proprietates ejus et causas exponere, et haec erit prior principalis pars hujus operis). The
first main part comprises volume one and disp. 127.
52 Thomas Aquinas, In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Expositio, Prooem., eds.
M.-R. Cathala and R. Spiazzi (Rome, 1950), pp. 12: Ejusdem autem scientiae est consid-
erare causas proprias alicujus generis et genus ipsum: sicut naturalis considerat principia
corporis naturalis.
53 Thomas, In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum, Prooem., pp. 12.
54 See Thomas, In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum 6.1.1149, p. 296.
40 Fink
mention a possible objection to this idea of a demonstrative procedure in

metaphysics. In one sense, that is, as a superior science, metaphysics demon-
strates and in this way conveys principles and causes in subordinate sciences
because it demonstratively teaches the middle terms of other sciences.55 But
in another sense, metaphysics cannot demonstratively prove the causes of its
own adequate object, because being the highest, most noble object it has no
higher reasons to ground it.56 So, the objection seems to go, how could meta-
physics study the causes of its adequate object if there are none. Surez coun-
ters this objection by distinguishing between a narrow and a broad sense of
cause:
It is replied that there are two kinds of causes: (1) some are proper and
inflows [sc. being] from the thing itself to the effect; (2) some are causes
more broadly speaking, which are rather called causes of cognition of the
thing a priori than causes of existence; and strictly speaking these are
called accounts of attributes or of properties which [sc. the attributes or
properties] are demonstrated of the subject.57
The object of metaphysics, being as being and this includes God,58 has no
causes in sense (1). But it has causes in sense (2) meaning that it is to a certain
extent intelligible to man. Surez points this out by maintaining that the object
of metaphysics has accounts, or intelligible structures, (rationes) and explana-
tory middle terms (media) which are distinct from conclusions concerning the
object of metaphysics, distinct, at least, with respect to our way of conceiving
(secundum modum concipiendi nostrum) and that by use of these a priori
demonstrations can be constructed concerning this object, for example that
God is perfect or that God is immortal from the fact that God is immaterial.59
Now, with respect to the four causes it is clear that they are causes in sense (1),
causes of existence. But Surezs claim has never been that these causes cause
the object of metaphysics; his claim is, as we have seen above (Section5), that
they belong to the object of metaphysics as some sort of properties. This should
55 dm 1.5.36 (Vivs 1.5.37) [25.48]: quoniam docet demonstrandi media altiora.

56 dm 1.5.37 (Vivs 1.5.38) [25.48].
57 dm 1.5.37 (Vivs 1.5.38) [25.48]: Respondetur duplices esse causas, alias proprias, et quae
re ipsa influunt in effectum, et alias latius dictas, quae sunt potius causae cognoscendi
rem a priori, quam existendi, et proprie dicuntur rationes attributorum seu proprietatum,
quae de subjecto demonstrantur. See also the brief statement in dm 1.1.27 (Vivs 1.1.29)
[25.1112].
58 dm 1.5.37 (Vivs 1.5.38) [25.48]: ens ut ens, quod Deum comprehendit.
59 dm 1.5.37 (Vivs 1.5.38) [25.48] and 1.1.27 (Vivs 1.1.29) [25.12].
mean that the four Aristotelian causes should be demonstrable as belonging

per se (in some sense) to the adequate object of metaphysics and in this way it
belongs to metaphysics to study and demonstrate the causes. According to
Thomas, as we have just seen, such a consideration of causes consists in formu-
lating and perhaps testing a definition and then proceed to apply it as an
explanatory middle term in further demonstrative proofs of attributes pertain-
ing to a given genus. This is arguably what Surez attempts to do in disp. 12 and
the remaining disputations concerned with the four Aristotelian causes (see
Section4.1 above). On a different note, Surez also points out that the science
of metaphysics applies at least three of the Aristotelian causes in demonstra-
tive proofs of some metaphysical truth: primarily the final cause, in second
place the efficient and in a certain manner the material.60
7 Aristotelian Causality?
The preceding sections raise, I think, a pertinent question to which an answer

should be attempted as a way of conclusion. The question is whether Surez
offers a satisfactory account of Aristotelian causality in disp. 12. If we resolve
this question into the following two: does Surez succeed in giving a unified
definition of the four Aristotelian causes and does he offer a precise account of
the systematic position of causality in his concept of metaphysics, the answer
would be negative. Let me briefly state why this seems to me to be the case.
Surez knows quite well that Aristotle never offers a single, unified defini-
tion of cause.61 He maintains, nevertheless, that such an account can be given
(Section4.1 above). It is therefore not because Aristotle offers a clear cut defini-
tion of cause and Surez cannot provide an adequate account of it that he
fails to provide a satisfactory account of Aristotelian causality. Further, I do not
want to argue that he fails because he offers no sufficiency proof of the number
of Aristotelian causes, why are there four and no more or no less, or because he
introduces the utterly un-Aristotelian influxus terminology of Neo-platonic
origin into his account of causality. These charges can be levelled against
Aristotle himself (the lack of a sufficiency proof) or against the Aristotelian
tradition which, at least, since the Liber de causis believed that influxus was a
60 dm 1.5.3839 and 41 (Vivs 1.5.3940 and 42) [25.489].

61 dm 12.2.1 [25.384]: Ex Aristotele nullam causae in communi definitionem habemus. It
could even be argued that Aristotle denies that such an account can be given, see
Metaphysics 3.2.996a18b26 concerned with the problem whether it belongs to one or
more sciences to study all kinds of causes.
42 Fink
genuine Aristotelian piece of doctrine or reconcilable with an Aristotelian

position. Rather, I believe Surez fails on the basis of his own criteria for a sat-
isfactory account of Aristotelian causality. The account he arrives at does not
amount to a unified definition of all four Aristotelian causes as I argued above
(Section4.2). When Surez maintains that his definition of cause applies both
analogically and univocally to the four Aristotelian causes we witness a silent,
that is, an un-admitted breakdown in his attempt to show that his definition
fits the four causes.
As to the second sub-question, whether Surez offers a precise account of
causality as a property of being, I argued in Section5 that this is not the case. It
remains undetermined what sort of property of being he takes causality to be
and how causality fits into his ordering of transcendental terms (properties of
being, divisions of being and the order obtaining among them). Thus, it
remains unclear how causality fits into the object studied by the science of
metaphysics.
Whether we should think about Surez as the tragic hero who paves the way
for the demise of what he holds most dear while striving to save it, or we should
take his attempt to find a place for Aristotelian causality within metaphysics as
an instance of Scholastic doctrine collapsing under its own weight, I do not
know.62 My aim in this chapter has certainly not been to diminish or deny the
importance of Surez as a philosopher. I hope that the negative verdict I have
reached on the specific question concerning Aristotelian causality in the
Metaphysical Disputations will spur others to correct me and free Surez of the
allegations raised against him here.63
62 See Helen Hattab, Surezs Last Stand for the Substantial Form, in The Philosophy of
Francisco Surez, eds. Benjamin Hill and Henrik Lagerlund (Oxford, 2012), p. 101 (tragic
figure) and Walter R. Ott, Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy
(Oxford and New York, 2009), p. 20 (internal collapse).
63 I would like to thank the following for very useful comments: David Bloch, Sten Ebbesen,
Heine Hansen, Ana Mara Mora-Mrquez, Sydney Penner, Stephan Schmid, Jacob
Schmutz, Robert Schnepf and the anonymous reader of the press. I am, of course, respon-
sible for any remaining shortcomings.
chapter 2
Material Causality Dissolving a Paradox:

The Actuality of Prime Matter in Surez
Erik kerlund
In the course of his treatment of material causes and material causation,

Surez writes that:
It should therefore be said, first, that matter is not called pure potency
with respect to every metaphysical act, that is, because it does not include
any metaphysical act. For this cannot be true.1
For a person familiar with traditional Aristotelian philosophy, this might appear
a bit paradoxical. As is evident from this quote, Surez does indeed consider
prime matter to be pure potency (pura potentia). However, the status of being
in pure potency or in pure potentiality does not exclude matter being actual
metaphysically. It does include it being in pure potency physically, though, as
we will see.
In this way, Surez solves or rather dissolves what has been called the
central paradox that was attached to prime matter within Scholastic philoso-
phy. This paradox is expressed in the following way by Robert Pasnau:
By common consensus, forms are what give a thing its nature, or more
generally its properties and characteristics. Yet, also by common consen-
sus, prime matter is that which underlies all forms and so is of itself free of
those forms. So how can prime matter be real that is, how can it exist
without having some character? Surely nothing can exist without existing
in some way or another.2
In what follows, we will see how Surez steers clear of this paradox exactly by
separating metaphysical act from physical act.
1 dm 13.5.8 (Vivs 13.5.9) [25.416]: Dicendum est ergo primo, materiam non vocari puram
potentiam respectu omnis actus metaphysici, id est, quia nullum actum metaphysicum
includat: hoc enim verum esse non potest.
2 Robert Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes 12741671 (Oxford, 2011), p. 36.

44 kerlund
In order to understand just how he does this, we shall follow Surezs treat-
ment of the material cause of substances which he equates with prime mat-
ter from his treatment of causes in general, through the basic distinctions
and theses concerning prime matter, to his conclusion that it indeed includes
some actuality. We shall also see where this places prime matter with respect
to substantiality, as well as what his view on prime matter implies for heavenly
bodies and their heavenly matter.
1 A Cause among the Causes
Surezs definition of a cause is that it is a principle in itself influencing being into

another (principium per se influens esse in aliud).3 Under this general heading,
Surez then gives a number of different subdivisions of the causes. Since these are
made before his treatment of the material causes and material causation, the way in
which the material causes are ordered and treated among causes generally sets the
stage, so to say, for his proper treatment of material causes (although, of course, this
preliminary treatment of material causes is also at least partly dependent on his later,
proper treatment of material causes and material causation there is an interesting
reciprocal relationship between these treatments).
There are particularly two contexts in which material causes are included in
different constellations together with other causes, namely, (i) as contributing
real influence when they cause (together with formal and efficient causes, but
in contrast to final causes), (ii) as causing by intrinsically constituting the effect
(as the formal cause, but in contrast to the efficient and final causes which
influence extrinsically).
So, first, the material cause contributes real influence when it causes.4
Another division of the causes can be thought out [sc. which is] more
immediate [sc. than the division into four causes]. For the three causes
beside the final cause are alike in that they contribute by real influence to
the being of the effect, and therefore require real existence for their [sc.
respective kind of] causality, as we will see later, whereas the final cause
influences intentionally, and can therefore influence before it exists.5
3 dm 12.2.3 (Vivs 12.2.4) [25.384]. Cf. Ch. 1 above, though. See also Erik kerlund, Nisi temere
agat: Francisco Surez on Final Causes and Final Causation, Dissertation (Uppsala, 2011),
Ch. 1.
4 Cf. kerlund, Nisi temere agat, p. 33.
5 dm 12.3.19 [25.394]: posset alia divisio causae immediatior excogitari: nam tres aliae causae
praeter finalem, conveniunt in hoc, quod conferunt ad esse effectus per realem influxum,
Material Causality Dissolving A Paradox 45
In this division, which he presents as one alternative (of many) to the fourfold
division of causes, Surez singles out final causes from the other three kinds
among them, material causes as not contributing to the effect by real influ-
ence. This also means that final causes, as the only kind of causes, do not need
real existence in order to cause, but can cause before they come into existence.
In contradistinction to this, a material cause does need real existence in order
to cause. Furthermore, this real influence which the material cause exerts
hinges on the real existence of the material cause itself. Hence, the material
cause must exist, in some sense.
Second, a material cause causes by constituting the effect, rather than influ-
encing it from the outside.6
For there are some principles that constitute a thing intrinsically, others
are extrinsic, which remain outside of it and flow being into the thing, as
the final and the efficient [sc. principles].7
The efficient [sc. cause] most properly influences being; matter and form,
however, do not as properly influence being as composing this by them-
selves. And therefore, for this reason, it seems that the name cause is
primarily said of the efficient [sc. cause]. To matter and form, it is trans-
ferred by some sort of proportionality.8
In this division, final and efficient causes are grouped together as these kinds of
causes remain something else, something distinct, from that which they cause.
In contradistinction to this, then, the formal and the material causes form
and matter, as they are referred to in the quote above cause that which they
cause by constituting the effect. They are called causes, then, not in the
strictest manner, but only by proportionality. Indeed, their manner of caus-
ing is a bit strange; they cause by forming part of that which is their effect.9
ideoque requirunt existentiam realem ad suas causalitas, ut postea videbimus: causa autem
finalis influit intentionaliter: ideoque causare potest antequam in se realiter existat.
6 Cf. kerlund, Nisi temere agat, pp. 38f.
7 dm 12.1.5 [25.374]: Sunt enim quaedam principia intrinsece constituentia rem: alia vero sunt
extrinseca, quae esse influunt in rem, et extra illam manent, ut finis, et efficiens.
8 dm 27.1.10 [25.952]: efficiens propriissime influit esse: materia autem et forma non tam pro-
prie influunt esse, quam componunt illud per se ipsas, et ideo secundum hanc rationem
videtur nomen causae primo dictum de efficiente: ad materiam autem vel formam esse
translatum per quandam proportionalitem.
9 The inverted commas around the words cause and effect are warranted here, it seems,
based on Surezs view that these words are used analogically with respect to the material
causes and their effects.
46 kerlund
From these two alternative divisions of the causes, which Surez gives us in
his general treatment of the causes, we can form some preliminary conception
of material causation, then. The material cause must be real (from i). Further,
it causes by means of forming part of its effect, indeed, this effect is the whole
of which it is a part (from ii). The material cause, then, is a real part of a whole,
and this is its way of causing.
We have already come some way to understand in what way prime matter is
actual. However, with regards to prime matter, we have yet to come to prime.
Further, it remains to understand the relation between prime matter and
material causes.
2 Prime Matter as the Material Cause of Substance
In order to account for material causation, one must first answer what matter
the cause involved in material causation is.
And because the nature of causing cannot be understood, unless the

entity of matter is understood, we shall first investigate whether there is
matter, thereafter of what kind this entity is, after this about its proper-
ties, and finally regarding its causality.10
We cannot explain material causation and its nature of causing unless we

first know what entity this matter has.11
There is a clear line of investigation here, then, from what kind of thing some-
thing is to what kind of causality it can exert. Agere sequitur esse the agency
follows being is an old Scholastic saying that comes to mind.12
It should be noted, though, that Surez here only speaks of matter generally.
We have yet to come to prime matter, more specifically. However, once we have
arrived at prime matter and its way of causing, we can extrapolate to arrive at
the other kinds of material causation. Indeed, Surez even omits a general dis-
cussion of material causation because of this.
10 dm 13 prologue [25.395]: Et quia ratio causandi intelligi non potest, non intellecta enti-
tate materiae, investigabimus prius, an sit materia, deinde qualis sit entitas, et essentia
ejus; postea de proprietatibus; ac tandem de causalitate ejus.
11 dm 13.4.1 [25.409]: non possumus causalitatem materiae, et rationem causandi declarare,
nisi prius sciamus quid entitatis habeat ipsa materia.
12 See e.g. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles 3.69, eds. not indicated (Turin and Rome,
1946), p. 304: agere sequitur ad esse in actu.
I leave aside a general discussion of the material cause, as this abstracts

from a substantial or accidental cause, because the nature of this cause is
best discerned in prime matter. And if the nature [sc. of the material
cause] were to be shown on account of this [sc. prime matter], it would
be easy to understand in the remaining [sc. kinds of material cause] by
proportion.13
By reaching prime matter, and its special kind of causing, all kinds of material
causes and material causation would be accounted for.
So we are on the lookout for prime matter. When he goes about finding it,
Surez makes a number of distinctions between different senses in which
matter can be taken.14 The kind of matter that we are looking for is that which
underlies change, or which is the same something in which forms inhere. It
is a subject of change, that which remains throughout a transmutation. The
prime in prime matter tells us that this is what ultimately remains in the
change, and therefore does not require any further subject to inhere in.
And it is settled, if we speak generally and as though formally of prime

matter that is, of the first subject of changes or forms, abstracting from
the question of what kind such a subject would be, or what kind of form
would be received in it that it is just as evident that there is prime mat-
ter as it is evident that there is change between different forms, because
all change presupposes some subject, as was shown above and as experi-
ence confirms.15
Matter is that which underlies a change, and which is the same thing that
in which forms inhere (because a change is the changing of one form to
another). So we are here talking of changing, i.e., sublunary, things.16
13 dm 13 prologue [25.395]: Praetermitto disputationem in communi de causa materiali, ut

abstrahit a causa substantiae, vel accidentis: quoniam potissima ratio hujus causae cerni-
tur in materia prima: et, si in illa declaretur, facile erit reliqua cum proportione
intelligere.
14 In dm 13.1.13 [25.3956].
15 dm 13.1.4 [25.396]. Atque hinc constat, si in communi, et quasi formaliter loquamur de
materia prima, id est, de primo subjecto mutationum, vel formarum, abstrahendo a
quaestione quale sit tale subjectum, qualisve forma quae in eo recipitur, sic tam evidens
esse dari materiam primam, quam est evidens, dari in rebus mutationes ad varias formas:
quia omni mutationi aliquod subjectum supponitur, ut supra probatum est, et experi-
mento constat.
16 Cf. dm 13.1.5 [25.397]. Unchanging, celestial or supra lunar things also have matter, but of
another kind. See below.
48 kerlund
And although one might think of this as there being a hierarchy of this
inhering of the form, there must be some ultimate subject, which does
not inhere in anything further, precluding an infinite chain.17 This is prime
matter.
As therefore every natural composite is in itself so, that in itself as a whole

it does not depend on any subject in the order of material causes beside
itself, it necessarily has within itself some subject which is primary with
respect to all other entities, of which it consists, and which are in the
subject. So it is therefore evident that there is prime matter or a first sub-
ject in natural things.18
It might be that some form could be seen as inhering in something that then
inheres in something else. But this chain cannot go on indefinitely. Hence,
there must be something in every natural thing that does not inhere in any-
thing else, and this is what is called prime matter.
One rather amusing argument for some underlying subject in all natural
things is the example Surez gives of eating. For in this case, either something
of the food remains in the animal that is nourished, or nothing remains. But in
the latter case, all talk of nourishment is superfluous, as this is rather an anni-
hilation of the food. So something remains, and this is the common, underly-
ing subject.19
A further question is, then: does this ultimate subject differ between things?
Or isit the same in all things? As prime matter is that which remains through-
out change that which receives different forms there cannot be different
prime matter in different things that succeed each other. Furthermore, what
separates between different things, what makes different things different, is
not prime matter this is what material things have in common but rather
forms. Different material things differ as to their proximate matter, though.
17 On a less fundamental level, there is, e.g., proximate matter (materia proxima) (cf. dm
13.1.3 [25.396]).
18 dm 13.1.4 [25.396]: Cum ergo omne naturale compositum ita per se sit, ut secundum se
totum non pendeat in genere causae materialis ab aliquo subjecto, quod extra ipsum sit:
necesse est ut intra se habeat aliquod subjectum, quod sit primum respectu omnium
aliarum entitatum ex quibus constat, et in subjecto sunt. Sic igitur evidens est dari mate-
riam primam, seu subjectum primum in rebus naturalibus.
19 dm 13.1.8 [25.397]. This argument is, of course, related to Surezs view that each thing can
only be actuated by one substantial form; cf. dm 13.3.10 (Vivs 13.3.11) [25.405] as well as
dm 15.10 [25.53657].
More on this below. Hence, prime matter is not something that is multiplied,
but only one.
It should therefore be said that prime matter, or the material cause of all
sublunary things, is only one.20
From the common and mutual transmutation of sublunary things, we

may demonstrate that there is prime matter.21
The essences of these material things are diverse and dissimilar as to

their forms, but similar as to their prime matter.22
Indeed, if one would propose that there were many first principles of the mate-
rial order, one could always go one step further and ask: what is the common
subject of these. This is what Surez does, e.g., when refuting Empedocles view
of a multitude of fundamental elements.
It is therefore necessary to acknowledge that there is in these elements

some subject which is prior to these, and which is common to them all,
by reason of which they can mutually change into one another. These [sc.
elements] are therefore not first material causes, but there is another
prior to them of which they consist.23
Let us recapitulate the arguments that lead Surez to the point of postulat-
ing prime matter. He set out to investigate material causation, generally,
among sublunary things. The primary kind of material causation is the
causation of substances; furthermore, he wants to find the most funda-
mental causation of this kind. But in order to explore causation, we must
first determine what cause exerts this causation. In this way, Surez arrives
at prime matter, the most fundamental material principle and ultimate
subject of material things.
20 dm 13.2.8 [25.401]: Dicendum ergo est primam materiam seu materialem causam
omnium rerum sublunarium esse tantum unam.
21 dm 13.2.8 [25.401]: ex communi et mutua transmutatione rerum sublunarium, ostendi-
mus dari communem materiam.
22 dm 13.2.9 [25.402]: essentias harum rerum materialium esse diversas ac dissimiles quoad
formas, similes vero quoad primam materiam.
23 dm 13.2.7 [25.401]: ergo necesse est fateri, etiam in ipsis elementis esse aliquod subjectum
prius ipsis, et commune illis, ratione cujus possint mutuo transmutari: ergo non sunt illa
causae primae materiales, sed datur alia prior quibus illa constant.
50 kerlund
3 The Actuality of Prime Matter
It remains to be seen, though, exactly what prime matter is, and what relation
to form it has.
As we have seen, prime matter is the cause of a material substance as it com-
poses this substance, together with the substantial form that inheres in matter.
But then form, in one sense, presupposes matter (as form inheres in matter);
matter must, then, be something, and have its own, separate existence.
Matter, as presupposed by form and as it is the subject of begetting, is not

wholly nothing, otherwise the begetting would be from nothing. It is there-
fore some created entity, and therefore an actual and existing entity, since
creation does not end up in anything but an actual existence and entity.24
Matter is a real entity really separable from whichever particular, deter-

minate form [sc. it may have], which is sufficiently [sc. shown] as it is
distinct from the form in the thing itself. They are not, however, only mod-
ally distinct, because the substantial form is not a mode but a true thing
having proper entity. Wherefore [sc. the form] can in some cases naturally
be conserved separately from matter, as the rational soul, and any form
whatever can be conserved separately [sc. from matter] by [sc. Gods]
absolute power. Matter is therefore distinguished from form as a thing
from another thing. And this is confirmed, for the composition of the sub-
stance from matter and form is real and physical, but it is not from a thing
and a mode therefore from two things.25
In making the point that matter has its own entity in this last quote, Surez
employs quite heavy metaphysical machinery. This is particularly the case with
his reference to two of the three kinds of distinctions that he recognizes: modal
24 dm 13.4.13 [25.413]: materia ut praesupponitur formae, et est subjectum generationis, non

est omnino nihil, alias generatio fieret ex nihilo: est ergo aliqua entitas creata: ergo entitas
actualis et existens, quia creatio non nisi ad actualem entitatem, et existentem terminatur.
25 dm 13.4.5 [25.410]: materia est entitas realiter separabilis a qualibet forma particulari deter-
minata, quod satis est ut a forma sit in re ipsa distincta: non distinguuntur autem solum
modaliter: nam forma substantialis non est modus, sed res vera habens propriam entita-
tem: unde interdum naturaliter etiam conservari potest separata a materia, ut anima ratio-
nalis, et per potentiam absolutam quaelibet forma potest separata conservari. Distinguitur
ergo materia a forma tanquam res a re. Et confirmatur, nam compositio substantiae ex
materia et forma est realis et physica, et non ex re et modo, ergo ex duabus rebus.
and real (the third being rational).26 Surez stresses that the distinction between
matter and form is real, and not merely modal (not even considering it being
rational, at this point). This means that there is a mutual independence between
matter and form (whereas a modal distinction would mean that there is asym-
metrical independence). It is noteworthy that he argues for this mutual indepen-
dence merely from the side of form being independent from matter. It might be
that this is easier to argue for, and that he therefore chooses to sum up his argu-
ment for the mutual independence by referring to his argument for the indepen-
dence of form from matter. Or it might be that he thinks he has already sufficiently
shown the independence of matter from form as prime matter by its very
nature cannot depend on a further subject and that he therefore perceives that
the independence he has to argue for is the independence of form from matter.
Be that as it may, Surez makes it absolutely clear that the independence of mat-
ter and form goes both ways, as from two things to one another.
There is one dependence which matter has, though: on God. God directly
creates matter since there can be no further subject from which matter can
be generated and only God can destroy it, by withholding his conserving
action towards it.
Matter does not have real existence or essence from itself, without an
efficient cause, but it is fitting that it receives this being from another,
that is, from God.27
Matter is made by creation, and it could not come into being any other
wayIt is not producible by begetting. This is evident, because matter
cannot be produced from a subject, as it is the first subject.28
Matter is incorruptibleGod, however, can destroy matter through his

power, not by corruption but by annihilation, by suspending the influx by
which He conserves it and the concurrence by which He introduces form
26 For the three kinds of distinctions, see dm 7 [25.25074]; also translated as Surez, On the
Various Kinds of Distinctions, trans. Cyril Vollert (1947; repr. Milwaukee, wi, 2007). Cf. Simo
Knuuttila, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy (London and New York, 1993) and Stephen
Menn, Surez, Nominalism and Modes, in Hispanic Philosophy in the Age of Discovery,
ed. Kevin White (Washington d.c., 1997), pp. 22656.
27 dm 13.4.15 [25.413]: Materia non habet ex se actualem entitatem vel existentiam sine
causa efficiente, sed oportet ut ab alio, scilicet a Deo, hoc esse recipiat.
28 dm 13.4.16 [25.4134]: materiam factam esse per creationem, nec potuisse aliter fieri []
per generationem, producibilis non sit. Quod est evidens, quia materia, cum sit primum
subjectum, non potest ex subjecto produci.
52 kerlund
in it. This, however, is only by the extrinsic power of God, wherefore it

does not hinder that matter is perpetual and incorruptible of itself.29
There is some composition in matter, though, although this composition does

not amount to a real distinction as that between prime matter and substan-
tial form but merely a rational distinction, i.e., a distinction made only on the
conceptual level. For the existence of prime matter is not given by and of itself,
but rather from God in a free act of creation,30 as we have seen. Hence, we can
distinguish what prime matter is from the fact that it is. In other words, we can
distinguish the essence of prime matter from its existence. But this is not a real,
nor a modal, distinction, but only a distinction from the side of thinking, as the
existence of matter is nothing but the actual essence of prime matter.
Prime matter also has in and of itself entity or actuality of existence dis-
tinct from the existence of form [] The basis of this conclusion, suppos-
ing the preceding, is that existential being does not add any thing or real
mode beyond the essential entity, as actual and posited outside of its
causes, because, in virtue of being conceived as actual outside its causes,
the entity is conceived as existing.31
Matter, as it has an actual entity of essence, distinct from form, also has
its proper existential being, which it retains throughout all forms.32
In the first quote, Surez refers to his thesis that there is merely a rational
distinction that is, neither a real nor a modal distinction between the
essence and the existence of a thing. Hence, matter is not really distinct from
essence and existence, although we might conceive of it in this way. Matter is,
29 dm 13.4.17 [25.414]: materiae entitatem esse incorruptibilem [] Deus autem per suam
potentiam posset materiam destruere, non corrumpendo, sed annihilando, suspendendo
influxum, quo illam conservat, et concursum quo in illa formam introducit: hoc autem
solum est per potentiam extrinsecam Dei: unde non impedit quominus materia de se
perpetua et incorruptibilis sit.
30 For Gods freedom in the creation of things outside of Himself, see dm 20.6.6 (Vivs
20.5.6) [25.780].
31 dm 13.4.13 [25.4123]: Materia prima etiam habet in se et per se entitatem seu actualita-
tem existentiae distinctam ab existentia formae [] Fundamentum hujus conclusionis
supposita praecedenti est, quia esse existentiae nullam rem vel modum realem addit
supra entitatem essentiae ut actualem, et extra causas positam, quia, hoc ipso quod enti-
tas concipitur actualis extra causas, concipitur existens.
32 dm 13.4.13 [25.413]: materiam, sicut habet entitatem essentiae actualem, distinctam a
forma, ita habere suum proprium esse existentiae, quod retinet sub quacunque forma.
rather, one and indivisible as we saw above and not separable into parts, as
a material thing is separable into form and matter.33 It is precisely the compari-
son to this latter kind of separability that leads some to posit the same kind of
real separability within matter itself, according to Surez.
The cause of the error is the difference between physical and metaphysi-
cal essential composition, which tend to be compared in this, as one
exists in the thing, the other [sc. merely] in concepts.34
Essence and existence are merely two sides of the same thing; they both come
together in the thing or entity, such as matter. Matter is actual, one and indivisible.
The reality and actuality of prime matter, which Surez stresses, raises the
question, though: how can Surez even allow prime matter to be called pure
potency? For, as was seen in the quote at the beginning of this paper, Surez
does agree that prime matter is pure potency. He treats this as the received
view, and one that he does not want to challenge.
It is not for us, therefore, to deny that matter is pure potency, as all phi-
losophers seem to agree on this assertion, but [sc. rather] to explicate the
true meaning of this expression.35
As we have seen, though, he is also quite insistent on the actuality of prime

matter, that it is something created separately from form, etc. How can he hold
these views simultaneously? In order to answer this objection, Surez makes a
distinction between an absolute and a relative conception of pure potency.
As therefore the difficulties touched upon in the preceding section are to

be solved, and the way of speaking of the philosophers is to be explained,
and all ambiguities of the terms lifted, I point out that the word act can
33 He develops this view, and argues for it, in dm 31 [26.224312]. See especially dm 31.1
[26.2248], where Surez concludes that essence and existence are not distinguished in
the thing itself, as the essence, taken abstractly and precisely, as it is in potency, is distin-
guished from the actual existence, as a non-being from a being (dm 31.1.13 [26.228]: exis-
tentiam et essentiam non distingui in re ipsa, licet essentia, abstracte et praecise concepta,
ut est in potentia, distinguatur ab existentia actuali, tanquam non ens ab ente.).
34 dm 13.3.20 (Vivs 13.3.21) [25.408]: differentia inter essentialem compositionem physi-
cam, ac metaphysicam, quas velle in hoc aequiparare, causa est erroris, cum altera in
rebus, altera in conceptibus existat.
35 dm 13.5.1 [25.414]: non est enim nobis negandum quin materia sit pura potentia, cum in
ea assertione philosophi omnes convenire videantur: sed verus sensus illius locutionis
explicandus.
54 kerlund
be taken in many ways. Because it is sometimes said absolutely, some-

times respectively. For sometimes it is called an act because it actuates
something, in the way form is the act of matter. And this I call a respective
act, because it is an act of something different. But sometimes it is called
an act because it is some act, and not a potency, although it does not actu-
ate anything else, as God is called act. This I call act said absolutely.36
Actually, while there can be such a thing as pure actuality in an absolute sense,
pure potency can only be understood relatively in relation to form as pure
potency absolutely would also mean non-existence.37
The use of words should be considered, though; in one way matter is sig-
nified rigorously, as when it is called pure potency, in another, if it is said
tobe in pure potency. For the first is simply true, and has a legitimate,
explained sense; the second, however, is at least ambiguous. For to be in
pure potency rigorously signifies the privation of actual existence.
Wherefore it is only said of that which actually is nothing, but which can
be. This cannot be said of matter after it is created or co-created. For
although matter is almost nothing, it is not nothing, but a true thing, as
we have said above with Augustine.38
Matter is thus a something, something actual with certain properties. Together

with forms, it constitutes material substances and makes a real contribution to
36 dm 13.5.7 (Vivs 13.5.8) [25.416]. Ut autem solvantur difficultates tactae superiori

sectione, et explicetur modus 1oquendi philosophorum, et omnes ambiguitas termino-
rum auferatur, adverto nomen actus multipliciter sumi posse, nam interdum absolute,
interdum respective dicitur: aliquando enim dicitur actus, quia actuat aliquid: quomodo
forma est actus materiae. Et hunc voco actum respectivum, quia est actus alterius.
Aliquando vero dicitur actus, quia in se est actuale quid, et non potentiale, quanvis nihil
aliud actuet; quo modo Deus dicitur actus: et hunc voco actum absolute dictum.
37 At dm 13.5.18 (Vivs 13.5.19) [25.419], Surez makes the comparison to goodness and bad-
ness, where absolute goodness, but not absolute badness, is possible.
38 dm 13.5.11 (Vivs 13.5.12) [25.417]: Est autem propter usum verborum considerandum,
aliud in rigore significari, cum dicitur materia pura potentia; aliud, si dicatur esse inpura
potentia. Primum enim simpliciter verum est, et habet legitimum sensum expositum;
secundum vero, ut minimum, est ambiguum; nam esse in pura potentia inrigore signifi-
cat privationem actualis existentiae: unde solum dicitur de eo quod actu nihil est, esse
tamen potest, quod dici non potest de materia, postquam creata, vel concreata est. Nam
licet sit prope nihil, non tamen nihil, sed vera res, ut supra cum Augustino dicebamus.
them. Furthermore, it receives its existence directly from God, independently

of form.39 It seems, then, that matter itself starts to look awfully much like a
substance.40
4 The Partial Substantiality of Prime Matter
One alternative to prime matter being a substance is that it would be a body.

This is not the case, however, as a body is corruptible, and prime matter is that
which underlies all change and in this sense is incorruptible.
The material cause in its universal and first order is not one of the sensi-
ble bodies or elements, which are affected by contrary qualities. [] For
if these elements and sensible bodies would mutually change substan-
tially, none of them could be the first subject of change.41
Neither is prime matter divisible or extended, in itself.42

Another alternative is that it would be a substance. However, Surez is not
prepared to accept this right away. Instead, he finds a solution in the fact that
prime matter is intrinsically directed toward union with substantial forms. In
line with this, he sometimes talks of the partial essence and partial existence of
prime matter.
Actual essence and existence are not separate in the thing, but in mind.
Therefore matter, as it is an actual entity really distinguished from form,
39 In dm 15, on the formal cause of substance, Surez goes to even greater length to stress the
independence of matter from form. For example, in dm 15.9 [25.5326], Surez affirms
that matter can be conserved by God separately from form, just as form can be conserved
separately from matter (dm 15.9.5 [25.533]: potest Deus sicut formam sine materia, ita et
materiam sine forma conservare). See also Dennis Des Chene, Physiologia: Natural
Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Thought (Ithaca, 1996), p. 128.
40 For a history of this kind of conclusion concerning Surezs view, as well as a critical
assessment of it, see Daniel Heider, Surez on Material Substance: Reification of Intrinsic
Principles and the Unity of Material Composites, Organon F 15 (2008), pp. 42338.
41 dm 13.3.5 (Vivs 13.3.6) [25.403]: causam materialem in suo ordine universalem et primam
non esse aliquod ex sensibilibus corporibus seu elementis, quae contrariis qualitatibus
afficiuntur. [] nam si haec elementa, et omnia corpora sensibilia invicem transmutantur
substantialiter, nullum eorum potest esse primum subjectum transmutationis.
42 dm 13.3.13 (Vivs 13.3.14) [25.406].
56 kerlund
in its entity includes a proper partial existence, also really distinguished

from the partial existence of form.43
We are of the opinion that matter has its partial existence, and existence
is not distinguished from the side of the thing from an actual essence, but
only in our way of conceiving.44
This partial essence and existence has to do with the intrinsic relation toward
form which prime matter has (just as the form of material things are naturally
directed toward being united to matter).
This means that matter also has partial substantiality. It is a substance as it
underlies change, and does not change with it, but it is partial as it is naturally
conjoined to some form.
Prime matter essentially composes a substance. [] A substance is not

composed, however, but from substances, although incomplete. Likewise,
a composite substance adds some thing besides form, and this is not acci-
dental; it is therefore something substantial. Finally, prime matter, in the
way in which it is a being, is not in a subject, for this is maximally repug-
nant to it as it is the first subject.45
Surez must conclude, then, that prime matter is a substance, although it is

only a partial substance as it is intrinsically directed toward union with sub-
stantial forms (which are also called partial substances).
It is responded that matter is a substance [] For it is repugnant that

there exists a real and receptive potency with respect to the whole class
43 dm 13.4.13 [25.413]: existentia, et essentia actualis non re, sed ratione, distinguuntur:
ergo materia ut est actualis entitas realiter distincta a forma, in sua entitate includit
propriam partialem existentiam, in re etiam distinctam ab existentia partiali
formae.
44 dm 13.5.6 (Vivs 13.5.7) [25.415]: nos opinemur habere materiam suam partialem existen-
tiam: et existentiam non distingui a parte rei ab actuali essentia, sed tantum modo conci-
piendo nostro.
45 dm 13.4.4 [25.410]: materia prima essentialiter componit substantiam. [] Substantia
autem non componitur nisi ex substantiis, saltem incompletis. Item substantia compos-
ita aliquid rei addit praeter formam, et illud non est accidens: est ergo aliquid substan-
tiale. Denique materia prima eo modo quo est ens, non est in subjecto: nam hoc maxime
repugnat illi, cum sit primum subjectum.
and width of substance, as it covers complete as well as incomplete [sc.

substances].46
Surez has thus arrived at the view that prime matter is a substance, albeit
an incomplete substance. With this conclusion, he has arrived at a high
degree of symmetry between prime matter and substantial form, which he
will treat later on. For substantial forms are also called partial substances.47
And just as prime matter is created independently of forms, but is intrinsi-
cally directed toward union with forms, so also the substantial forms of
material things can be conserved without forms, but are naturally united to
matter.48
5 Heavenly Bodies
One important test case for trying out and possibly revising our understanding
of what Surez means by prime matter is heaven and heavenly bodies. As we
have seen, the substantial change of things is an important reason for Surez
holding the view that there really is prime matter. When we come to the heav-
enly bodies, however, there is no substantial change, because heavenly bodies
are incorruptible and always remain the same. Is there, then, any need for
prime matter in heavenly bodies?
Surez admits as much, that in the order of knowledge, we first come to
know of prime matter, and deduce its existence, from the changeability of
all things. When we widen our scope to the heavenly bodies, however, it
becomes obvious that this changeability is a specific property of the sublu-
nary world. What we have to do, then, is to see whether the arguments for
the existence of prime matter hold when the factor of changeability has
been taken away.
So far we have only explicated the material cause with respect to general
and corruptible bodies, in which it is more known by reason of their
46 dm 13.5.19 (Vivs 13.5.20) [25.420]: respondetur, materiam esse substantiam [] Repugnat

enim dari potentiam realem, et receptivam respectu totius generis et latitudinis substan-
tiae, ut completam et incompletam comprehendit.
47 For form as an incomplete or partial substance, see dm 15.5.1 [25.517] and Helen Hattab,
Descartes on Forms and Mechanisms (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 4253.
48 On forms of material things being naturally conjoined to matter, see dm 15.9 [25.5326]
and Kara Richardsons chapter in this volume.
58 kerlund
continuous change. Now it remains to be seen whether there is also this

kind of cause in incorruptible bodies.49
One could object, though, that heaven is incorporeal, together with the things that
are in it. This would do away with the need for matter.50 However, although one
might think that heaven is incorporeal, as it is incorruptible, the implication does
not go this way. For even though immaterial things are necessarily incorruptible, it
is not necessarily so that incorruptible things are immaterial.51 Furthermore, there
are positive reasons for heaven and the things that are in it to be composed of mat-
ter and form. The main reason for this is that heavenly things have quantity.
Nonetheless, however, insofar as we can judge from signs and effects, it

seems to be true that heaven is composed from matter and form. First,
then, because all accidents that follow upon matter are in it (excepting
corruptibility) as quantity, which is of the same nature in all bodies.
Thereafter, there is scarcity and density in heaven, which are defined
through matter. For that is dense which has much matter under little
quantity.52
As will be seen below, quantity is the only accident that necessarily accompa-
nies matter.
Surez refers to corruptibility of material things above. When searching for
prime matter the ultimate material cause of substance we first arrive at it
through reflecting on the constitution of corruptible, material things. This is
only logical in an order of knowledge, as these are best known to us, and it is
through corruptibility and change that as we saw we first arrive at a knowl-
edge of prime matter. However, once we come to heavenly bodies, it becomes
clear that corruptibility, although an important feature of many material
49 dm 13.10.1 [25.434]. Hactenus solum explicuimus materialem causam in substantiis gen-

erabilibus et corruptibilibus, in quibus notior est ob continuam transmutationem; nunc
videndum superest, an sit etiam hoc genus causae in corporibus incorruptibilibus.
50 Surez explores this option in dm 13.10.25 [25.4346].
51 dm 13.10.7 [25.436]: licet res immaterialis necessario sit incorruptibilis, non tamen
convertitur.
52 dm 13.10.8 [25.437]: Nihilominus tamen, quantum ex signis et effectibus nos judicare pos-
sumus, verisimilius est, caelum esse compositum ex materia et forma. Primo quidem,
quia in illo sunt omnia accidentia, quae materiam consequuntur, excepta corruptibilitate,
ut sunt quantitas, quae ejusdem rationis est in omnibus corporibus. Deinde est in caelis
rarum et densum, quae per materiam definiuntur: est enim densum, quod sub parva
quantitate multum habet materiae.
things, is not at the heart of what it means to be a material thing. Instead, what
is essential to matter is its composition with form, and the properties especially
quantity that it brings to the composite.
Although the first cognition of prime matter is found by way of motion

and change, it is nevertheless the case that once this composition from
matter has been cognized in the lower bodies, it is afterwards deduced
with respect to the higher and it is understood from other similarities and
accidents of such bodies that this composition is common to all bodies.53
In this way, the very nature of prime matter becomes clearer once we reflect on
the nature of heavenly bodies, according to Surez. When including heavenly
bodies in our reflection, we investigate the essence of matter by taking account
of matter in the broadest possible sense.
We see, then, that materiality does not necessarily imply corruptibility. But
what does materiality imply? To understand this, we must start with the composed
thing or substance, of which matter is a part. Matter cannot fundamentally be
directed toward anything else but the composite, and toward contributing its
properties to this composite. This is true of heavenly, as well as sublunary, bodies.
It is not fitting that the composition from form and matter is for another,
extrinsic end, but [sc. rather] for the composing of the substance itself, so
that it may have all that is connatural to it that is, matter, so that it can
subsist, occupy a place, be moved, and such things, and form, so that it
may be in act, and so that it may act. Wherefore it seems false to suppose
in this argument that matter is only for the generation and corruption in
these inferior things. For this [sc. generation and corruption] is only one
of the properties of this matter; it is not, however, the adequate nature of
matter as such (italics added).54
53 dm 13.10.9 [25.437]: licet prima cognitio materiae primae inventa fuerit per viam motus
et transmutationis, tamen, semel cognita hac compositione ex materia in inferioribus corpori-
bus, inde ratiocinatum est ad superiora, et ex aliis similitudinibus et accidentibus talium
corporum intellectum est, hanc compositionem communem esse omnibus corporibus.
54 dm 13.10.9 [25.437]: non oportere ut compositio ex materia et forma sit propter alium finem
extrinsecum, sed propter ipsam substantiam componendam, quae ex eis constat; et, quia
natura talis substantiae hujusmodi compositionem postulat, ut habeat omnia quae sibi con-
naturale sunt, scilicet, materiam, ut possit subsistere, occupare locum, moveri, et similia: for-
mam vero, ut sit in actu, et ut agere possit. Quocirca falso videtur in eo argumento supponi,
materiam in his rebus inferioribus solum esse propter generationes et corruptiones: est enim
haec una ex proprietatibus hujus materiae, non tamen adaequata ratio materiae ut sic.
60 kerlund
It belongs to the nature of matter to be part of a composite with form; and

although some matter (i.e., sublunary) is also the substrate of change, this does
not make this property essential to matter. Hence, once again, although we
arrived at the existence of prime matter through the phenomenon of substan-
tial change, we have now firmly established and come to the conclusion that
substantial change is not essential to material things.
So far, we have looked at what is common to heavenly and sublunary matter.
However, Surez also wants to stress the big differences between these types of
matter. He even says that heavenly matter and sublunary matter have a differ-
ent nature (ratio).
If we were only to look to the natures, it is more probable that the matter
of the heavens is of a different nature than the matter of generable things.55
How does this cohere with the earlier assertions regarding matter being one,
the same in heavenly and sublunary bodies, etc.? The answer seems to be that
Surez, when dealing with the differences between heavenly and sublunary
matter, is referring to proximate rather than prime matter. For example, when
discussing whether the matter of incorruptible things could have another form
than the one it actually has, he makes a distinction exactly between a remote
and a proximate way of speaking about the capacities of matter.
The capacity of matter can be considered in two ways: in one way, in itself
and as remote; in another way, proximately and as it is reducible to an act.
In the first way they [sc. some philosophers] concede that the matter of
heaven would be capable of other forms, as the argument made proves,
and similarly to have privation, and something like a radical appetite;
proximately, however, they deny that it has this capacity, because this
matter is already so affected, disposed and actualized so as not to be
reducible to another act, because it is not separable from that which it
presently has.56
55 dm 13.11.13 [25.443]: si solam rationem spectemus, probabilius est, materiam caelorum

esse diversae rationis a materia rerum generabilium.
56 dm 13.11.16 [25.444]: capacitatem materiae dupliciter posse considerari: uno modo secun-
dum se et quasi remote, alio modo proxime, et ut est reducibilis ad actum. Priori modo
concedunt materiam caeli esse capacem aliarum formarum, ut argumentum factum pro-
bat, et similiter habere privationem, et quasi radicalem appetitum: proxime vero negant
habere capacitatem, quia jam illa materia ita est affecta, disposita, et actuata, ut non sit
reducibilis ad alium actum, eo quod non sit separabilis ab illo quem nunc habet.
So in one sense, heavenly matter is capable of taking on another form; itcould

have been conjoined to another form when it was created. In another sense,
though, it is not capable of being joined to another form. Being part of incorrupt-
ible bodies, which are not subject to substantial change, heavenly matter cannot
in this sense become conjoined to another substantial form, as this would
precisely entail substantial change. In the first sense, matter isconsidered and spo-
ken of remotely or in itself; in the second sense, matter isconsidered proximately
and as related to form. This would be, then, proximate matter.
The relation to form is also what distinguishes the matter of one thing from
the matter of another. We are, then, no longer treating prime matter as a (quasi)
substance and the ultimate subject of all corporeal things. We are rather deal-
ing with the specific, already formed or informed matter of particular things.
For one matter is distinguished from another by relation to different gen-

erable or ingenerable forms, as we have declared.57
It is as seen in this perspective proximately, rather than remotely that the mat-
ter of heavenly bodies is radically different from the matter of sublunary bodies.
There are also some conspicuous features of the context in which Surez
deals with heavenly bodies. First, Surez in some places stresses that what he
treats here is actually part of theology, rather than philosophy, although there
may be some overlap between these two disciplines.58 Generally, the para-
graphs where Surez deals with heavenly bodies are heavily scattered with
theological references. Second, Surez is quite modest in his claims concern-
ing heavenly bodies. In a number of places, he talks of his conclusion or opin-
ion being more probable (probabilius) than the opposite.59 This more
cautious language in the context of treating heavenly bodies also differs from
the language in the parts where he treats prime matter generally.
However, this does not change the core of what Surez writes on heavenly
bodies it merely places it in a certain context. Also, the main point when
comparing these paragraphs with the other is, as was said, that Surez in some
places seems to be talking of proximate rather than prime matter.
57 dm 13.11.9 [25.441]: una vero materia distinguitur ab alia per habitudinem ad diversam
formam generabilem vel ingenerabilem, ut declaravimus.
58 E.g. in dm 13.11.24 (Vivs 13.11.25) [25.447], where he claims that heaven is not made up of
elements: Dico tertio. Ex divinis Scripturis colligi non potest caelos esse factos ex materia
elementorum, et consequenter nihil est in Scriptura sacra quod propositae philosophicae
veritati repugnet. Haec assertio excedit quidem limites metaphysicae. (Italics added).
59 E.g. in dm 13.11.13 [25.443] and dm 13.11.16 [25.444].
62 kerlund
6 Quantity
Surez ends his dealings with the material cause of substance by once again
coming back to general characteristics of prime matter, and what unites all
matter, be it heavenly or sublunary. As a matter of convention, that which is com-
posed of matter must be a part of nature.60 Hence, also the heavenly bodies must
be said to be a part of nature (in this sense, at least). Further, that which is mate-
rial must, of necessity, have quantity, and that which has quantity is material.61
Hence, that which has matter and that which has quantity are co-extensive.
From this we can infer that everything in nature has quantity. In fact, quantity is
the only proprium, or proper property, of matter; it is the only accident which
necessarily comes with or follows upon matter. Other seeming accidents which
are ascribed to matter are either really its essence as, e.g., being in potency with
respect to form or a negative expression of this same essence as, e.g., being
ingenerable or incorruptible.62 Hence, quantity necessarily comes with matter,
and this is the only accident that necessarily comes with it.63 In stressing the close
connection between matter and quantity, Surez comes close to the traditional
position of philosophers within the nominalist school in Scholasticism.64
7 Conclusions
Above, we have seen how Surez ends up at prime matter through his search
for the material cause of substance. In order to find that which ultimately
60 dm 13.14.14 [25.459]: nam materia vel est pars naturae, vel non est materia.
61 dm 13.14.15 [25.459]: Ex his infero materiam et quantitatem se habere inseparabiliter ac
reciproce, ita ut omne compositum ex materia, necessario sit quantum; et omne etiam
corpus quantum, necessario sit compositum ex materia.
62 dm 13.14.15 [25.45960]: cum autem materia sit substantia, et quantitas accidens, non
possunt aliter connecti, nisi ut proprietas et essentia, radix, seu fundamentum. Imo, si de
proprietate reali, et physica loquamur, nullam aliam in materia inveniemus: nam si quid
aliud assigneri solet, vel non est proprietas, sed essentia; ut esse potentiam ad formam: vel
non est proprietas positiva, sed quae per negationem declarat eandem essentiam, ut esse
ingenerabilem, et incorruptibilem.
63 dm 13.14.15 [25.460]: At vero quantitas est vera et realis proprietas, propriam habens enti-
tatem (de qua infra suo loco dicemus) naturaliter ac necessario conjunctam cum entitate
materiae.
64 Cf. Dennis Des Chene, From natural philosophy to natural science, in The Cambridge
Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Donald Rutherford (Cambridge, 2006),
pp. 6794; especially p. 71.
materially causes a substance, he must ask for the ultimate substrate of sub-
stantial change that which does not undergo generation and corruption, but
rather underlies it. The question of the cause prime matter is more funda-
mental than the question of the (material) causation.
Having looked at the status of material causation in the big picture of causes
generally, and the way from material causation to prime matter, we then came
to the central paragraphs, looking at how Surez dissolves the paradox of
prime matter. He does this by separating metaphysical act from physical act,
and ascribing pure potency to prime matter only with respect to physical form.
It is actual, metaphysically, though. Since essence is not really distinct from
existence, this means that matter also has its own proper properties. Although
prime matter exhibits many traits of substances, it can only be called a partial
substance as it is directed toward unity with a substantial form in order to form
a material substance (which is a complete substance).
Reflection on heavenly matter then leads Surez to a better grasp of matters
essence to be a part of a form-matter-composite, rather than to be that which
underlies change and quantity is, in the end, considered to be the only proper
property (proprium) of matter.
In the beginning of this article, we saw a quote from Robert Pasnau concern-
ing the central paradox attached to the question of prime matter in Scholastic
philosophy. The quote continues:
Scholastic treatment of this paradox must steer between two unaccept-

able outcomes. If they give prime matter some kind of character, as it
seems they must, then they face the risk of turning prime matter into the
actual substratum of corpuscularian theory. If, fearing this result,
they stress the pure potentiality of prime matter, they then risk the sug-
gestion that such matter does not actually exist at all not just because
existence is a kind of actuality (a point that might perhaps be finessed),
but more fundamentally because a thing can exist only by existing in a
certain way.65
Surez indeed accepts the pure potentiality of prime matter, as he says all
philosophers do. However, he also unequivocally accords prime matter some
kind of character, as he refers this pure potentiality to its relation to (physical)
form. Also, assigning actuality to prime matter without giving it any character-
istics is not a live option for Surez, as essence is not really distinct from exis-
tence according to him.
65 Pasnau, Metaphysical themes, pp. 367.

64 kerlund
Matter has thus become a substance, albeit only a quasi substance. Based
on this, Daniel Heider has written about the reification of prime matter in the
philosophy of Surez and some of his followers.66
This seems also to mirror what could be called a reification of substantial
forms in Surez. Helen Hattab has called substantial forms internal efficient
causes, and shown how they behave like self-subsisting things or agents
within the form-matter-composite.67 It is not surprising, then, to find that
prime matter has also acquired a more robust substantiality in Surezs phi-
losophy, as a co-worker to substantial form in form-matter-composites. It con-
tributes its own properties to, and forms a real part of, the whole. It is pure
potentiality, but only vis--vis form; it unequivocally has its own actuality.
In this way, Surez has dissolved the central paradox of prime matter and
has provided a clear answer to a muddy question.
66 Daniel Heider, F. Surez a J. Senftleben: Reifikace prvn ltky [F. Surez and J. Senftleben:
Reification of Prime Matter], in Slnsk Rozhovory: panelsko (Slan, 2004), pp. 3742; see
especially pp. 378.
67 Hattab, Descartes on forms and mechanisms, p. 64.
chapter 3
Formal Causality: Giving Being by Constituting

and Completing
Kara Richardson
Surezs theory of formal causality encompasses Aristotles claim that the form
or the account of the essence is among the types of cause.1 But it also includes
elements not found in Aristotle. These largely emerge in two disputations: in
dm 12, where he treats the formal cause in connection with his attempt to dis-
cover a common account of cause, and in dm 15, where he treats the substan-
tial formal cause. These disputations yield an account of the substantial formal
cause as a principle that partially constitutes the existence of a natural thing
and which completes and perfects its essence (see Section1 below).
To some extent, Surezs account of substantial formal causality has been
eclipsed in recent scholarship, which finds him to privilege the efficient causal-
ity of the substantial form over its formal causality or even to construe the
substantial form as a kind of efficient cause rather than as a formal cause.2 This
impression is mainly derived from Surezs defense of the existence of sub-
stantial forms in dm 15.1, which repeatedly invokes substantial forms as neces-
sary to explain natural phenomena. I argue, however, that the impression is
mistaken. First, Surezs arguments from natural explanation for the existence
of the substantial form in dm 15 appeal both to its formal causality and to its
efficient causality. Second, he considers formal causality as fundamental to
and definitive of the substantial form and he accords it great importance
(Section2 below).
While Surez does underline the efficient causality of the substantial form in
dm 18, his arguments there do not show that he accords less importance to its
formal causality. He vigorously defends the genuine efficient causality of the
substantial form against Thomist and Peripatetic philosophers, but his argu-
ments are consistent with his claim that formal causality is fundamental to and

2 Helen Hattab, Surezs Last Stand for the Substantial Form, in The Philosophy of Francisco
Surez, eds. Benjamin Hill and Henrik Lagerlund (Oxford, 2012), pp. 10118. Robert Pasnau,
Form, Substance, and Mechanism, Philosophical Review 113 (2004), pp. 3188. Robert Pasnau,
Metaphysical Themes (Oxford, 2011).

66 Richardson
definitive of the substantial form. His arguments in dm 18 are significant not

only because they defend the efficient causality of the substantial form, but also
because they respond to contemporary debates about the causality of the sub-
stantial form by distinguishing its formal and efficient causality (Section3).
1 What is Formal Causality?
A central task of dm 12 is to develop a common account of cause (communis

ratio causae), that is, an account of cause that encompasses all four of Aristotles
causes. As we saw in Chapter 1, Surez settles on the following account: a cause
is a principle that per se inflows being to another.3 Two parts of his argument for
this account are especially instructive with respect to his theory of the formal
cause: his reasons for employing the term inflows being (influens esse) and his
response to the objection that use of that term suits the efficient cause alone.
Surez considers his account of cause an improved version of the following one,
which he attributes to certain modern philosophers: a cause is that on which some-
thing depends per se.4 As discussed in Chapter 1, Surez retains the idea that causa-
tion involves dependence. On the other hand, he considers the account of cause as
that on which something depends per se to be too broad. He therefore removes
the term depends from his account of cause and instead employs the term inflows
being. He uses the example of privation to support this revision. Surez empha-
sizes that an account of cause must exclude privation from the circle of causes. His
concern has to do with the role of privation in Aristotles account of change. In
Physics 1.7, Aristotle identifies three principles of change: (a) the underlying sub-
ject, which persists through the change, (b) form (that is, some feature , which the
underlying subject gains as a result of the change) and (c) privation (that is, the
lack of in the underlying subject prior to the change). On this account, privation
is a condition for change: for example, in order for water to become warm, it must
first be cool. It appears then that any change, and any effect of change, depends on
privation. On the view that a cause is that on which something depends per se, it
also seems that privations are causes. Intuitively, this is mistaken: a lack of warmth
in the water is not a cause of its becoming warm. Surez considers the example of
privation to show that not everything on which change depends is a cause. He
employs the term inflows being rather than the term depends in his own account
4 dm 12.2.3 (Vivs 12.2.4) [25.384]: Tertia definitio est, quam potissime afferunt aliqui moderni,
Causa est id a quo aliquid per se pendet.
Formal Causality 67
of cause because it excludes privations and other factors on which the effect
depends in a non-causal way.5
By means of the term inflows being, Surez attempts to state the precise
type of dependence characteristic of causality: the effect depends on the cause
in the sense that the cause inflows being to the effect. Applying this insight
about causation in general to formal causation in particular yields the follow-
ing result. The effect depends on the formal cause in the sense that the formal
cause inflows being to the effect. This result constrains our interpretation of
the dependence of the effect on the formal cause. For example, formal causal-
ity should not be understood to consist in the following dependency: the effect
of a change depends on form some feature , which the underlying subject
gains as a result of the change in the sense that form is a condition for change.
It is true that change depends on form in this way. But formal causality consists
in a special type of dependence: the form inflows being to the effect.
While use of the verb influere helps solve one problem, it also generates a
further difficulty. It must not be taken narrowly so that the account of cause
suits the efficient cause alone, but more generally: the phrase inflows being to
another is equivalent to the phrase gives or communicates being to another.6
With this qualification, the account is said to embrace both the efficient and
the formal causes: for the idea that the formal cause gives being (dat esse) is
already accepted. But some will deny that the account includes the material
and final causes on the ground that these do not give being. Surez begins to
address this problem as follows:
But although it belongs to those two causes [sc. the formal and the efficient]
to give being in a special way with respect to form as completing proper and
specific being but with respect to the efficient cause as really influencing
still, absolutely and under the common account, matter in its own genus
gives being, since the existence of the effect depends on it and it itself gives its
own entity with which the being of the effect is constituted.7
5 dm 12.2.3 (Vivs 12.2.4) [25.384]: Per illam autem particulam, per se influens [sc. esse], excluditur
privatio, et omnis causa per accidens; quae per se non conferunt, aut influunt esse in aliud.
6 dm 12.2.3 (Vivs 12.2.4) [25.384]: Sumendum est autem verbum illud influit, non stricte, ut
attribui specialiter solet causae efficienti, sed generalius, prout aequivalet verbo dandi, vel
communicandi esse alteri.
7 dm 12.2.3 (Vivs 12.2.4) [25.3845]: Sed, licet speciali modo attribuatur illis duabus causas
dare esse, formae ut complenti proprium et specificum esse, efficienti vero ut realiter influ-
enti, tamen absolute et sub communi ratione, etiam materia in suo genere dat esse, quia ab
illa dependet esse effectus, et ipsa dat suam entitatem, qua constituatur esse effectus; causa
etiam finalis, eo modo quo movet, influit etiam in esse, ut postea declarabitur.
68 Richardson
Two points in this passage must be considered with care. First, formal and effi-
cient causes are said to give being in a special way: the formal cause completes
proper and specific being, while the efficient cause really influences. Surez
seems to suggest that the formal cause gives being in tandem with the efficient
cause. And his claim that the efficient cause alone really influences raises the
question whether the formal cause gives being in its own right. Second, while
Surez says that matter gives being to the effect, he appears to contrast the way
the material cause gives being and the way the formal cause and the efficient
cause give being. He claims that matter gives being in that it gives its own
entity with which the being of the effect is constituted. But later in dm 12, and
again in dm 15, Surez makes plain that the formal cause gives being in its own
right, apart from the efficient cause, and that it gives being in much the same
way as the material cause.
In dm 12.3.3, Surez considers the number of causes. He argues that the for-
mal and material causes must be counted among the causes on the ground that
each clearly inflows being to another. Matter is said to inflow being to another
in that it is incorporated (insito) into the effect; matter presents itself (exhibet
se) in such a way that the being of the whole arises from it.8 Form is said to
inflow being in a similar way: form presents itself (forma seipsam exhibit) in
such a way that by it a composite in act is constituted.9 In this passage, the
formal cause is said to give being in tandem with the material cause: for matter
is a certain beginning or foundation of being itself, so to speak, but form per-
fects and completes it.10 Furthermore, both matter and form are numbered
among the intrinsic principles of a natural thing or, rather, these two are the
sole principles constituting a natural thing.11 Surezs defense of the causality
of matter and form emphasizes that both give being by constitution. This point
is also developed in his account of substantial formal causality in dm 15.
In dm 15.5.1, Surez defines substantial form as follows: [Substantial] form
is a certain simple and incomplete substance which, as the act of matter,
8 dm 12.3.3 [25.388]: materia enim ab Aristotele definitur esse, id ex quo insito fit aliquid.
Ubi per particulam ex cum proprietate sumptam distinguitur materia ab aliis causis; per
particulam autem, insito, separatur a privatione, et declaratur proprius influxus, quo
materia et in universum subjectum exhibet se, ut ex eo consurgat esse totius.
9 dm 12.3.3 [25.3889]: Similiter forma seipsam exhibit, ut illa tanquam actu conpositum
constituatur.
10 dm 12.3.3 [25.389]: Materia enim est quasi inchoatio quaedam, vel fundamentum ipsius
esse: forma vero illud consummat et complet.
11 dm 12.3.3 [25.389]: Item haec numerantur inter principia intrinseca rei naturalis: vel
potius illa duo tantum sunt principia constituentia rem naturalem.
Formal Causality 69
constitutes with it the essence of a composite substance.12 He explains each

part of the definition as follows. The term substance identifies the genus of
substantial form and distinguishes it from accidental forms and substantial
modes. The term simple distinguishes substantial form from the composite.
Both substantial form and matter are simple substances. The term incomplete
distinguishes substantial form from separate substance. An incomplete sub-
stance constitutes only part of the essence of a thing. By contrast, a separate sub-
stance is complete. Both substantial form and matter are incomplete substances;
each constitutes part of the essence of a natural being. Finally, the claim that
substantial form is the act of matter distinguishes form from matter which is
also a simple and incomplete substance, but as potency, while form is the pri-
mary act of that potency.13 Surezs elaboration of this final claim helps clarify
his position on the relative contributions of form and matter to the composite.
Surez states that act of matter means act of a physical body and that phys-
ical body has two senses: matter itself or the natural being itself which con-
sists of matter and form and whose act is said to be form as constituting it.14 In
dm 15.5.2, he construes the substantial form as the act of a physical body in the
second sense: it is the act of a natural being, which is composed of it and matter.15
He states that substantial form completes the essence of a natural composite
and distinguishes it essentially or quidditatively from others.16 Both matter
and substantial form constitutes part of the essence of a natural composite.
Substantial form, however, serves as the principle of actuality: it makes the
12 dm 15.5.1 [25.517], translation from Surez, On the Formal Cause of Substance, trans. John
Kronen and Jeremiah Reedy (Milwaukee, 2000), p. 77: forma est substantia quaedam sim-
plex et incompleta, quae ut actus materiae cum ea constituit essentiam substantiae
compositae.
13 dm 15.5.2 [25.517], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 77: Reliqua pars definitionis distinguit for-
mam a materia, quae etiam est substantia simplex et incompleta, tamen ut potentia:
forma vero ut primarius actus illius potentiae.
14 dm 15.5.2 [25.518], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 77: Vel etiam possumus per corpus physi-
cum ens ipsum naturale intelligere quod ex materia et forma constat, cujus actus dicitur
forma tanquam constituens illud.
15 He adds that substantial form is the act of matter either (a) as that which actually informs
matter, or (b) as that which is prepared by its nature to inform matter. By means of (b), the
claim that substantial form is the act of matter includes the rational soul, even if it is sepa-
rated from the body. dm 15.5.2 [25.518]: nam forma substantialis ita est substantia incom-
plete, ut sit actus materiae: actus (inquam) vel actu informans, vel natura sua institutus
ad informandam materiam, nam verba (ut aiunt) in definitionibus dicunt aptitudinem: et
ita comprehenditur anima rationalis, etiam si a corpore separata sit.
16 dm 15.5.2 [25.518], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 78: id est, quae compositi naturalis essen-
tiam complet, et ab aliis essentialiter ac quidditative eam distinguit.
70 Richardson
composite a member of a certain species. By contrast, matter serves as the

principle of potentiality: matter can conjoin with any type of substantial form;
it can constitute part of a natural composite of any type. Substantial formal
causality consists in the union of these two principles.
In dm 15.8, Surez distinguishes his position on the relative contributions of
form and matter to the composite from that of Aquinas and his followers. The
latter are said to hold that matter of itself does not have any existential being
and that form is properly the cause of matter, because that which gives being
to a thing is its cause.17 Whereas Surez maintains that, form does not give to
matter that partial essential entity which it has in itselfand which it retains
under all forms. But that entity includes its own particular existence distinct
from any existence coming formally from the form.18 Of course, Surez is not
the first Scholastic to maintain that matter has its own existence apart from
substantial form. But this aspect of his position deserves notice in connection
with his account of substantial formal causality: while substantial form and
matter do not exist apart from one another in nature, each has its own existence
and can exist apart from the other by Gods will. The last point is relevant to a
criterion for being a cause not yet discussed: Surez states that a cause inflows
being to another. The term to another indicates that cause and effect are dis-
tinct. The distinctness criterion might seem incompatible with formal and
material causality: matter and substantial form together constitute the effect;
thus, they are not distinct from the effect; thus they cannot cause the effect,
given the distinctness criterion for being a cause.19 Surez is not vulnerable to
this objection, however: he holds that while substantial form and matter
together constitute the composite, each has its own entity and so each is dis-
tinct from the other and from the composite. The distinctness criterion is espe-
cially relevant to accidental formal causality, which Surez addresses in dm 16.
One potential objection to accidental formal causality holds that an acci-
dent cannot give being as a formal cause since it does not have its own entity
17 dm 15.8.2 [25.525], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 98: Qui enim existimant materiam ex se
nullum habere esse existentiae, dicunt formam proprie esse causam materiae, quia illud
est causa rei, quod dat illi esse. Haec viditur esse opinio Divi Thomae., 1.par., quaest. 66,
artic. 1, et de Potentia, quaest. 4, artic. 1, quam tenent omnes Thomistae.
18 dm 15.8.7 [25.527]: forma non dat materiae illam partialem entitatem essentialem, quam in
se habet, ut supra ostensum est, quamque retinet sub omnibus formis: sed illa entitas includit
suam partialem existentiam distinctam ab omni existentia proveniente formaliter a forma.
19 Olivo raises an objection along these lines; Gilles Olivo, Lefficience en cause: Surez,
Descartes et la question de la causalit, in Descartes et le moyen ge, eds. Jol Biard and
Roshdi Rashed (Paris, 1997), pp. 91105.
Formal Causality 71
distinct from the substance, which is its subject. Surezs response to this
objection appeals first to the doctrine of transubstantiation, which demands
that some accidents be able to exist apart from substance and so that they have
proper entity distinct from substance.20 The objection thus applies only to any
accident, which cannot exist apart from substance. Surez accepts the objec-
tion against such accidents being formal causes. He then maintains that, acci-
dents which have proper entity distinct from substance exercise proper and
true formal causality.21 This yields an account of accidental formal causality,
which is continuous with certain aspects of his account of substantial formal
causality. Accidental forms are formal causes insofar as they give being per se
to another. Like substantial forms and matter, they give their own entity to the
effect; that is to say, they give being by constitution. Surezs view about which
accidents play formal causal roles can be derived from his distinction between
accidental res or real accidents and accidental modes in dm 7.22 A real accident
is an entity in its own right, which can exist apart from other res, including its
subject of inherence. According to Surez, the class of real accidents includes
continuous quantity, as well as accidents in the category of quality, with the
exception of figure. Since a real accident is an entity in its own right, it can give
being as a formal cause. A mode, by contrast, is not an entity in its own right
and cannot exist apart from the res in which it inheres. According to Surez,
figure (a species of the category of quality), as well as beings in the categories
of action, passion, where, when, and position, are modes. Figure, for example,
is a mode of quantity. (Or, in other words, the subject in which figure inheres is
quantity.) The figure of a table cannot exist apart from the quantity of the
table. The quantity of the table, however, can exist apart from the table. Since
a mode is not an entity in its own right, it cannot give being as a formal cause.
In disputations 12, 15 and 16, Surez develops a theory of the formal cause on
the basis of his common account of cause. The theorys main tenet holds the
formal cause to be a principle that per se gives being to another. It does so by
partly constituting the existence of the effect. In this respect the formal cause
20 dm 16.1.2 [25.566]: Quis enim intelligat, accidentia in Eucharistia separari, et manere sine
entitate substantiae, et quod non habeant propriam aliquam entitatem distinctam reali-
ter ab entitate substantiae.
21 dm 16.1.4 [25.567]: Accidentia, quae propriam habent entitatem distinctam a substantia,
propriam ac veram exercent causalitatem formalem.
22 dm 7.1.18 (Vivs 7.1.19) [25.2567]. See Stephen Menn, Surez, Nominalism, and Modes,
in Hispanic Philosophy in the Age of Discovery, ed. Kevin White (Washington, 1997), pp.
22656 and Jorge Uscatescu, Zur Eigenart der Akzidenzienlehre von Surez, in
Salzburger Jahrbuch fr Philosophie LIII (2008), pp. 7399.
72 Richardson
is no different from the material cause: each gives being by constitution. Both
substantial forms and certain types of accidental form sc. those with proper
entity apart from substance play formal causal roles. A second prominent
feature of Surezs theory of the formal cause, which is developed in dm 12 and
15, distinguishes a substantial formal cause from a material cause. The substan-
tial formal cause completes the essence of a natural thing and makes it a mem-
ber of a certain species. Matter, by contrast, is one and the same in all natural
things. Surez states that this aspect of his theory of substantial formal causal-
ity accords with Aristotles claim in Physics 2.3 that the causes include the
account (ratio) of the essence or quiddity.23 He thus considers his theory of
substantial formal causality as continuous with the Philosophers, even though
it goes beyond Aristotle in its explicit delineation of the formal cause as a prin-
ciple that gives being to another by constitution.
2 Two Causal Roles for the Substantial Form
Some recent scholarship on Surezs account of the causality of the substantial

form centers on its efficient causality rather than its formal causality. For
example, Helen Hattab argues that Surez downgraded the importance of the
formal cause and that in his hands, the substantial form was transformed into
something more like an internal efficient cause than a formal cause.24 In a
somewhat similar vein, Robert Pasnau uses examples from Surez to illustrate
his account of the physical aspect of the Scholastic doctrine of substantial
forms.25 The physical aspect of the doctrine posits substantial forms as playing
an explanatory role that is causal in the modern sense.26 Pasnau considers
Surez and other Scholastics to emphasize the concrete, physical roles of sub-
stantial forms over their abstract, metaphysical roles.
Both Hattab and Pasnau adduce textual evidence for their positions from
Surezs account of substantial formal causality in dm 15.1. This account first
defends the existence of substantial forms. One objection receives great atten-
tion: Substantial forms are not needed to explain the phenomena; matter
23 dm 15.5.2 [25.518], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 78: Et hinc consequenter habet, ut cum
materia componat essentiam entis naturalis, quod est substantia composita: et ideo Arist.,
2. Physicor., cap. 3, ait formam esse essentiae seu quidditatis rationem, id est, quae compositi
naturalis essentiam complet, et ab aliis essentialiter ac quidditative eam distinguit.
24 Hattab, Surezs Last Stand, p. 115.
25 Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, p. 562.
26 Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, p. 558.
Formal Causality 73
together with accidents is sufficient to explain the phenomena.27 In response to

this objection, Surez identifies several natural phenomena that cannot be
explained by matter together with accidents, but can be explained by substantial
forms. In dm 15.1.7, Surez argues that, an aggregation of many accidental facul-
ties or forms in a simple substantial subject is not enough to constitute a natural
thing on the ground that in human beings there are perhaps more accidental
faculties and forms, and more perfect ones, than in other natural things, and yet
these do not suffice for the constitution of any complete natural being.28 In
addition to an aggregate of accidents in matter, a natural being requires:
a form to rule, as it were, over all those faculties and accidents and to be
the source of all actions and natural changes of the human being and the
subject in which the whole variety of powers and accidents is rooted and
unified in a certain way.29
In dm 15.1.813, he appeals to the fact that certain things, which have under-
gone a change, return to their original state without the help of an extrinsic
power. He focuses on the example of heated water, which is said to revert to
coldness by means of an intrinsic power, the substantial form. This argument
appears to involve the idea that the substantial form of water plays an efficient
causal role in the reversion of heated water to coldness. This idea is stated
more explicitly at dm 18.3.4.30
In dm 15.1.14, he appeals to the fact that many natural things have properties
which stand or fall together, e.g., the sweetness and whiteness of milk.31 These
27 dm 15.1.1 [25.498]. This objection is the main target of dm 15.1.

28 dm 15.1.7 [25.499], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 21: aggregationem plurium facultatum, vel
formarum accidentalium in simplici subjecto substantiali non satis esse ad constitutio-
nem rei naturalis: nam in homine sunt illae facultates, et formae accidentales, plures fortasse
ac perfectiores, quam in aliis naturalibus rebus, et tamen non sufficiunt ad constitutionem
alicujus naturalis entis completi.
29 dm 15.1.7 [25.499], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 21: sed praeterea requiritur forma, quae
veluti praesit omnibus illis facultatibus, et accidentibus, et sit fons omnium actionum, et
naturalium motuum talis entis, et in qua tota illa varietas accidentium et potentiarum
radicem, et quandam unitatem habeat.
30 dm 18.3.4 (Vivs 18.3.6) [25.616]: Et in illo exemplo aquae manifeste constat, veram esse
conclusionem positam, scilicet, aliquod accidens posse immediate resultare effective a
substantiali principio. Nam illa intensio frigoris nullum habere potest propinquius princi-
pium unde resultet, quam sit forma substantialis aquae.
31 For discussion of this argument, see Christopher Shields, The reality of substantial form:
Surez, Metaphysical Disputations xv in Interpreting Surez: Critical Essays, ed. Daniel
Schwartz (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 3961.
74 Richardson
properties are not subordinated to one another: sweetness is not ontologically

or causally prior to whiteness and vice versa. Thus the fact that these proper-
ties stand or fall together must be due to a third thing, a single form in which
they are all united.32
In dm 15.1.15, Surez appeals to the fact that, when a thing is intensely act-
ing in one way, its power to act in another is reduced.33 He says that we
humans clearly experience this: for when we are deep in thought we may not
see what is right before us or we may forget to eat; conversely, we may be
unable to think because we are hungry or tired. This is an indication that the
various powers of the human soul reason, sensation and nutrition are
subordinate to one and the same form, which operates through them as a
principle. Otherwise:
each one of them would operate independently of the others, and there
would be no reason why the force of one would impede the force of the
others more than if they were in diverse subjects.34
Surez offers several arguments for the existence of substantial forms in dm

15.1, which rely on the idea that we must posit substantial forms to explain
natural phenomena. As these arguments show, Surez considers the substan-
tial form to have an efficient causal influence on natural action. Do they there-
fore support the impression that he construes the substantial form as more like
an internal efficient cause than a formal cause? With respect to this question,
it is important to notice that Suarezs arguments for the existence of substan-
tial forms in dm 15.1.714, which are said to be gathered from various indica-
tions arising from accidents and operations of natural beings, appeal not only
to the efficient causality of the substantial form but also to its formal causality.
For example, in the argument at dm 15.1.7, substantial form is invoked as that
32 dm 15.1.14 [25.502], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 26: ergo haec multitudo, et varietas pro-
prietatum, praesertim quando posteriori modo se habent, requirit unam formam in qua
omnes uniantur.
33 dm 15.1.15 [25.502], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 27: Quod res unum intense agens, in alio-
rum actione remittatur, signum substantialis formae. For discussion of this argument, see
Shields, The reality of substantial form, pp. 3961 and Marleen Rozemond, Unity in the
Multiplicity of Surezs Soul, in The Philosophy of Francisco Surez, eds. Benjamin Hill
and Henrik Lagerlund (Oxford, 2012), pp. 15472. Rozemond examines versions of the
argument given in Surezs commentary on De anima.
34 dm 15.1.15 [25.5023], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 27: nam si nullam subordinationem
inter se haberent, neque cum aliquo communi principio, quaelibet earum haberet suam
operationem independenter ab alia, neque esset ulla ratio, cur conatus unius impediret
conatum alterius, magis quam si essent in diversis subjectis.
Formal Causality 75
which would rule over accidental faculties and forms. This ruling role appears
to be that of an active principle. But substantial form is also invoked in this
argument on the ground that it is needed to constitute a complete natural
thing. As we saw in Section 1, Surez considers substantial formal causes to
play this role. Substantial form is also invoked in the argument at dm 15.1.7 as
that in which the variety of accidents is rooted and unified in a certain way.
This role may also involve substantial formal causality. Likewise, in the argu-
ment at dm 15.1.14 that appeals to the fact that many natural things have prop-
erties which stand or fall together, substantial form is invoked to explain the
unity of those properties. Surez distinguishes this role from that of efficiently
causing species-appropriate properties, as occurs in the example of water.
Since Surezs arguments from natural explanation for the existence of the
substantial form appeal both to its formal and its efficient causal roles, those
arguments should not be taken to show that he construes the substantial form
as more like an efficient cause than a formal cause. Rather, they show that he
considers the substantial form to play two different causal roles, efficient and
formal. Additional evidence against the impression that Surez privileges the
efficient causality of the substantial form over its formal causality is also found
elsewhere in dm 15.
At dm 15.1.18 Surez states that the chief (praecipua) argument for the exis-
tence of substantial form should be taken from its end (finis), which is to con-
stitute and complete the essence of a natural being.35 In other words, Surez
identifies the end or purpose of the substantial form with its formal causal
role. Surez also considers formal causality to distinguish the substantial form
from its close relative, the separate substance. At dm 15.5.1, he states that
substantial forms must be distinguished from separate substances that move
bodies. While the latter are sometimes called attendant forms, as in the case
of those which move the celestial bodies, they do not serve the function of
a formal cause, but exercise a certain efficiency.36 Serving the function of a
formal cause is the feature that distinguishes substantial forms from sepa-
rate substances; both play efficient causal roles by moving bodies, but only
substantial forms play formal causal roles by constituting and completing the
35 dm 15.1.18 [25.504], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 30: Igitur praecipua ratio sumenda est ex
fine formae substantialis, qui est constituere et complere essentiam entis naturalis, qui
finis seu effectus est absolute necessarius in rerum natura.
36 dm 15.5.1 [25.517], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 77: Additur vero simplex et incompleta, ut
per priorem particulam a composita substantia separetur: per posteriorem vero a sub-
stantiis separatis; quae interdum vocari solent formae assistentes, ut illae quae movent
corpora coelestia, quae revera non exercent munus causae formalis, sed efficientiam ali-
quam: quare non sunt formae substantiales, prout nunc de illis loquimur.
76 Richardson
essence of a natural being.37 This distinction is important with respect to a

point Hattab makes about the relationship between Surezs account of the
substantial form and Descartes characterization of Scholastic substantial
forms. She writes that in light of Surezs account:
Descartes characterization of material substantial forms as hidden souls

directing the motions of the matter to which they are joined appears not
so much like a straw man attack, but a very astute observation of the
causal role to which they had been reduced.38
Surez would dispute this characterization on the ground that it confuses sub-
stantial forms and separate substances: for it overlooks the fundamental and
definitive formal causal role played by substantial forms, which is not to direct
the motions of the matter to which they are joined, but rather to constitute
and complete the essence of a natural being. Surezs estimation of the impor-
tance of the latter role is apparent in several passages in dm 12 and dm 15, which
I discussed in Section1. But it is perhaps best illustrated in his account of the
chief argument for the existence of the substantial form in dm 15.
As we have seen, Surez states at dm 15.1.18 that the chief argument for the
existence of the substantial form should be taken from its end, which is to
constitute and complete the essence of a natural being.39 He argues that the
existence of an entity with this end and effect is necessary:
Otherwise, nothing among physical things would be complete and per-

fect in its own substantial nature, nor would there be the multitude and
variety of substantial species which chiefly constitutes the wonderful
order and beauty of the physical world.40
37 In a similar vein, Surez argues in De Anima that the soul should be considered a forma
informans rather than a forma assistens. The separate substances said to move the heav-
enly bodies are examples of the latter type of form. See Surez, Commentaria una cum
quaestionibus in libros Aristotelis De anima 1.1, ed. Salvador Castellote, vol. 1 (Madrid, 1981),
pp. 1720.
38 Hattab, Surezs Last Stand, p. 115.
39 dm 15.1.18 [25.504], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 30: Igitur praecipua ratio sumenda est ex
fine formae substantialis, qui est constituere et complere essentiam entis naturalis, qui
finis seu effectus est absolute necessarius in rerum natura.
40 dm 15.1.18 [25.504], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 30: alioqui nihil esset in rebus corporeis
insua substantiali natura completum, et perfectum: neque esset multitudo et varietas
Formal Causality 77
Two reasons are given in support of this claim. First, since matter is a very
imperfect being, it is not possible for the complete essence of anything to con-
sist in it alone.41 Second, because matter, insofar as it is the first subject, is one
and the same in all natural things.42 Were the essence of natural things to
consist in matter alone:
[A]ll things would be of one essence and would only differ accidentally.
Such a state of affairs is incompatible with the greatness and beauty of
the universe, which chiefly arises from the variety of species.43
Substantial form completes the essence of the composite: it makes the com-
posite a natural thing of a certain species. As that which completes the essences
of natural things, it is the source of the variety and therefore the greatness
and beauty of the natural world.
In sum, Surezs arguments for the existence of the substantial form in
dm 15.1 show that he holds the substantial form to play two different causal
roles, efficient and formal, though he considers its formal causal role as
fundamental. Furthermore, as is indicated in dm 15.5.2, he considers the
formal causality of substantial form to differentiate it from separate sub-
stance; formal causality, not efficient causality, is definitive of substantial
form. Nevertheless, Surez does appear to emphasize the efficient causal-
ity of the substantial form over its formal causality in dm 18. I will argue
that he does so not because he considers its formal causality less impor-
tant, but rather because he takes his Thomist and Peripatetic philosophical
opponents to deny or misconstrue the genuine efficient causality of the
substantial form.
specierum substantialium, in qua maxime consistit huius universi corporei mirabilis dis-
positio, et pulchritudo.
41 dm 15.1.18 [25.504], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 30: Ad hunc ergo finem est omnino neces-
saria substantialis forma, quia cum materia sit valde imperfectum ens, non potest in illa
sola consistere integra uniuscujusque rei essentia.
42 dm 15.1.18 [25.504], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 30: Deinde, quia materia quatenus est
primum subjectum, est una et eadem in omnibus rebus naturalibus: ergo non potest in
sola illa consistere earum essentia, alioqui omnia essent unius essentiae, solumque acci-
dentaliter differrent, quod repugnat amplitudini, et pulchritudini totius universi, quae ex
specierum varietate maxime consurgit.
43 dm 15.1.18 [25.504], trans. Kronen and Reedy, p. 30: alioqui omnia essent unius essentiae,
solumque accidentaliter differrent, quod repugnat amplitudini, et pulchritudini totius
universi, quae ex specierum varietate maxime consurgit.
78 Richardson
3 Defending the Efficient Causality of the Substantial Form
Surez emphasizes the efficient causality of substantial forms in dm 18 in rela-

tion to two different cases: the first, in dm 18.2, has to do with the generation of
material substance; the second, in dm 18.3, has to do with the production of
species-appropriate properties.
In dm 18.2, Surez aims to determine the principle or principles by which
material substance is generated.44 There are three potential candidates for this
role: each of the metaphysical constituents of the generating substance,
namely, form, matter and accidents. Surez first rules out matter, since matter
itself is non-active. He then argues that no accident is a principal principle of
a substance:
a principal cause must be either more noble than, or at least no less noble
than, the effect. For since no one gives what he does not have, how can an
imperfect form have within itself or communicate to its suppositum a
principal power for effecting a more perfect form, a form which it is
unable to contain either formally or eminently? But an accidental form is
more imperfect than a substantial form. Therefore, an accidental form
cannot be a principal principle for educing a substantial form.45
The argument depends on a causal axiom: the effect cannot be more perfect
than the cause. It also relies on an ontological hierarchy in which substantial
forms are more perfect than accidental ones. These are combined as follows:
since an effect cannot excel its cause, and since accidents are less perfect than
substantial forms, accidents alone cannot be the principal principles by which
one substance generates another.
Surez has ruled out both matter and accidents as candidates for the role of
the principal principle of generation; he concludes that this role must be
played by the generators substantial form. He states that this conclusion is
44 Late Scholastic debates about generation are discussed in Dennis Des Chene, Physiologia
(Ithaca, 1996), pp. 1617 and in Hattab, Surezs Last Stand, pp. 11517.
45 dm 18.2.2 [25.599], translation in Surez, On Efficient Causality, trans. Alfred J. Freddoso
(New Haven, 1994), p. 52: quia causa principalis, ut ostendimus, esse debet, vel nobilior,
vel certe non ignobilior effectu; cum enim nemo det quod non habet; quo modo potest
forma imperfecta habere in se, vel communicare suo supposito principalem vim effici-
endi perfectiorem formam, quam nec formaliter neque eminenter continere potest? Est
autem accidentalis forma imperfectior substantiali; ergo non potest esse principium prin-
cipale educendi illam.
Formal Causality 79
widely accepted, but that philosophers dispute the way in which the sub
stantial form is a principal principle in generation.46 As Surez describes the
dispute, it has to do with whether the substantial form has an immediate
influence in generation or whether it has a merely remote and originating
influence.47
Surez attributes the view that the substantial form has a merely remote
and originating influence to Aquinas, to his contemporary Thomas Cajetan
(14691534) and, more generally, to Thomist and Peripatetic philosophers.48
They are said to hold that a substantial form is not per se immediately active
but is instead active through a power, which is a quality distinct from it.49
They are also said to argue that a substantial form is of itself determined only
to giving esse as a formal cause, whereas with respect to its actions it is an inde-
terminate principle on the ground that the substantial form is almost always
able to effect several actions to which it is determined by its accidents.50 This
is said to show that the substantial form is a proximate principle of an action
not through itself but rather through its accidents.51 As Surez interprets
these philosophers, they deny that substantial forms are immediate principles
of action. Substantial forms give being to the composite as formal causes.
Qualities or accidents are the immediate principles of the actions of the com-
posite. This report has a basis in Aquinas writings.
Aquinas denies that the substantial form is an immediate principle of action
throughout his career.52 The issue arises in his writings on the human soul and
the powers related to the soul. A soul is a special type of substantial form: a
46 dm 18.2.4 [25.599], trans. Freddoso, p. 53: quomodo forma substantialis sit principium
principale ad educendam similem formam.
47 dm 18.2.4 [25.599], trans. Freddoso, p. 53: supposito, quod accidens immediate attingat,
an cum illo proxime etiam influat substantialis forma, vel tantum remote, et quasi
radicaliter.
48 dm 18.2.9 [25.601].
49 dm 18.2.10 [25.601], trans. Freddoso, p. 59: forma substantialis non est per se immediate
activa, sed per potentiam quae sit qualitas ab ea distincta.
50 dm 18.2.10 [25.602], trans. Freddoso, 59: Item, quia forma substantialis per se ipsam solum
determinatur ad dandum formaliter esse; ad actiones vero est indeterminatum principium,
quia fere semper potest plures actiones efficere, ad quas per accidentia determinatur.
51 dm 18.2.10 [25.602], trans. Freddoso, 59: et ideo non est proximum principium actionis
per se ipsam, sed per accidentia; ergo idem dicendum est de actione qua producit
substantiam.
52 For example, in his discussion of the essence and powers of the soul in his Sentences com-
mentary, Summa Theologiae, Disputed Questions on the Soul and Disputed Questions on the
Spiritual Creatures.
80 Richardson
soul informs a living body, sc. a plant, animal or human being. A power is an
accidental form. More precisely, a power is a quality, one type of accident.53
Aquinas holds that soul-related powers are principles of operation, and that a
soul cannot be an immediate principle of operation. His argument for the lat-
ter point applies to all types of substantial form.
Although Aquinas denies that the substantial form is an immediate princi-
ple of operation, he does consider it a remote principle of operation.54 The
reason is that powers follow from (consequor) substantial forms.55 The claim
that powers follow from substantial forms is ambiguous. In Summa Theologiae
Ia.77.6, Aquinas claims that the powers of the soul flow (fluere) or emanate
(emanare) from the essence of the soul.56 He attempts to clarify his view
through this analogy: proper accidents (including species-appropriate powers)
result naturally from substantial forms as color results naturally from light.
In sum, Aquinas denies that the substantial form is an immediate principle
of operation, but affirms that it is a remote principle of operation because spe-
cies-appropriate properties, which include active (and passive) powers, follow
from the substantial form. Furthermore, he holds powers to be immediate
principles of operation. Powers are accidents in the category of quality.
Surez argues that on the view of his Thomist and Peripatetic opponents,
substantial forms have no genuine efficient causal influence on action. He sup-
ports his claim with the following thought experiment. Suppose first that it is
true that the substantial form of fire is not per se immediately active, but rather
has a remote and originating influence on the fires act of burning. This means
that the substantial form contributes to the act of burning in the sense that the
53 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia.77.1, eds. P. Caramello et al. (Turin and Rome,
19481950), p. 370: cum potentia animae non sit ejus essentia, oportet quod sit accidens,
et est in secunda specie qualitatis.
54 Thomas, Summa Theologiae, Ia.77.1, p. 370: quod forma accidentalis est actionis princip-
ium, habet a forma substantiali. Et ideo forma substantialis est primum actionis principium,
sed non proximum. Et secundum hoc philosophus dicit quod id quo intelligimus et sentimus,
est anima.
55 Thomas, Summa Theologiae, Ia.77.1, p. 370: Ad tertium dicendum quod actio est com-
positi, sicut et esse, existentis enim est agere. Compositum autem per formam substan-
tialem habet esse substantialiter; per virtutem autem quae consequitur formam
substantialem, operatur. Unde sic se habet forma accidentalis activa ad formam substan-
tialem agentis (ut calor ad formam ignis), sicut se habet potentia animae ad animam.
56 Thomas, Summa Theologiae, Ia.77.6, p. 374: Unde manifestum est quod omnes potentiae
animae, sive subjectum earum sit anima sola, sive compositum, fluunt ab essentia ani-
mae sicut a principio, quia iam dictum est quod accidens causatur a subjecto secundum
quod est actu, et recipitur in eo inquantum est in potentia.
Formal Causality 81
active quality heat follows from the substantial form. The quality heat is the
immediate principle of the fires act of burning. Now imagine that God decides
to conserve the quality heat apart from the fire. Will the action that proceeds
per se and immediately from the quality heat also be conserved? Surez con-
siders it obvious that this action would be conserved. This shows, he claims,
that on the view of his Thomist and Peripatetic opponents, the substantial
form of fire does not have a proper and per se efficient causality.57 Surez
contrasts this view with his own: he holds that substantial forms are immedi-
ate principles of action, which do have a true and proper efficient causal influ-
ence on action.
Surez designs his thought experiment to help prove this point: if the imme-
diate principles of natural action are accidents alone, then natural substances
are without any active principle sufficient for generation. This is supposed to
follow from his earlier argument based on the assumptions that an effect can-
not excel the cause, and that accidents are less perfect than substantial forms.
He thus concludes that on the Thomist or Peripatetic account of the causality
of substantial forms, natural substances do not have what it takes to generate
new members of their species. According to Surez, his own view that substan-
tial forms are immediate principles of action, and thus have an efficient causal
influence on action, safeguards a widely held position that generation occurs
through natural processes.58
Surez emphasizes the efficient causality of the substantial form again in
dm 18.3, where he discusses the relationship between substantial forms and
species-appropriate properties. We have seen that Aquinas holds such proper-
ties to follow from substantial forms; he claims that the powers of the soul flow
from the essence of the soul; he also claims that proper accidents result natu-
rally from substantial forms. Surez argues that natural resulting or natural
emanation involves genuine efficient causality on the part of the substantial
form. Indeed, he contends that it is impossible to understand what this result-
ing might be if it is not effecting.59 Once again, he pits his view against alterna-
tive positions advanced by Thomists. The first of these is attributed to Cajetan,
who is said to interpret natural resulting this way: proper accidents, such as
the powers of the soul, follow naturally from substantial forms without any
57 dm 18.2.22 (Vivs 18.2.23) [25.6067], trans. Freddoso, p. 71: haec non est propria et per se
efficientia.
58 But the claim is not ad hoc: Surez holds that substantial forms are immediate principles
of action in a variety of cases.
59 dm 18.3.3 (Vivs 18.3.5) [25.616]: imo neque intelligi potest, quid sit haec resultantia, si
non est efficientia.
82 Richardson
mediating operation (naturalem sequelam absque operatione media).60

Employing the assumption that efficient causality consists in an action, Surez
infers that Cajetan must deny that natural resulting is genuine efficient causal-
ity.61 Surez also argues that Cajetan is not entitled to call the consequence of
one thing from another natural resulting unless it is due to genuine efficient
causality:
If it is not an effecting neither then is it a resulting or a natural causal

consequence, but an inference only, since when one is posited the other
is posited in accordance with what is naturally owed.62
If B follows from A without genuine efficient causality on the part of A, then B

is merely a logical consequence of A, and the following of B from A should not
be called natural resulting. This aspect of the argument is in part a terminologi-
cal dispute. Surez thinks that natural resulting carries with it the meaning of
something beyond a mere logical consequence, and that this can only be genu-
ine efficient causality. But Surezs overall point against Cajetan is substantive,
not terminological: he aims to defend the view that species-appropriate proper-
ties follow from the substantial form by means of an efficient causal influence
on the part of the substantial form; he takes Cajetan to oppose this view.
The second alternative position holds natural resulting to consist solely in
the fact that the cause that produces the substance is determined, by reason of
the substance, to give it the properties that are appropriate to it.63 For exam-
ple, if the producer is producing a cow, it must make cow-appropriate proper-
ties. On this view, species-appropriate properties result from substantial forms
in the following way. The producer aims to make a specific kind of substance;
60 dm 18.3.3 (Vivs 18.3.5) [25.616]: Circa hoc Cajetanus I. parte, quaestione 54. articulo 3.
indicat hanc dimanationem esse naturalem sequelam absque operatione media; non
tamen declarat, quid sit illa naturalis sequela, aut quomodo fiat sine actione vel opera-
tione media.
61 Surezs report has a basis in Cajetans writings. See Cajetan, Summa Theologiae, 1.54.3
and 1.77.1 in Thomas Aquinas, Opera omnia iussu impensaque Leonis XIII P. M. edita, tome
5 (Rome: 1882-), pp. 4750 and 2389.
62 dm 18.3.4 (Vivs 18.3.6) [25.617]: Si non est efficientia, neque etiam est resultantia, aut
naturalis sequela causalis, sed illativa tantum, quia, posito uno, ponitur aliud propter
naturale debitum.
63 dm 18.3.4 (Vivs 18.3.6) [25.617], trans. Freddoso, p. 95: Aliqui videntur inter haec assig-
nare medium, dicentes hanc non esse efficientiam, sed quasi efficientiam: quae in hoc
solum consistit, quod causa efficiens substantiam, ratione illius determinatur, ut ei det
proprietates illi proportionatas.
Formal Causality 83
in other words, the producer aims to make something with a certain type of
substantial form. To do so, the producer must make the type of properties
suited to that type of substantial form. Surez states that proponents of this
view call the contribution of the substantial form quasi-efficient. He attacks
this aspect of the view on the ground that: this is no true efficient causality but
merely a connaturality of the sort that also exists between a natural passive power
and its act.64 Employing the idea that efficient causality involves activity, Surez
argues that his opponents are not entitled to the claim that substantial forms play
a quasi-efficient causal role in determining a substances species-appropriate
properties. For, in fact, their position attributes no genuine efficient causality to
the substantial form. Again, the argument is partly terminological: Surez objects
to the use of the term quasi-efficient where there is no activity. And again,
Surezs overall point is substantive: he considers the substantial form to be an
active principle in the production of species-appropriate properties.
In both his discussion of the generation of material substance in dm 18.2
and his discussion of the production of species-appropriate properties in dm
18.3, Surez shows the causality of the substantial form to be in dispute amongst
his contemporaries. And in both discussions, he defends the genuine efficient
causality of the substantial form against alternative positions, which he
ascribes to Thomist and Peripatetic philosophers. This suggests that he empha-
sizes the efficient causality of the substantial form because he takes it to be
denied or misconstrued by his philosophical opponents, not because he
accords more importance to the efficient causality of the substantial form than
its formal causality. Surezs arguments in dm 18 are consistent with his view
that substantial formal causality is fundamental to and definitive of the sub-
stantial form, as well as his view that substantial forms play important roles in
explaining natural phenomena both as formal causes and as efficient causes.
That said, Surezs arguments for the efficient causality of the substantial form
in dm 18 are very significant. They explain why he maintains that we must attri-
bute a genuine efficient causal role to substantial forms in at least some cases
of natural action. And they demarcate the efficient causality of the substantial
form from its formal causality. This aspect of Surezs contribution to debates
about the causality of the substantial form is important in connection to
Robert Pasnaus account of the Scholastic doctrine of the substantial form.
As mentioned earlier, Pasnau uses examples from Surez to illustrate the
prominent physical aspect of the Scholastic doctrine of substantial form.
Pasnau describes this aspect of the doctrine as follows:
64 dm 18.3.4 (Vivs 18.3.6) [25.617]: Sed imprimis haec revera nulla efficientia est, sed solum
connaturalitas, quae inter potentiam passivam naturalem, et actum etiam intercedit.
84 Richardson
Substantial forms are understood as causal agents that would figure cen-
trally in any complete scientific account of the natural world. They
explain why water is cold, gold is heavy, why horses have four legs and
human beings two, and why horses merely whinny whereas human
beings talk. Given this conception of form, it is no wonder that some
scholastic authors contemplated describing the substantial form as a
kind of efficient cause.65
This report of the causality of the substantial form includes a point on which
Surez and his Thomist and Peripatetic opponents clearly agree: substantial
forms play an important role in natural philosophy in that they explain why
species-members have certain properties and abilities, e.g., why water is cold
and so on. But it elides their disputes about the causality of the substantial
form. Surez draws attention to these disputes, which he considers substantive
and not merely terminological.66 He vigorously attacks positions he attributes
to Aquinas and his followers on the ground that they fail to appreciate the genu-
ine efficient causality of the substantial form. In defending his own view against
those opponents, Surez distinguishes the formal causality of the substantial
form from its efficient causality. In its formal causal role, as we have seen, the
substantial form determines the species of a natural being and thereby deter-
mines its species-appropriate properties, which include active and passive pow-
ers. In its efficient causal role, it has an immediate influence in natural action,
such as generation, and in the production of species-appropriate properties.
Since these two causal roles are indeed quite different, Surez rightly insists that
they ought to be distinguished. His discussion of Scholastic disputes about the
causal roles of substantial forms thus supports a twofold account of what
Pasnau calls the physical aspect of the Scholastic doctrine of substantial form.
On the one hand, substantial forms explain natural phenomena as formal
causes. On the other, they do so as efficient causes. The substantial form is akin
to a causal agent in its latter role; in its former role, however, it retains its tradi-
tional function as the principle of actuality in a composite, which makes it a
member of a certain species. The substantial form plays this formal causal role
not by any action but rather by union with matter.
65 Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, pp. 5623.

66 On this issue, he may disagree with Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, p. 563, who writes,
Dispute over the proper terminology wore on for centuries. But the point does seem to
be wholly terminological, inasmuch as the later scholastic conception of substantial form
came to have more and more in common with an Aristotelian efficient cause.
chapter 4
Efficient Causality: The Metaphysics of Production

Stephan Schmid
1 Introduction
Efficient causes predominate in Surezs comprehensive theory of causality,

which he presents in his Disputationes Metaphysicae.1 And they do so in several
respects. On the one hand efficient causes for Surez are conceptually privi-
leged among the three other types of Aristotelian causes. This is because they
conform best to Surezs influxus-theory of causation that articulates a core
feature of all Aristotelian causes. According to this theory, a cause is a princi-
ple that essentially pours being into another thing. Since this theory is sup-
posed to cover all Aristotelian causes, Surez is eager to add that the word
pouring in this context,
is not to be understood strictly, as it is particularly used to be attributed

to the efficient cause, but more generally, so that it is synonymous with
giving or communicating being to another thing.2
Nonetheless, Surez frankly concedes that the efficient cause pours being
most properly, such that the term cause is primarily predicated of the effi-
cient cause.3 Moreover, there is reason to think that for Surez efficient causes
are also ontologically prior to every other kind of cause. This is because Surez
reconstructs the Aristotelian doctrine of four causes in a traditional Christian
framework according to which all things ultimately depend on an omnipotent
creator God who figures as the efficient (and in a certain sense also as the final)
cause of all things. Had God not created the world as an efficient cause there
would be neither form nor matter that could figure as a cause, nor would
1 Translations of Surezs texts are mine, although I heavily lent support from English trans
lations when they were available. The translations I have consulted are listed in the
bibliography.
2 dm 12.2.3 (Vivs 12.2.4) [25.384]: Causa est Principium per se influens esse in aliud;
Sumendum est autem verbum illud influit non stricte, ut attribui specialiter solet causae effi-
cienti, sed generalius, prout aequivalet verbo dandi, vel communicandi esse alteri.
3 dm 27.1.10 [25.952]: Nam efficiens propriissime influit esse; ...et ideo secundum hanc ratio-
nem videtur nomen causae primo dictum de efficienti.

86 Schmid
anything act for a certain purpose. In addition to this, Surez defends concur-
rentism, i.e. the position that all finite causes require Gods efficient causal
assistance (Gods so called concursus) in order to operate as causes at all.
Surez takes this to imply that without Gods efficient causality there would be
no material or formal causes either.4 Hence, efficient causes are not only con-
ceptually paradigmatic causes insofar as they comply most properly with
Surezs influxus-theory of causation, but they also seem to be ontologically
prior to most other kinds of Aristotelian causes.5 Therefore, it is hardly surpris-
ing that efficient causes enjoy yet another privileged role in Surez and receive
most space and attention in his comprehensive investigation of causes in the
Disputationes Metaphysicae. As it has been noted, Surezs tract on efficient
causality is the longest and most meticulous such tract in the history of scho-
lasticism.6 While Surez examines material, formal and final causes in at most
two disputations, he devotes no less than six disputations to the discussion of
efficient causes. The first three of them (dm 1719) are concerned with efficient
causes and their various modes of operation in general, whereas the last three
disputations focus on the efficient causality of God as it is displayed in his cre-
ation (dm 20), in his subsequent conservation of the created world (dm 21), and
in his concurrence by means of which he assists finite causes in their causal
operations (dm 22).
What then are these efficient causes, which Surez takes to be the paradigm
kind of causes and without which there would be no other kind of causes at all?
I want to shed some light on this general question by focusing on three more
particular questions. Namely, first, what are efficient causes for Surez and
which phenomena are they supposed to explain? Second, what is their proper
way of operation their causality, as Surez says ontologically speaking?
And third, how do efficient causes perform their distinct causality? In the
4 See especially dm 22.1.25 [25.8078].

5 So at least many authors, like Vincent Carraud, Causa sive ratio: La raison de la cause, de
Suarez Leibniz (Paris, 2002), pp. 14548 and Tad Schmaltz, Descartes on Causation (Oxford,
2008), pp. 3334, have argued. Since Surez repeatedly insists that the final cause is prior to
the efficient cause so that God would not engage in creation or concurrence if he did not
intend certain ends, the case of the ontological priority of efficient causes is not as clear as it
is often claimed. For a discussion, see Chapter 1, Section 4.2 and especially Chapter 5,
Sections34 in this volume, which provides strong defence of Surezs view of the priority of
final causality and suggests a slightly different overall picture of Surezs weighting of the
four Aristotelian causes.
6 Francisco Surez, On Creation, Conservation, and Concurrence: Metaphysical Disputations 20,
21, and 22, trans. Alfred J. Freddoso (South Bend, in, 2002), p. xxvii.
Efficient Causality 87
following three sections I will take up these questions in turn. This will finally
provide the background for addressing the question about the modernity of
Surez and his theory of efficient causation, a connection suggested by various
scholars.7 I will come back to this in my conclusion.
2 Efficient Causes and Their Range of Operation
What are efficient causes for Surez? This question can be understood in two
ways. It can either be understood extensionally as a request to list all kinds of
things that Surez likes to conceive of as efficient causes, or it can be taken
intensionally, as a question about what it means to be an efficient cause.
Surezs account of what it means to be an efficient cause can better be appre-
ciated if we have a rough idea about what kinds of phenomena the notion of
an efficient cause is supposed to capture. I will therefore start with the ques-
tion taken in its extensional sense.
Surez accounts for a great variety of phenomena in terms of efficient causes.
Primarily, efficient causes are supposed to explain processes. That is, every sort
of coming to be is due to an efficient cause according to Surez. And there are
many different sorts of processes. For one there are natural processes such as the
rusting of iron, freezing of water, burning of wood, the generation, growth and
procreation of animals, and every other causal interaction you can think of.8
Furthermore, Surez even thinks that:
accidental properties, especially those that follow upon or are owed to a

thing by reason of its form, are caused by the substance not only as a
7 See Surez on Individuation: Metaphysical Disputation V; Individual Unity and Its Principle,
trans. with an Introduction, Notes, Glossary and Bibliography by Jorge E. Gracia (Milwaukee,
wi, 1982), p. 23, and Schmaltz, Descartes on Causation, p. 11, who writes that Surez antici-
pates Descartess views in taking efficient causality to provide the paradigmatic instance of
causation.
8 Here a caveat might be in order: In his Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in libros Aristotelis
De anima, 6.2.13, ed. Salvador Castellote, vol. 2 (Madrid, 1981 [originally composed in 1572, yet
never published in Surezs lifetime]), p. 486, Surez famously argued that powers of the soul
do not directly interact, but are in constant harmony (consensio) with each other. For further
discussions see Joseph Ludwig, Das akausale Zusammenwirken (sympathia) der Seelenvermgen
in der Erkenntnislehre des Surez (Munich, 1929) and James B. South, Francisco Surez on
Imagination, Vivarium 39 (2001), pp. 13756. The topic of the non-causal interaction of the
powers of the soul is not addressed in the dm.
88 Schmid
material cause or final cause, but also as an efficient cause through a nat-
ural resulting.9
For Surez, then, substances do not only figure as bearers (or material causes) of
their accidents or as their final causes (to the extent that they are appropriate or
good subjects of inherence), but even as their efficient causes, when these acci-
dents naturally result from them, as Surez puts it. Such natural resulting is a
spontaneous, non-triggered, production of accidents by its substance, which is
particularly salient in the case of water. In this example, Surez explains,
it is manifestly obvious that the posited thesis is true: namely, that some
accident can result immediately, via efficient causality, from a substantial
principle. For the degree of coldness in question can have no more proxi-
mate principle from which it results than the substantial form of water.10
That is, what explains that water spontaneously returns to its pristine coldness
if it is not constantly heated is that this accident naturally results from the
substantial form of water, which thus qualifies as the efficient cause of its natu-
ral coldness.11
In addition to natural processes, human actions are also due to efficient
causes. Some of them are overt and have their effects outside the agent Surez
calls them transeunt actions such as singing, house-building, writing or walking.
Others, which Surez calls immanent actions, have their immediate effects
9 dm 18.3.4 (Vivs 18.3.6) [25.616]: [nimirum] proprietates accidentales, praesertim illas

quae consequuntur aut debentur rei ratione formae, causari a substantia non solum
materialiter et finaliter, sed etiam effective per naturalem resultantiam.
10 dm 18.3.4 (Vivs 18.3.6) [25.616]: Et in illo exemplo aquae manifeste constat, veram esse
conclusionem positam, scilicet, aliquod accidens posse immediate resultare effective a
substantiali principio. Nam illa intensio frigoris nullum habere potest propinquius princi-
pium unde resulted, quam sit forma substantialis aquae.
11 Other instances of natural emanations are the souls emanation of its faculties and a sub-
stances emanation of its propria (i.e necessary accidental properties). The former phenom-
enon is extensively discussed in Surezs De anima, 3.3 ed. Salvador Castellote, vol. 2
(Madrid, 1981), pp. 11651. Note however, that Surez refrains from describing these sorts of
emanation as proper forms of efficient causality since such emanation can never occur by
itself, separately, but instead can only occur insofar as it is connected to a prior action [sc. of
bringing about a particular substantial form like the soul] and to the end of that action and
so it is not a proper and per se action, even less a change, but rathera sort of accidental
completion of the prior action. dm 18.3.7 (Vivs 18.3.9) [25.618]. As we will see in the next
section, genuine efficient causality essentially requires the occurrence of a genuine action.
only within the causally operative power. His favourite examples are thinking
and willing.12 Although willing and thinking both occur within their distinc-
tive faculties in the will and in the intellect , these acts are radically different
from each other: while acts of the intellect are so called natural acts that are
completely determined by their antecedent conditions, acts of will are essen-
tially indifferent or undetermined and to this extent free. Surez takes this dif-
ference to be due to their respective causes. As he explains, the intellect belongs
to the class of natural causes which are characterized by the fact that they
operate necessarily once all the things they require for operating are pres-
ent,13 while the will is a free cause, which, given that all the things required
for acting have been posited, is able to act and not to act.14 This two-way-
power of the will endows rational agents with three sorts of indifferences:
first, free agents are indifferent with respect to the exercise of their will (it is up
to them whether they choose something or not). Second, they enjoy indiffer-
ence with regard to the specification of the object of their acts of will, that is,
with regard to the question whether they want this object rather than another,
and they are finally indifferent about the specification of the volitional act, that
is, whether they love, desire, hate or abominate a certain object.15
As this brief survey shows, Surez thinks that efficient causes account for
every sort of process, however diverse these processes might be. But Surez
does not leave it at that. Ultimately, efficient causes do not only explain the
various ways of coming to be, but every form of non-necessary existence what-
soever. The reason for this is that, according to Surez, everything which does
not exist in virtue of its own essence must be brought about by an efficient
cause and subsequently be kept in existence by Gods continuous conservation.
Surez carefully attempts to prove creation by successively considering the
cases of celestial bodies (dm 20.1.15), material substances (dm 20.1.1620), and
immaterial substances (dm 20.1.21). His main (philosophical) reason for believ-
ing that God must have created all finite things consists in the fact that it
12 For Surezs distinction between transeunt and immanent actions, see dm 48.2.1 [26.873
4], and for a detailed discussion of this distinction dm 18.7.4551 [25.64547].
13 dm 19.1.1 [25.688]: [causae] necessario agentes, si requisita ad agendum adsint.
14 dm 19.4.1 [25.706]: [causa libera est] quae positis omnibus requisitis ad agendum potest
agere et non agere.
15 Cf. dm 19.4.9 [25.7089]; although Surez is often anxious to follow Thomas Aquinas in
questions of freedom, he clearly sides with voluntarist authors like Ockham and Scotus
who also defend these three sorts of indifferences of the will. A short overview of their
theories of freedom is provided by Richard Cross, Duns Scotus (Oxford and New York,
1999), pp. 8489 for Scotus and by Marilyn McCord Adams, William Ockham, 2 vols.,
(Notre Dame, in, 1987), pp. 111537 for Ockham.
90 Schmid
belongs to their very nature that they do not exist by themselves, but must
have been brought about by an efficient cause.16 For the claim of divine conser-
vation Surez provides mainly two arguments. The first adduced in dm 21.1.12,
[25.788] could be called a parity-of-reasoning-argument: if the coming to be
of a non-necessary being requires an efficient cause (since its brute coming to
be would be unintelligible), then its remaining in existence is equally unintel-
ligible and thus, by parity of reasoning, also requires an efficient cause.
Surezs second argument starts from the rather weak assumption that God
allows an entity to remain in being and derives from this that God must actively
keep it in existence or conserve it. This derivation turns on a reflection about
Gods ability of annihilating something. As Surez argues, annihilating cannot
be a proper action,
since every positive action necessarily tends toward some being, and thus
if God always needed an action in order to destroy entities, he would not
be able to annihilate them.17
This reasoning is evident from a comparison to our ability of destruction: if I

destroy a sandcastle, for example, I can do so by actively operating on this
sandcastle, for instance, by kicking it. Yet, by doing so, I do not really annihilate
the sandcastle, but just give its constituent matter a new form. The deeper rea-
son for this, which Surez provides in the passage just quoted, is that every
action tends towards the being or existence of something (and be it only
towards the being of a ruin).18 On account of this it is clear that in order for the
annihilation of things to be possible, God
must be able to annihilate them just by withholding his action or influ-

ence; but this cannot be the case except insofar as they depend on that
influence and action for their being and being-conserved.19
Therefore, God must conserve all things and hold them actively in existence.
16 Thus, Surez thinks that the first being has no cause, all other things have one (primum
ens nullam habet causam, caetera omnia illam habent) dm 28.1.4 [26.2].
17 dm 21.1.14 [25.789]: quia omnia positiva actio necessario tendit ad aliquod esse; unde si
Deus semper indigeret actione ad destruendas res, non posset eas annihilare.
18 Surez discusses the problem of destructing and annihilating something at some length
in dm 18.11.
19 dm 21.1.14 [25.789]: [N]ecesse est ut per solam abstractionem actionis vel influxus possit
eas annihilare. Hoc autem fieri non potest nisi quatenus illae in suo esse et conservari a
tali influxu et actione pendent.
This shows that efficient causes for Surez have an utterly broad range of
operation: every process of coming to be, all kinds of actions, and even every sort
of persistence of finite beings is ultimately due to the influence of efficient
causes. What then are efficient causes such that they can perform all these vari-
ous operations? Surez addresses this question outright at the very beginning of
his extensive discussion of efficient causes in his Disputationes Metaphysicae. He
starts by considering the brief and concise claim that an efficient cause can be
said to be a per se extrinsic principle from which a change (mutatio) first exists.20
Let us have a closer look at the single elements of this characterization in turn.
First we are told that an efficient cause is a per se extrinsic principle. This
qualification distinguishes efficient causes from material and formal causes
which are intrinsic causes insofar as they are partially identical with the thing,
with respect to which they figure as formal or material causes.
An efficient cause, by contrast, is an extrinsic cause, that is, a cause that

does not communicate its own proper and (as I will put it) individual
being to the effect, but instead communicates to it a different being, which
really flows forth and emanates from such a cause by means of an action.21
That is, an efficient cause exists independently from its effect, and is thus
d istinct from it.22
Second, an efficient cause is said to be that extrinsic principle from which a
change first exists. As it stands, this characterization seems to be too broad and
too narrow at the same time. It is too narrow, in that it seems to leave no room for
God, who is supposed to be the worlds creator or first efficient cause. The reason
for this is that the suggested definition talks about a change (mutatio) which
according to orthodox Aristotelianism consists in the acquirement of a new
form in a previously existing portion of matter. Since Gods production of the
world is conceived as a creatio ex nihilo, Gods creation cannot be understood as
20 dm 17.1.2 [25.581]: [D]ici posset causa efficiens esse principium per se, extrinsecum, a quo
primo est mutatio.
21 dm 17.1.6 [25.582]: [C]ausa vero efficiens est extrinseca, id est, non communicans effectui
suum proprium et (ut ita dicam) individuum esse, sed aliud realiter profluens et manans
a tali causa media actione.
22 Note however that causes and effects do not need to be really distinct from another (in the
technical sense of being distinguished ut res a re). Otherwise there could not be any
immanent causes which exist in the same supposita as their effects. Nonetheless, Surez
argues that even in this case the proximate principle of acting is in some way distinct
from the proximate principle of receiving. dm 18.7.47 [25.646]. For Surezs theory of dis-
tinctions see below n. 34.
92 Schmid
a change in the strict sense of the term. After all, when God creates the world, he
does not operate on a previously existing portion of matter, but brings his crea-
tures into being from nothing. In order to amend this difficulty, Surez suggests
replacing the word change in the above definition by action, since albeit no
change, Gods creation is an action. In the strict sense then, an efficient cause for
Surez is an extrinsic principle from which an action first exists.23
This modification of the definition of an efficient cause immediately brings
another difficulty to light, namely that it seems to be too broad in that it
includes final causes as well. At least with regard to human actions, it seems
natural to say that their source lies in the end for the sake of which they are
performed. How then can we be sure that the presented definition exclusively
pertains to efficient causes, and not equally to final causes? At first sight,
Surezs answer to this question seems rather to consist in a terminological
insistence than in a substantial reply. He just stresses that an efficient cause is
a principle whence (unde) or from which (a quo), and not the principle
or cause for the sake of which (propter quam) an action exists, which is the
strict definition of final causes.24 Yet, Surez substantiates this terminological
distinction between a principle from which and a principle for the sake of which
an action follows by means of his theory of efficient causality.
Surez is eager to remind his reader to carefully distinguish between ques-
tions concerning a cause, its proper effect, and its distinct causality (see dm
12.2.11 [Vivs 12.2.13] for instance). A causes causality is its distinct influence
by which it differs (a) from non-causal principles of explanation that do not
exert any influence at all, and (b) from causes of other types since Surez
takes the four kinds of Aristotelian causes to be characterized by a proper
kind of causality, that is, by a distinct kind of influence through which they
give rise to their peculiar effects.25 It is precisely this distinct kind of
23 See dm 17.1.45. Maintaining that efficient causes are things that perform actions might
sound odd to contemporary ears, since we are used to apply the term action only to per-
sons who act intentionally. However, it was common among scholastic philosophers to
use the term actio in a very broad sense as to describe every activity whatsoever. In the
following I join the general scholastic usage and thus take the term action to be applica-
ble to any causal operation.
24 See dm 17.1.3 [25.581].
25 Note that Surezs basic methodological assumption that all causes have effects which
they give rise to by a distinct influence reflects the fact that he attributes a conceptually
privileged role to the efficient cause. For Aristotle the term cause is said in many ways
(Metaphysics 5.2.1013b4), and is hence not to be construed on the model of one cause like
the efficient cause. As Robert Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes: 12741671 (Oxford, 2011), p. 560
and Form, Substance, and Mechanism, The Philosophical Review 113 (2004), pp. 3188,
influence that Surez wants to refer to, when he calls efficient causes the
extrinsic principles whence or from which an action first exists and takes this
to distinguish them from final causes that are principles for the sake of which
an action exists.
This distinction between a cause, its distinct causality, and its effect is also
to be kept in mind in order not to be misled by Surezs characterization of the
efficient cause as a principle whence or from which an action exists. For at first
sight one might take this to mean that actions are effects of efficient causes.
However, Surez decisively opposes this view by arguing that the action is
rather the efficient causes causality by means of which it brings about its spe-
cific effect (cf. dm 18.10.5). Hence, by calling an efficient cause a principle
whence an action exists Surez just wants to point to the efficient causes
distinct causality or influx by means of which it is distinguished from all other
kinds of causes:
For to say that an efficient cause is a first principle whence an action

exists is the same as saying that it is that whence the effect exists by
means of an action, that is, the same as saying that it is a principle
from which the effect flows forth, or on which it depends through an
action.26
Efficient causes then are causes that bring about their effects by engaging in
a certain type of action. This conception of efficient causation can easily be
illustrated with the help of an example. Suppose that I want to heat up my
apartment and turn on the heating system. If everything works out fine then
the heating system will figure as the efficient cause of my apartments
warmth. What makes my heating system the efficient cause of a certain effect
(my apartments warmth) is just the fact that the heating system performs a
certain action: it heats up my apartment.
As plausible as this characterization of efficient causation might appear,
it still raises the worry of being utterly circular. For is doing something or
performing a certain action (in the broad sense of the term) not simply
has shown, however, late scholastic thinkers increasingly thought about causes on the
model of efficient causes and not just as abstract explanatory principles which account
for metaphysically sublime questions like questions about a things identity.
26 dm 17.1.6 [25.582]: Perinde enim est dicere efficientem causam esse primum principium
unde est actio, ac dicere, unde est effectus, media actione, seu, esse principium, a quo effec-
tus profluit seu pendet per actionem.
94 Schmid
synonymous to causing something? But how then can it be a proper analysis to

say that the causality of an efficient cause consists in its action? Surez is per-
fectly aware of this difficulty. He thinks, however, that we should not be trou-
bled by this, for
since the action is related to the agent in the manner of a form, there is
nothing wrong with explaining the nature of an agent in terms of its rela-
tion to an action.27
In the same way as fire only qualifies as fire because it has the form of fire, so
an efficient cause is only an efficient cause because it has the form of some-
thing that performs a certain operation. Hence, that acting and being an effi-
cient cause have the same meaning is no vice of Surezs definition. It is rather
a natural consequence of the fact that acting is the essential feature of an effi-
cient cause, and that efficient causation and action describe the same meta-
physically fundamental phenomenon such that neither of these two terms can
be given a reductive analysis.
For Surez then, efficient causes are distinguished from all other kinds of
causes by the fact that they perform a proper action by means of which they
bring about an effect that is really distinct from them: they are extrinsic prin-
ciples of genuine actions. This analysis is admittedly non-reductive insofar as
it does not trace efficient causality back to a more fundamental feature of real-
ity. Nonetheless, it is informative in that it allows us to distinguish efficient
causes from other kinds of causes. Efficient causes are those causes that per-
form actions. It is the task of the next section to elucidate what this means
from an ontological point of view.
3 The Ontology of Efficient Causality
As it has become clear in the last section, Surezs definition of efficient causes
as principles which perform certain actions allows him to conceive of various
phenomena like natural processes, natural resulting, human actions (including
thinking and willing) as well as divine actions (like the creation and conserva-
tion of the world) as instances of efficient causation. Still, the assumption of a
distinctive efficient causality, that is, a medium or link, as it were, between the
27 dm 17.1.5 [25.582]: [Dicendum tamen est,] cum actio comparetur ad agens per modum
formae, non male rationem agentis per ordinem ad actionem declarari.
cause and the effect,28 evokes the ontological question as to what this medium
or link really is. What is an action for Surez ontologically speaking?29 His
response is straightforward: the action, he maintains,
is not properly and formally the very effect that is produced by

the agent; rather, it is a mode of such an effect, distinct in reality from
that effect.30
Actions then are modes of effects. But what are modes?

It is surely Surezs most influential, if not major metaphysical achievement
to have systematically introduced the ontological category of a mode and used
it in order to solve a range of metaphysical problems.31 As he argues in dm 7,
modes are modifications of real things (res) like accidents and substances. As
such they
are something positive and of themselves modify the very entities by

conferring on them something that is over and above the complete
essence as individual and as existing in reality.32
But although they are something positive, and hence some kind of entity,
modes are incomplete entities, incapable of existing on their own: their
nature, Surez explains,
28 dm 18.10.8, [25.682]: [D]e ratione causalitatis est ut habeat immediatam habitudinem ad

causam et sit quasi medium aut vinculum inter causam et effectum.
29 For an older treatment of this question, see J. Patout Burns, Action in Surez, The New
Scholasticism 38 (1964), pp. 45372.
30 dm 18.10.8, [25.682]: [R]espondetur, actionem proprie ac formaliter non esse ipsum effec-
tum productum ab agente, sed esse modum talis effectus ex natura rei ab illo distinctum.
(My emphasis).
31 Note, however, that Surez was not the first who employed the notion of a mode. His
forerunner Petrus Fonseca already made extensive use of this notion and traces of a
technical use of this term go back until the 13th century. For an extensive discussion
of Surezs theory of modes and its relation to Fonseca see Stephen Menn, Surez,
Nominalism, and Modes, in Hispanic Philosophy in the Age of Discovery, ed. Kevin
White (Washington, dc, 1997), pp. 22656, and for a history of the emergence of the
technical notion of a mode see Robert Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes (Oxford and New
York, 2011), pp. 24475.
32 dm 7.1.16 (Vivs 7.1.17) [25.255]: [Modi] sunt aliquid positivum et afficiunt ipsas entitates
per seipsos dando illis aliquid quod est extra essentiam totam, ut individuam et exis-
tentem in rerum natura.
96 Schmid
seems to consist in this, that they do not of themselves suffice to consti-

tute being or entity in reality, but intrinsically require to actually modify
some entity without which they could not exist at all.33
Unlike substances and real accidents, which are fully-fledged res that can at
least in principle exist on their own, modes are essentially ontologically depen-
dent entities.
A mode then is a distinct kind of entity that has its own criterion of identity
and that is distinct from the thing it is a mode of. Surez is eager to emphasize,
though, that a mode of a thing x is not really distinct from x, in the technical
sense of the term, that is, distinct in the sense in which two things (res) are
distinct from one another. Rather, a mode is only modally distinct from the
thing it modifies, where such a modal distinction is a stronger kind of distinc-
tion than a mere conceptual distinction, which traces only conceptually dis-
tinguishable aspects of a thing instead of separate kinds of entities.34
Now, Surez argues that an action by means of which a cause brings about
its effect is precisely such a mode of such an effect, distinct in reality from that
effect. The reason for this is simply that
the effect can remain in the absence of such a mode; or, what amounts to the
same thing, the effect can remain even if its dependence changes. For the
mode in question is the effects emanation from or dependence on the act-
ing cause.35
This can easily be illustrated by returning to my apartments heating system.

As seen, my heaters distinctive causality consists in its particular act of heating
33 dm 7.1.17 (Vivs 7.1.18) [25.256]: [Igitur dantur in entitatibus creatis modi aliqui afficien-
tes ipsas,] quorum ratio in hoc videtur consistere, quod ipsi per se non sufficiunt con-
stituere ens seu entitatem in rerum natura, sed intrinsece postulant, ut actu afficiant
entitatem aliquam, sine qua esse nullo modo possint.
34 See dm 7.1.15 (Vivs 7.1.16) [25.255]. As Surez explains in dm 7.2.68 [25.263f.] a sign (yet
not certainly a necessary requirement) for y being modally distinct from x, is ys asym-
metric separability from x, such that x can survive the destruction of y, but not vice versa.
A sign for a real distinction between x and y, by contrast, is the mutual separability of x
and y, so that both can exist independently of one another (see dm 7.2.910 [25.264f.]).
35 dm 18.10.8 [25.682]: [R]espondetur, actionem proprie ac formaliter non esse ipsum effec-
tum productum ab agente, sed esse modum talis effectus ex natura rei ab illo distinctum;
cuius argumentum sufficiens est quod potest manere effectus sine tali modo, aut variata
dependentia, quod idem est. Est enim ille modus emanatio seu dependentia effectus a
causa agente.
by way of which it causes the apartment to be warm. According to Surezs

analysis, the heating systems action of heating is nothing but the emanation
of my apartments warmth from the heating system and this emanation or
dependence is modally distinct from the warmth. For, exactly as Surez says,
the warmth can remain in the absence of my heating (if I have heated my
apartment long enough and shut down my heater my apartment will remain
warm), or the same warmth can be caused by another action if I change for
instance the heating source and go on to heat my apartment with my electric
furnace instead. Thus, the action of heating cannot exist without it becom-
ing warmer in my apartment and, conversely, the warmth of my apartment
can be caused by another action or even remain for a while after I have
switched off my heater.
Due to the fact then that an action cannot exist without producing some
effect, and that this very effect can even remain (and thus exist) after the action
has ceased, actions satisfy all criteria for qualifying as modes of their effects;
even more so if an action is conceived as an effects dependence on an efficient
cause. Nonetheless, Surezs characterization of an action as a mode of its
effect must strike a contemporary reader as odd. Why does Surez take actions
to be modes of effects? Would it not be equally possible, and even more natu-
ral, to conceive of an action as the mode of its efficient cause? At least this is
what the grammatical structure of our ascriptions of actions suggests. Unlike
passions, we ascribe actions to their performers; and in accordance with this, it
seems more natural to take actions as modes of their performing agents rather
than their effects. To better understand Surez choice to conceive of actions as
modes of their effects it is instructive to see how Surez conceives of actions in
general. In dm 48 he writes:
I say that it belongs to the intrinsic nature of an action as such and to

every action that it has an intrinsic terminus, towards which it tends,
insofar as it produces it, and that consequently the essential and com-
plete concept of an action includes a transcendental relation to such a
terminus (my italics).36
As is plain here, Surez holds a relational conception of actions: an action is

intrinsically directed toward a certain terminus or outcome. This conception
36 dm 48.2.16 [26.878]: Dico enim, de ratione intrinseca actionis ut sic, et omnis actionis
esse, ut habeat intrinsecum terminum ad quem tendat, ut producendum per ipsam, et
consequenter in essentiali et completo conceptu actionis includi transcendentalem
respectum ad huiusmodi terminum.
98 Schmid
reflects the way we usually characterize actions. What distinguishes one type
of action say switching on the light from another type of action say scar-
ing off a burglar are their different ends or intended outcomes: the end of the
former action is achieved if the light is on while the latter is successful if the
burglar is scared off and desists from his plans. That is, an actions identity
depends on the kind of outcome it is supposed to produce, and with regard to
which it can be judged as completed or failed. And inthis sense the concept of
an action includes a relation to a certain outcome.37
This relational conception of actions provides a deeper reason for
Surezs decision to conceive of actions as modes of effects as opposed to
causes. An action is a mode of its effect because it owes its identity (and
thus its existence as the very action it is) to the effect which it is essentially
directed at. As seen, modes for Surez are by their nature ontologically
dependent entities, and due to the fact that an action owes its identity to
the effect, which it is intrinsically directed towards, it does also ontologi-
cally depend on it: an action could not exist (as the very action it is), if it
were directed towards another effect. Hence an action quite naturally qual-
ifies as a mode of its effect.
Despite this broader theoretical underpinning, Surezs conception of
actions as modes of their effects rather than of their causes still might appear
arbitrary. For, could one not argue in the same way that an action ontologically
depends on the efficient cause? After all, if there were no efficient cause, noth-
ing would engage in an action either and no action would exist. So, it seems
that we have equally good reasons to conceive of actions as modes of their
causes. In order to dispel the worry that Surezs conception of actions as
modes of effects is arbitrary, it is important to note two additional reasons that
speak in favor of his position.
The first reason is connected with Surezs Aristotelianism. Aristotle has
famously analyzed processes or motions as actualizations of forms in a suit-
able substance. If fire ignites a piece of wood for example, this is to be explained
37 More precisely, Surez states that an action bears a transcendental relation to its termi-
nus. Transcendental relations are inter alia distinguished from categorical relations in
that they do not require their relata to actually exist. Thus, an action is related to its end
even though the action might fail and the intended outcome never really exists. (For an
extensive discussion of the difference between categorical and transcendental relations
or respects see dm 47.4). Such relations are called transcendental because they transcend
the ten categories of Aristotle insofar as they are true and real relations [sc. toward cer-
tain things], which essentially belong to various and indeed almost all categories of
beings. dm 47.3.10 [26.797].
by the fact that the wood, which only has the potential to burn, is brought to
actually burn when it comes into contact with an instance of fire, in which the
form of fire is already actualized. This analysis of a change immediately entails
that a change takes place only in the patient whose potential is actualized.
Since in the agent the form (in question) is already actualized, there is nothing
going on in the agent. Thus a change, according to the Aristotelian analysis,
exists in the changing thing, and not in the thing that causes this change.38 By
conceiving of actions as modes of effects, Surez can accommodate this basic
Aristotelian tenet. Since all natural actions produce their effects in certain suit-
able patients,39 they also exist in their patients exactly as it is required by the
Aristotelian account of motion.40 And this provides a good reason for Surez
to analyze actions as modes of effects rather than causes.41
A second reason for Surez to describe an action as a mode of its effect rather
than of its cause is theological in nature. Medieval philosophers were famously
struggling with the problem about how Gods creation of the world is to be
reconciled with his being perfect. This problem arises from the fact that virtu-
ally all Christian philosophers (at least of Surezs times) share the view that
God, in virtue of being perfect, has no unactualized potentialities and is to this
extent pure act (actus purus) and hence immutable (otherwise God had some
unactualized potentialities which would contradict his perfection).42 So, how
can a perfect and thus immutable being like God do something like creating a
world? This problem is at least alleviated if one can say that actions, although
emanating from an agent, are not modes of these agents, but rather modes of
their effects. On this assumption, Gods creating the world does not contradict
his immutability, for such an action qua being a mode of its effect does not
38 See Aristotle, Physics 3.3.202a13b29.

39 This distinguishes natural actions from the divine action of creation that as a creatio ex
nihilo does not operate on anything; see dm 20.1.14 [25.749].
40 So Surez writes, dm 48.4.7 [26.890]: The first [sc. reason for a natural actions existing in
its patient] is that an action cannot be really distinct from the formal terminus, that arises
from it, but only its mode. So wherever a terminus of action occurs, there it is necessary
that the action itself occurs, because a mode is necessarily accompanied by the thing
whose mode it is (Prima est, quod actio non potest res esse realiter distincta a termino
formali, qui per eam fit, sed modus ejus; ergo ubi fuerit terminus actionis, ibi necesse est
esse actionem ipsam, quia modus necessario comitatur rem cuius est modus).
41 One might wonder where the passion of a patient exists, if already the action exists in the
patient. Surez dissolves this worry, by maintaining that actions are passions; see dm
49.1.8 [26.899].
42 Surez himself proves the immutability of God from his perfection in dm 30.8.2 [26.113].
100 Schmid
take place in God and consequently does not conflict with his immutability
orperfection.43
Surezs wish to abide by the Aristotelian analysis of processes and his theo-
logical interest in justifying the coherence of a creator God show that his con-
ception of actions as modes of their effects is all but arbitrary. Yet, his wish to
harmonize Aristotelian metaphysics with the assumption of a Christian cre-
ator gives at the same time rise to a new problem. This problem is particularly
salient with regard to Gods creation which as a creatio ex nihilo does not
operate on anything. Consequently, this action cannot exist or take place in
anything either. But how then can an action exist without existing in some-
thing? Does this not render this action a kind of ontologically free-floating
entity which blatantly contradicts its being a mode, that is, an essentially onto-
logically dependent entity? This worry can even be extended to all actions:
how can actions be modes of their effects, if actions are only ways of bringing
about these effects in the first place? Does the fact that actions precede their
effects not show that they can exist independently from their effects and thus
cannot be conceived as their modes? Surez seeks to dispel these worries by
appeal to his relational conception of actions:
Thus from this we can infer that it pertains to the nature of an action as
such that it simply is a certain mode that adheres to a terminus and per se
flows from an efficient cause: for this relation to a terminus is not so much
towards a subject [sc. of inherence], as we have said above [sc. when deal-
ing with creation], nor is this intimate conjunction a proper inherence or
information, but a peculiar mode of constituting its terminus, which
depends and flows from its principle, in reality.44
An actions being a mode of its effect does not require the action to somehow
inhere or exist in anything. It is enough for it to adhere to its effect by tending
43 Things of course are trickier with regard to Gods immanent acts like Gods consideration
of the various possible worlds and his voluntary decision for one amongst them. Surez
especially struggles with the problem of reconciling Gods freedom with his immutability
for which he does not find a fully satisfying solution and frankly concedes that Gods free-
dom is an eminent mystery, see dm 30.9.38 [26.128].
44 dm 48.4.12 (Vivs 48.4.13) [26.891]: Hinc ergo colligimus, de ratione actionis ut sic solum
esse ut sit modus quidam adhaerens termino, et per se immediate fluens ab efficiente: ille
enim respectus ad terminum non est sicut ad subjectum, ut supra diximus, neque illa
intima coniunctio est propria inhaesio aut informatio, sed peculiaris modus constituendi
ipsum terminum in rerum natura, dependentem et fluentem a suo principio.
to produce it. This is a natural consequence of Surezs relational conception

of actions according to which an actions being a mode of an effect is simply
grounded in the fact that an action is intrinsically directed towards its effect
and does in this sense ontologically depend on it: an action could not exist (as
the very action it is) if it were directed towards another effect. And for this
reason an action is not required to exist in anything.45
This is of course a crucial result for Surez for other than that he could not
conceive of Gods creatio ex nihilo as a proper action since this action does not
operate on a preexisting patient in which it could inhere. Moreover, his theory
of action is still such that it yields the same results as Aristotles analysis for
actions that operate on a preexisting patient. For it is clear to Surez that:
[E]ach action, which is in a subject [sc. at all], is in that subject which its
terminus is in; and this formally applies to all actions that arise out of a
subject, be it immanent or transeunt.46
This shows that Surezs conception of actions as modes of their effects allows
him to provide a conservative extension of Aristotelianism in the technical sense
of the term. It is an extension since his theory of action does not presuppose
that actions have to exist in anything. Actions are simply modes of their effects
in virtue of being intrinsically directed at them. Consequently this theory
allows for a creatio ex nihilo which, according to strict Aristotelian standards,
would have to be dismissed as a metaphysical impossibility. Yet, this extension
is conservative to the extent that it conforms to Aristotelianism in all the cases
of natural actions that operate on a preexisting patient, which are the only
cases that strict Aristotelianism covers. Thus, with respect to all actions that
classical Aristotelianism can handle, Surezs theory yields the same results.
Surezs attempt to devise a theory of action that reconciles Aristotelianism
with the Christian doctrine of a creator God is surely impressive. Still, his rela-
tional conception of actions does not seem to dispel all ontological worries yet.
The ontological status of divine creation remains problematic. Even though an
45 Note that it would be misguided to require that a mode m of x must, in virtue of being a
mode of x, inhere in x. For the ontological dependence of m on x is not spelled out in
terms of inherence because, according to Surezs analysis, inherence itself is a mode, see
dm 7.1.18 (Vivs 7.1.19) [25.256], and Menn, Surez, Nominalism, and Modes (see above,
n. 31), pp. 23242.
46 dm 48.4.14 [26.892]: omnis action, quae est in subjecto, in illo est, in quo est terminus
ejus; et hoc est quod formaliter convenit omni actioni, sive immanenti sive transeunti,
quae ex subjecto fit.
102 Schmid
actions being a mode of its effect does not require the action to exist in any-
thing, it might still strike one as odd that the non-inhering action of creation is
a free-floating entity. Is this no absurdity? Not for Surez, at least, who tries to
turn this alleged absurdity into a special distinction:
Insofar as this coming-to-be [sc. the action of creation] is conceived of

as being prior in nature to its terminus, it should be admitted that it
does not exist in a subject. Rather it is thought of quasi in itself. This is
not problematic; to the contrary, this is the singular excellence and way
of a creatures dependence. Indeed, at the very instant in time at which
this dependence comes to be, it is, through an intimate conjoining and
sort of identity, in the terminus itself not as in a subject, but according
to the special and peculiar relation by which a path is related to its
terminus.47
The action of creation, then, exists in the effect it brings about as the very
becoming of a creature. Despite Surezs insistence that this is unproblematic
his view still has quite radical implications. For if creation is really to be
thought of [sc. as being] quasi in itself, as Surez suggests, such an action
seems to enjoy the kind of ontological independent existence that pertains to
substances rather than the ontological dependent sort of existence that is
peculiar to modes. But even here Surez is happy to admit these consequences
and concedes
that this creative dependence, insofar as it has the nature of an action, is

not an accidental action, which is such that it requires a subject, but a
substantial action; and thus it is not classified in the category of action
[sc. one of the nine Aristotelian non-substantial or accidental catego-
ries], but is instead attributed to the category of substance.48
47 dm 20.5.27 (Vivs 20.4.27) [25.777]: [Q]uatenus illud fieri concipitur ut prius natura suo
termino, concedendum est non esse in subjecto, sed concipi quasi in se, quod non est
inconveniens, immo potius haec est singularis excellentia et modus dependentiae crea-
turae. In eodem vero instanti temporis in quo fit, est per intimam coniunctionem et qua-
mdam identitatem in ipso termino non tamquam in subjecto, sed secundum specialem et
propriam habitudinem qua via respicit terminum.
48 dm 20.5.28 (Vivs 20.4.28) [25.777]: dici potest, illam dependentiam creativam, ut habet
rationem actionis, non esse actionem accidentalem, cuiusmodi est illa quae indiget subj
ecto, sed esse actionem substantialem, ideoque non collocari in praedicamento actionis,
sed reduci ad praedicamentum substantiae.
All this shows that Surezs theory of efficient causation is not only designed to
cover a great variety of phenomena as we have seen in the last section. As we
have seen in this section, it is also supposed to do so in an Aristotelian frame-
work as far as possible. It is now high time to consider how efficient causation
is supposed to work according to this Aristotelian framework. This will be the
topic of the next section.
4 Efficient Causation: How it Works
Most philosophers who think about causation nowadays agree that (efficient)
causality is a relation between events. What they disagree about is how this
relation should be spelled out. Some say for example that events are causally
related if they are counterfactually dependent on each other, others maintain
that one has (in principle) to be able to bring about an effect-event by positing
the cause-event, while a third party holds that an event A is the cause of event
B, if the probability for B to occur is significantly higher after A has occurred.49
As it is hopefully clear by now, Surez would disagree with all of them. The
reason for this is simply that he rejects their underlying assumption that effi-
cient causation is a relation between events. To be sure, events, or actions in
scholastic parlance, play a crucial role in Surezs theory of efficient causation.
But they are not the relata of causality. Rather they are efficient causality itself.
That is, an event or an action is nothing but an efficient causes producing a
certain effect, and thus the distinctive way by which an effect depends on its
efficient cause. In accordance with this, an action or an event is neither the
cause nor the effect of something.50
Thus, unlike many contemporary theories, Surez does not hold a variant of
event-causality. But what sort of things are causes if they are not events? In treat-
ing this question, we have to be careful since asking what are efficient causes?
is ambiguous. Taken in one way, Surez explains, this question addresses the
principle-quod (or the principal cause which operates), that is, the thing or
suppositum from which a certain action arises. Taken in another way, the ques-
tion refers to the principle-quo (or the principal principle of operation), that is,
49 For a short overview of causation in contemporary theories see David H. Sanford,

Causation, in A Companion to Metaphysics, eds. Jaegwon Kim et al. (Malden, 2009), pp.
310.
50 In the last section we have already seen that Surez explicitly rejects the view that actions
are caused by their agents. In dm 18.4.5 [25.625] Surez also denies that actions literally
cause anything.
104 Schmid
the principle by virtue of which a certain agent performs its action. The principle-
quo of an action is nothing but the power by means of which a suppositum can
perform a particular action.51
This is an important distinction which helps to avoid a notorious problem
that power-theories of efficient causality are often charged with. Perhaps most
famously by early modern mechanist philosophers, who would often criticize
their scholastic predecessors theory of efficient causality as obscure and futile.
As they argued, appealing to causal powers and faculties leads to an absurd mul-
tiplication of agents, for postulating a power or a faculty just amounts to assuming
a little agent that miraculously performs the very action one wishes to explain.52
On the basis of the aforementioned distinction, such criticism can be rejected
as relying on a conflation between the agent (the principle-quod of the action)
and the power in virtue of (the principle-quo) an agent engages in this action.
Thus, by invoking certain faculties (like the intellect for example) as causes that
give rise to certain actions (like solving a math-problem), one is not automati-
cally committed to the view that we have some subsystems that perform the
causal work for us, but rather that we solve a math-problem by exercising our
intellectual capacity. And although one can say, and scholastic philosophers
indeed did often say, that powers or faculties like the intellect or will are causes
of their actions, one should bear in mind that generally the term
principal cause is absolutely said of the cause that operates as a princi-

ple-quod, whereas it is said of a principle[sc.-quo] only derivatively and
secundum quid.53
So, literally speaking, it is, at least usually, not the power itself which brings
about an effect, but rather its suppositum which produces the effect in virtue of
a power.
Therefore, one might think that Surez is best understood as a proponent of
substance-causality, the position that the only things that can figure as causes are
51 For Surezs distinction between the cause as a principle-quod and principle-quo, see dm
17.2.7 [25.585] and 18.2.1 [25.5989].
52 For a representative example see John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding
ii.21.20, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford and New York, 1975), pp. 24344, and for a discus-
sion of the various lines of early modern criticisms against power-theories see Keith
Hutchison, Dormitive Virtues, Scholastic Qualities, and the New Philosophies, History of
Science 29 (1991), pp. 24578.
53 dm 17.2.8 [25.586]: [Et addi etiam potest,] causam principalem absolute dici de causa
operante ut quod, de principio autem nonnisi reductive et secundum quid.
substances that bring about their effects in virtue of their powers. For what else
than a substance could figure as a bearer of causal powers and thus perform a
certain action? Unfortunately things are not that straightforward. The source of
difficulties, again, is Surezs attempt to reconcile the Aristotelian framework with
central Christian doctrines. On the one hand he abides by the classical Aristotelian
view that things operate in virtue of their forms (be they substantial or acciden-
tal). On the other hand he also wants to leave room for his Catholic conviction
that in supernatural cases accidents can exist on their own. In conjunction these
two views immediately imply that mere accidents which usually inhere in an
underlying suppositum and hence only operate as principles-quo can in excep-
tional cases also figure as principles-quod of their operations.54 The most salient
case of such an exceptional scenario is the mystery of the Eucharist, in which,
according to Catholic orthodoxy, the substance of bread and wine is replaced by
Christs body and blood, while the accidents of bread and wine are miraculously
conserved by God.55 And, as Surez maintains, the destruction of their underlying
substance does not affect the causal powers of their accidents at all:
For we see that even after the substance [sc. of bread and wine] has been
removed, the whole power of acting that previously existed in the acci-
dents is conserved.56
Thus, even though bread and wine are destroyed by the consecration, their
conserved bready and winy accidents still cause in us the typical taste of bread
and wine if we consume the holy host.
Due to this, Surez ultimately seems to be committed not only to a version
of substance-causality, but rather to a form of res-causality, according to which
res in general (things that can possibly exist on their own, like substances and
real accidents) can figure as causes.57 This is of course an awkward consequence
54 Note that not all accidents are fully-fledged res for Surez and thus potential principles-
quod of efficient causal operations. As Surez explains in dm 37.2.7 [26.494], some acci-
dents listed among the nine non-substantial Aristotelian categories are only modes (such
as action and passion), while others are not even distinct entities, but only aspects of a
thing, which can conceptually distinguished from it (such as the time and place of a thing).
55 That Jesus Christ is really present in the wine and bread after it has been consecrated dur-
ing the Eucharist was definitively declared by the Council of Trent in 1551.
56 dm 18.3.13 (Vivs 18.3.15) [25.620]: [N]am videmus, seclusa substantia, conservatam esse
totam vim agendi, quae erat in accidentibus.
57 Indeed Surez argues that, dm 18.4.3 [25.624], apart from substances only qualities are
principles of true efficient causality on the basis of the fact that, dm 18.4.7 [25.626]: apart
106 Schmid
for Surez since it makes him vulnerable to the objection that his theory of
causality yields an absurd multiplication of agents. Moreover, it is a conse-
quence that Surez himself explicitly wants to avoid. With regard to the ques-
tion about the efficacy of accidents he writes:
[T]he question here has not to do with a principal cause quod that is,
with that cause which operates but rather with the principal principle
quo. For it is certain that it is the suppositum taken in the first way that
operates. Now if the suppositum is being taken formally that is, as a per
se cause of the accidental action then it has to be thought of as being
the subject of the accidental form that is the principle of such an action.
This, then, is the sense in which the accident is called the principal cause
as principle quo, whereas the substance, insofar as it is the subject of the
accident, is called the principle cause as a principle quod.58
When Surez argues that accidents can be independent principles of opera-

tion which need no assistance of the substantial form, he does not take this to
mean that they are little agents that perform their own actions, but rather that
they suffice to endow their supposita with the relevant powers in order to
account for their actions:
This is evident from the case of heat, which, when it exists in water or any
subject [sc. other than fire], produces heat in the absence of the form of
fire.59
So, the hot water circulating in my heating system causes the warmth of my
apartment not in virtue of its substantial form (to the contrary, as seen in
from quantities [sc. which are obviously inert], only qualities have a proper being that is
really distinct from the substance, and so they are accidental forms and proper acts in the
strictest sense which is what is required for the notion of a principle of acting and in
order for something to have its own activity. That is, only res, be they substantial or acci-
dental, can figure as causes (quo or quod).
58 dm 18.6.2 [25.630]: [[S]upponendum est] non esse hic quaestionem de causa principali
ut quod, seu quae operatur, sed de principio principali quo. Constat enim priori modo
suppositum esse quod operatur; si autem sumatur formaliter, ut est per se causa acciden-
talis actionis, accipi debet ut substat formae accidentali quae est principium talis actio-
nis. Hoc ergo modo dicitur accidens causa principalis ut principium quo, suppositum
vero ut substans accidenti, ut principium quod.
59 dm 18.5.4 [25.629]: Hoc patet in calore, qui existens in aqua, et in quolibet alio subjecto,
absque forma ignis calefacit.
Section2 above, the substantial form of water rather causes it to cool by means
of natural emanation), but in virtue of its accidental form of heat. That is, the
only causally relevant factor of water heating something is its property of being
hot, and not its substantial form. Nonetheless, Surez is anxious to stress that
if we ask what (quod) the cause of my warm apartment is, the right answer is
water, and not heat since heat is only the principle through which (quo) the
water heats my apartment.
How are we to treat this tension? Is Surez just inconsistent because he is
ultimately committed to concede that it is at least metaphysically possible that
non-substantial res can bring about their own actions? The first strategy to
solve this problem is to deny that Surez has to accept that in the supernatural
case of the Eucharist the conserved accidents perform their operations on
their own and thus figure as principles-quod of their effects. To be sure, the
Eucharist definitely entails that accidents do not always require the support of
their underlying substantial forms in order to display their causal significance
for in the mystery of the Eucharistthe accidents of wine act equally well in
the absence of their [sc. substantial] forms influence.60 You can also get drunk
by consecrated wine. But it is not clear whether the Catholic doctrine of tran-
substantiation also demands that the conserved accidents operate as princi-
ples-quod. For one might argue that after the act of consecration the accidents
of wine and bread are not ontologically free-floating, but inhere in Jesus Christ.
Consequently, it should be Christ himself who in virtue of his bready and
winy accidents causes in us the sensation of bread and wine such that the
accidents still only figure as principles-quo. This way out is of course theologi-
cally highly problematic. It seems not to befit Jesus or God to make you literally
drunk if you consume too much of consecrated wine.
Another strategy to bail Surez out consists in arguing that his remarks
about the causal status of accidents should be taken to pertain exclusively to
natural cases. And with regard to such cases they are actually true: on Surezs
account, it is indeed naturally impossible that accidents can exist without a
subject of inherence and thus figure as principles-quod of causal operations.61
60 dm 18.5.5 [25.629]: [Quod etiam confirmat] Eucharistiae mysterium, ubi accidentia vini
aeque agunt sine influxu suae formae.
61 Note however, that Surez is clearly committed to substantial forms which can exist inde-
pendently and thus figure as principles-quod of their actions. As he argues, dm 15.9.1
[25.532]: it is certain concerning the immaterial form that it can remain without matter,
not only by divine power, but even naturally (de immateriali constat, non solum virtute
divina, sed etiam naturaliter posse manere sine material). So, for him, there is no doubt
that the human soul can be a genuine agent.
108 Schmid
This strategy, however, seems unable to rebut the still pressing objection that it
is implausible to allow powers to be causes even in supernatural cases. This
objection can be spelled out in a particular vivid way with regard to cognitive
faculties. Is it not completely absurd to admit that in supernatural cases my
will could choose a mortal sin? Allowing for this would immediately yield the
disastrous problem about whom or what is to be held accountable for this
choice. Does my will have to go to Hell after the Last Judgment while I am sent
to Heaven with the rest of my faculties?
Fortunately, Surez can avoid these absurd consequences. As he makes
clear, accidental forms cannot always operate on their own. Such operational
autonomy is confined to accidents that give rise to non-vital operations (such as
the hot waters heating). Things are different as regards vital actions that arise
from the soul and its various faculties. Indeed, Surez provides several argu-
ments for this exception, which mostly rely on observations about the opera-
tions of our cognitive faculties.62 So, Surez holds, faculties cannot operate
independently from their soul, such that the problem sketched above cannot
arise.63
All this makes plain that even if Surez should ultimately be committed to
a sort of res-causality, in contrast to a mere substance-causality, he still has
the resources to cushion the absurdities that seem to be entailed by such a
position. First, he can point out that the allegedly absurd consequences only
impend in supernatural cases since in normal circumstances powers can only
figure as principles-quo of causal operations and never as independent agents.
Second, Surez can even alleviate the problems arising from the metaphysi-
cally possible exceptions as affecting only principles of non-vital operations.
While it might indeed be the case that an ontologically free-floating accident
of heat causes something to burn, it is impossible that a faculty of the soul
could engage in any vital operation without the influence of its underlying
soul. Thus, proposing to God at the Last Judgment that he should only send my
will to Hell, and let the rest of me enter Heaven, is pointless and nothing that
God could possibly agree to. For to the extent that my will actually could
62 See dm 18.5.23 [25.628] and Dominik Perler, Medieval Debates on Faculties, in Faculties,
ed. Dominik Perler (Oxford and New York, forthcoming), for a detailed reconstruction of
Surezs arguments.
63 Surez even holds the stronger view that faculties (although genuine res) cannot exist
independently from the soul. For an exploration of this view see Christopher Shields,
Virtual Presence: Psychic Mereology in Francisco Surez, in Partitioning the Soul:
Debates from Aristotle to Leibniz, eds. Dominik Perler and Klaus Corcilius (Berlin and New
York, 2014), pp. 199218.
exercise its operation at all (and perform a sinful choice), it had to be assisted
by my entire soul.
Whatever view of causality Surez is ultimately committed to substance-
causality or res-causality his theory of causality faces another problem. It is
the problem of date that also accounts for the unpopularity of substance-causality
among contemporary philosophers who often prefer event-causality. This
problem relies on the truism that causal processes take place at certain
moments in time. Now, since causes account for a certain causal processs
occurrence, they should equally account for the date or point of time at which
these processes occur. In accordance with this, causes should be things that
occur at a certain moment in time for else it seems to be utterly mysterious
how they can account for the date of the processes they give rise to. But sub-
stances do not belong to the category of things that could occur. This mode of
existence is reserved for events or processes which, unlike substances, are
not fully present at every time of their existence (they perdure and do not
endure, as one says nowadays).64 Therefore, it seems, only dateable events can
qualify as causes, while substances disqualify because they cannot account for
the date of their operations since they remain the same substance during the
whole time of their existence.65
In light of this argument one might be worried that Surezs endorsement of
res- or substance-causality is fundamentally flawed because it builds, from the
very first, on the wrong category of things (namely on enduring substances)
such that it cannot even account for the truism that causal processes take
place at certain moments in time. This would indeed be a tough setback. But
Surez would not rightly be called Doctor Eximius,66 if he had no response to
this challenge. It consists in a range of requirements for efficient causation.
Admittedly, things do (often) exist for a whole while, even though they do not
constantly perform operations. A brick for instance does not constantly kill
64 See David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (Malden, 1986), pp. 20204.
65 This argument is nicely summarized by Charlie Dunbar Broad, Ethics and the History of
Philosophy: Selected Essays (London, 1952), p. 215 who rhetorically asked: How could an
event be possibly determined to happen at a certain date if its total cause contained no
factor to which the notion of date has any application? And how could the notion of date
have any application to anything that is not an event? For a contemporary discussion of
this objection, which is pretty much in line with Surezs response, see Erasmus Mayr,
Understanding Human Agency (Oxford and New York, 2011), pp. 22628.
66 Surez received this nickname as the most exaltedly learned by Pope Paul V; see Bernardo
Cantes, Francisco Surez, in Early Modern Philosophy and Religion, eds. Graham Oppy
and Nick Trakakis, (The History of Western Philosophy of Religion) 3 (Durham, 2009), p. 75.
110 Schmid
people, but only in the very rare case that it is blown from the roof and unfor-
tunately hits a passer-by. Similarly, a certain amount of arsenic displays its
lethal effect only when ingested and further examples could easily be added.
As these examples make clear also, substances do not always or randomly
bring about their effects, but only under certain conditions. Surez even main-
tains that among created causes there are many that operate necessarily once
all the things they require for operating are in place.67 There are conditions,
then, which are jointly sufficient for a causes actual operation, and by appeal
to which one can respond to the problem of date. Causes perform their respec-
tive actions when their conditions for operating obtain. So although sub-
stances usually outlast their operations, the conditions for their operation
depend on dateable events, such that one can very well explain why a cause
became operative at this rather than that moment of time. Why did the brick
cause the passer-by to die this Monday? Because it was this Monday that a
storm swept across the city just when our poor passer-by was going to work.
And the arsenic killed the victim at 8.07 last evening, for she drank the poi-
soned drink at 8.03. Surez discusses altogether nine conditions for necessary
causal operation in his dm 19.1, although he takes some conditions to be redun-
dant. Let me therefore only go through the most important ones.
I . The cause has a full and sufficient power to act (dm 19.1.2)
II. There must be a susceptible and sufficiently close patient (ibid.)
III. Absence of impeding powers (ibid.)
IV. The cause in question is not a free cause (dm 19.1.4)
V. The cause has the necessary concurrence of the First Cause (ibid.)
The first condition seems to be obvious and even analytically true. Nothing is
able to cause anything if it does not have the power to do so. The second condi-
tion however is less obvious, but a direct consequence of the Aristotelian anal-
ysis of processes. As already seen, according to this analysis, a process is
conceived as an actualization of a certain form in a patient induced by an
appropriate agent. For example the process of boiling water is to be analyzed
as the actualization of the form of heat in water triggered by the cooking top in
which the form of heat is already actualized. For such an actualization to take
place, two things are required, as Surez states in his second condition. First
the patient must be susceptible to the agents affection, and second it must be
67 dm 19.1.1 [25.688]: [[D]icendum est primo,] dari in causis creatis plures quae necessario
operantur, si omnia, quibus ad operandum indigent, adhibeantur.
sufficiently close to it. These two requirements can easily be illustrated with the
help of the above example. The cooking top is only able to boil water because
water has the potential to be boiled. Things would be different if we put some
glass wool on the cooking top. Since glass wool is not susceptible to boiling, the
cooking top could not act on it and cause it to boil.68 Apart from this there is
the closeness condition. Turning on the cooking top, but leaving the kettle on
the table, hardly helps to heat the water. Rather the cooking tops heat can only
act on the water, if the kettle is sufficiently close to the source of heat and best
if it is in direct contact with it. Yet, sometimes agent and patient need not
stand in direct contact in order that the agent can act on the patient. So much
is clear from the suns influence on the earth or the enchanting eyes of women,
that Surez both discusses among other examples.69 However these cases of
distant effects are only possible as long as agents and patients are related by a
common medium. That is,
in order for an agent to act on a distant thing, it must antecedently (either in

time or in nature) act on the nearby medium and continuously on the
whole medium.70
Thus, an agent can only act on a patient if it is sufficiently close to its patient,
and stands either in direct or indirect (via an appropriate medium) contact
with it.
Condition III requires the absence of impeding powers. This is evident again.
If you try to boil water over a simple candle on the South Pole, you will not suc-
ceed for the coldness of the air will impede the candles effect on the kettle. And
the brick on the roof will not fall down as long as it is wedged by its surrounding
bricks. This is surely a decisive condition, and one might think that this condi-
tion together with the two previous ones is already sufficient for an efficient
cause to become causally operative. Yet, this is not the case, for Surez thinks
that there is a crucial difference between free and natural causes and that only
natural causes operate necessarily when all requirements for their operation
are posited. In addition, Surez holds that all causes need the assistance of God
in order to be able to bring about an effect at all (and consequently he takes
68 Hence, there must be a certain dissimilarity and proportionality between agent and
patient, as Surez extensively discusses in dm 18.9.
69 Cf. dm 18.8 that discusses various counterexamples to claim that an agent must be proxi-
mate to its patient.
70 dm 18.8.17 [25.656]: ut agens agat in distans, necesse est ut prius tempore vel natura agat
in propinquum, et continue in totum medium.
112 Schmid
Gods concurrence strictly speaking to be already included in condition I). Let

me briefly comment on these two last conditions.
That there are free causes, whose operation is not necessitated by the hold-
ing of the above mentioned conditions, is an indisputable fact for Surez.71 It is
not only proved by theology but also by our first-person experience that
it is within our power to do a given thing or to refrain from doing it; and
we use reason, discourse, and consideration to incline ourselves toward
the one rather than the other.72
More precisely, Surez is an advocate of freedom of indifference according to

which we can make completely undetermined choices.73 What accounts for
this ability is that
within a human being there is a faculty that is active by its own power
and free by its own intrinsic nature that is, [sc. a faculty] that controls
its own action in such a way that it is within its power to exercise that
action and not to exercise it and, consequently, to elicit one action or
another or opposite action.74
This faculty is of course the will by means of which we can perform arbitrary
choices.75 Now, although the assumption of such a radically free faculty might
71 For a thorough discussion of Surezs theory of free will see Sydney Penner, Free and
Rational: Surez on the Will, Archiv fr Geschichte der Philosophie 95 (2013), pp. 135.
72 dm 19.2.14 (Vivs 19.2.13) [25.697]: [[E]xperimur enim evidenter,] situm esse in nostra
potestate aliquid agere vel omittere, et ad hoc utimur ratione et discursu ac consultatione
ut in unam partem potius quam in aliam inclinemur.
73 Surez distinguishes between a freedom of spontaneity which consists in the absence of
coercion and a freedom of indifference that is grounded in a faculty to perform indeter-
minate actions. While he thinks that higher animals can enjoy the first sort of freedom, he
takes the freedom of indifference to be a prerogative of rational beings, and the only sort
of freedom which might reasonably be contested. See dm 19.2.10 (Vivs 19.2.9) [25.695]
and 19.2.13 (Vivs 19.2.12) [25.697].
74 dm 19.2.19 (Vivs 19.2.18) [25.698]: [[N]on est minus evidens, scilicet] esse in homine ali-
quam potentiam activam ex sua vi et intrinseca natura liberam, id est, habentem tale
dominium suae actionis ut in ejus potestate sit eam exercere et non exercere, et conse-
quenter unam vel aliam seu oppositam actionem elicere.
75 Note however, that Surez does not take it just for granted, that this faculty resides in the
will alone. Rather he defends this claim at length against Alexander of Hales, who takes
the faculty of free choice to be separate from intellect and will (dm 19.5.9 [25.714]), against
be appropriate in order to account for our phenomenology of choice or even

necessary for our actions to be morally significant, it seems to re-invoke the
problem of date. With regard to a free cause, which given all the things
required for acting have been posited, is [sc. still] able to act and not to act,76
it seems impossible to explain why a certain action occurs at this rather than
another moment in time. In this context, however, this objection is nothing
but a variant of the famous random-objection that figures prominently in the
free will debate, where it is launched against libertarians that take freedom to
be incompatible with determinism. According to this objection, libertarian or
incompatibilist accounts of freedom (which defend a sort of freedom of indif-
ference) are ultimately incomprehensible, since they assimilate free choices to
chancy events that are more akin to random processes than to rational acts.77
Thus, even if Surezs account of causation could with regard to free will be
charged of leaving certain causal operations inexplicable, this does not count
against his theory of efficient causality in general, but at most against his liber-
tarian account of freedom in particular.
But even here Surez might have a way out. As he argues, free choices are far
from being just fluky spasms. Rather the wills operation is led by the intellect
which judges the goodness or usefulness of the means among which the will is
going to choose.78 Thus, the will does not operate in a completely arbitrary
fashion, but reaches its choices on the basis of what the intellect judges to be
good, useful or choice worthy. To be sure, there might still be a trace of irratio-
nality in Surezs libertarian account of freedom, since he does of course deny
that the judgments of the intellect do infallibly determine the wills operation
on pains of saving its freedom of indifference. At the end, it is just up to the will
whether it follows the intellects practical judgment or not. Yet, even here,
Surez has some resources to ease the worry about brute, inexplicable facts by
relying on final causes. As he says, a certain option
can still be sufficient to excite and entice the will to such an extent that it
is determined or led to that object by its own freedom. For if some aspect
Durandus of Saint Pourain, who argues that this faculty resides in the will and intellect
together (dm 19.5.11 [25.714]), and against others who locate it in the intellect (dm
19.5.12 [25.715]).
76 dm 19.4.1 [25.706]: [[N]am causa libera est quae,] positis omnibus requisitis ad agendum,
potest agere et non agere.
77 For an extensive exposition and discussion of this objection see Randolph Clarke,
Libertarian Accounts of Free Will (Oxford and New York, 2003).
78 See dm 19.6.10 [25.722].
114 Schmid
of goodness is represented in the object, that aspect is of itself enough to

move the will.79
Thus, although the wills operation cannot be explained by appeal to efficient

causes, it may still be explained with respect to final causes that attract the
will not by a real and physical motion (as it arises from efficient causes), but
by a metaphorical motion which does not destroy the wills freedom of
indifference.80
This leaves us with the last condition IV, which states that finite causes can-
not operate unless God assists or concurs with them. As Surez makes clear at
the outset of his extensive treatment of divine concurrence in dm 22, this con-
dition is not fulfilled by that fact that creaturely actions are remotely depen-
dent on God, insofar as there were no creaturely actions if God had not created
and did not conserve finite agents that perform these actions in the first place.
Rather, Surez holds that finite things require Gods immediate assistance to
actually figure as actual efficient causes and he provides a whole battery of
arguments in favor of this view.81 These arguments divide into two main classes.
The first class of arguments aims to show that Gods concurrence is a direct
consequence of its conservation. Surez provides four considerations in favor
of this claim.82 First, he argues that if the cause depends on God for its exis-
tence, then the effect will too, since both are beings-through-participation.83
Creatures are not able to exist by themselves: they must be brought about and
79 dm 19.6.9 [25.722]: [Quamvis autem obiectum non sic determinet voluntatem,] potest
esse ita sufficiens ad excitandam et alliciendam illam, ut ipsa sua libertate determinetur
aut feratur in illud, quia si in obiecto repraesentatur aliqua ratio boni, illa est de se suffi-
ciens ad movendam voluntatem.
80 See dm 19.8.9 [25.729] and for further discussion Chapter 5, Section2 in this volume as
well as Stephan Schmid, Surez and the Problem of Final Causation, in Surezs
Metaphysics in his Historical and Systematic Context, ed. Luk Novk (Berlin, 2014), pp.
293308.
81 An excellent and systematically informed discussion of Surezs defence of concur-
rentism is by Alfred J. Freddoso, Gods General Concurrence with Secondary Causes: Why
Conservation Is Not Enough, Philosophical Perspectives 5 (1991), pp. 55385.
82 An attentive reader might wonder whether Gods concurrence (and similarly his conser-
vation) does not infringe on the proximity-condition II of efficient causation. For how can
an immaterial being like God be simultaneously in contact with all causally operative
creatures? Surez solves this problem (in dm 22.4.1) by appeal to Gods immensity or
omnipresence, that he discusses at length in dm 30.7.
83 dm 22.1.8 (Vivs 22.1.7) [25.804]: si causa pendet a Deo in esse, ergo et effectus, quia
utrumque est ens per participationem.
preserved in existence, and are in this sense beings-through-participation

(they only have being insofar as they depend on or participate in the being of
something else). The same holds for effects for they are brought about by their
causes and depend on them. And since finite causes depend on God, their
effects do so too by transitivity of participation or dependence.84 The rela-
tion between Gods conservation and his concurrence can also be justified
with regard to efficient causality itself, that is, with regard to the action by
means of which an efficient cause produces its effect. Surezs second argu-
ment is this:
[I]f God does not have an immediate influence on every action of a crea-
ture, then the created action itself does not require Gods influence per se
and essentially in order to exist, even though it, too, is a certain participa-
tion in being.85
As we have seen above, an action is a kind of entity it is a mode and as

such it requires Gods influence in order to exist. So if God did not hold
actions in existence, they would not occur and so there would be no effi-
cient causation either. This immediately leads to Surezs third argument:
created beings depend on God no less as agents than as beings.86 Surezs
fourth argument is a posteriori in nature in that it lends support from bibli-
cal stories which report that God can prevent a cause from bringing about
its natural effects without impeding them from without.87 Thus, he con-
cludes that
84 One might be worried that this proof of Gods concurrence shoots above the mark by
leading to occasionalism according to which God is the only cause. However, Surez is
confident that occasionalism can be refuted with a whole battery of considerations he
provides in dm 18.1.513 [25.5947]. For a systematic exploration of his arguments see
Alfred Freddoso, Medieval Aristotelianism and the Case against Secondary Causation in
Nature, in Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism, ed. Thomas V.
Morris (Ithaca, ny, 1988), pp. 74118.
85 dm 22.1.10 (Vivs 22.1.9) [25.804]: si Deus non influit immediate in omnem actionem crea-
turae, ergo ipsa actio creata, ut sit, non postulat per se essentialiter influxum Dei, cum
tamen ipsa etiam sit aliqua participatio entis.
86 dm 22.1.11 (Vivs 22.1.10) [25.804]: entia creata non minus pendent a Deo in quantum
agentia quam in quantum entia.
87 Surez particularly alludes to the book of Daniel, ch. 3, which reports that the Babylonian
king Nebuchadnezzar let three young men, who refused to worship a golden statue, cast
into a fiery furnace, which did not have any effect on them at all.
116 Schmid
just as God can deprive a created entity of its existence merely by with-
holding his action, so too he can deprive a created entity of its natural
action merely by withholding his concurrence.88
Apart from these considerations Surez provides an entirely different argu-

ment for the necessity of Gods concurrence. This argument is particularly
interesting insofar as it not only proves divine concurrence, but also shows
that Gods assistance plays an indispensable explanatory role. Briefly summa-
rized, the argument states that
a secondary cause is unable to determine itself to an effect in an individ-

ual and particular, since its power is always indifferent with respect to
many individuals and is not sufficiently determined by the subject and
the circumstances.89
This point is again intimately related with Surezs Aristotelian conception of

efficient causation. As we have repeatedly seen, forms play a prominent role in
this conception of causation (causation takes place when an agent that already
has a certain form actualizes the same form in an appropriate patient). In acci-
dental changes, like in heating water, certain subjects are endowed with acciden-
tal forms, whereas in substantial changes, like in the generation of animals,
certain material is given a substantial form. So the principles of efficient causal
operations are forms; and agents produce their effects in virtue of their substan-
tial or accidental forms. However, as Surez remarks, the power a form has is
always indifferent with respect to many individuals and is not sufficiently deter-
mined by the subject and the circumstances (above, n. 89). As a result, an agents
form leaves it indeterminate which individual effect is going to be produced and
consequently the causes form cannot be exclusively responsible for its effect. It
cannot account for its individuality. But neither can the form that is going to be
educed in the patient account for the effects individuality, on Surezs view,
because that does not yet exist and does not have the means to determine
the power of the agent; nor can [sc. the effects individuality] come from
88 dm 22.1.12 (Vivs 22.1.11) [25.804]: sicut Deus potest rem creatam suo esse privare per
solam negationem actionis, ita potest rem creatam sua naturali actione privare per solam
negationem concursus.
89 dm 22.1.13 (Vivs 22.1.12) [25.805]: causa secunda non potest sese determinare ad effec-
tum in individuo et in particulari, quia ejus facultas semper est indifferens ad plura indi-
vidua, et a subjecto et circumstantiis non satis determinatur.
the remote matter [sc. of the patient], because that is also equally indif-
ferent of itself.90
The only remaining thing therefore that can determine the individuality of a
produced effect is God, who does so by assisting the operative cause in giving
its effect a determinate and well-individuated being.91 On account of this,
Gods concurrence is also required for reasons of individuation. The forms in
virtue of which finite agents are causally operative are not enough to com-
pletely determine the individuality of their effects. And consequently, a cre-
ated cause could not bring about a well-individuated effect (and thus no effect
at all),92 if God did not concur with its action.93
Thanks to these requirements for efficient causation Surez has powerful
resources to defend his theory of causality against the argument from date
which charges substance-causality with inability to account for causal pro-
cesses taking place at a certain instant in time. Because of the above listed
requirements, the occurrence of a causal process depends on dateable events
90 dm 5.3.31 [25.173]: [[N]ec potest [sc. determinatio effectus] ab ipsa forma educenda pro-
venire,] quia ipsa nondum est, neque habet unde determinet virtutem agentis; neque
provenit ex materia remota, quia illa etiam est de se aeque indifferens.
91 This claim is intimately related with Surezs view about the principle of individuation.
As he argues contrary to other philosophers and in particular against the Thomists who
hold that matter is the principle of individuation Surez defends the view that every
singular substance is singular in itself, <that is, by its entity>and needs no other principle
of individuation in addition to its entity, or in addition to the intrinsic principles which
constitute its entity. (dm 5.6.1 [25.180], the Vivs edition lacks the bits in angular brackets)
and similarly that accidents do not have their individuation and numerical distinction
from the subject, but from their proper entities (dm 5.7.4 [25.189]). Thus, singular things
are individuated just in virtue of being actually existing things or entities and this is
something that they ultimately owe to God. For an exposition and discussion of Surezs
theory of individuation, see Surez on Individuation, trans. Gracia (see above, n. 7).
92 As Surez points out, non-individuated entities are metaphysically impossible, since, dm
5.1.5 [25.147]: not even by absolute power a real entity, as existing in reality, can be under-
stood as not being singular and individual, because being an entity and being divisible
into many entities like itself implies a contradiction (etiam de potentia absoluta intelligi
non posse, ut realis entitas, prout in re ipsa existit, singularis et individua non sit, quia
implicat contradictionem esse entitatem, et esse divisibilem in plures entitates, quae sint
tales qualis ipsa est).
93 I have confined myself to present only Surezs arguments for divine concurrence. For a
detailed account of his views about the operation of Gods concursus in its historical con-
text, see Dominik Perler and Ulrich Rudolph, Occasionalismus: Theorien der Kausalitt im
arabisch-islamischen und im europischen Denken (Gttingen, 2000), pp. 20113.
118 Schmid
(the cause must be endowed with a sufficient amount of power and come suf-
ficiently near to an appropriate patient, and impediments must be removed).
On account of this, the actual operation of a cause becomes dateable too. It is
only when all requirements happen to be fulfilled that a cause brings about its
effect by metaphysical necessity.94
5 Conclusion
Surezs account of causality is surely remarkably modern in that it assigns a

central role to efficient causes. Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes and many other
mechanist philosophers of the 17th century will join him in doing so. Even
though there is some, and at a closer look perhaps even surprisingly ample
agreement (just think about his theory of distinctions) between Surez and his
anti-Aristotelian successors, this should not obscure the fact that there is also
a lot of disagreement between these two parties in particular with regard to
their theories of efficient causality. Let me conclude by pointing out some of
them.
A first major disagreement between Surez and early modern mechanists is
methodological in nature. Contrary to what has been claimed, Surez defi-
nitely did not think that philosophy and in particular metaphysics had a
place of its own among the sciences, independent of theology.95 In the pref-
ace and subsequently in the introduction to his Disputationes Metaphysicae
Surez already states clearly that philosophy and especially metaphysics gains
its value ultimately by providing conceptual tools for treating problems of theol-
ogy. Thus, very much like his medieval forerunners, Surez thinks that philoso-
phy is the handmaid of theology.96 This basic conviction is also manifest in his
94 So, Surez claims that, dm 19.1.14 [25.692]: not even God himself seems to be able to bring
it aboutthat a cause which by its nature acts necessarily should fail to act once all things
required for acting have been posited.
95 Surez on Individuation, trans. Gracia (see above, n. 7), p. 23.
96 For an exposition of Aquinass conception of the relationship between philosophy and
theology which Surez seems to widely agree with, see Mark D. Jordan, Theology and
philosophy, in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, ed. Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge,
1993), pp. 23251. Surezs deep commitment to catholic theology is also stressed by Wells
in Francis Surez, On the Essence of Finite Being as Such: On the Existence of that Essence
and Their Distinction, trans. with an Introduction Norman J. Wells (Milwaukee, wi, 1983),
pp. 56, and by Freddoso in Francisco Surez, On Creation, Conservation, and Concurrence,
trans. Freddoso (see above, n. 6), pp. xivxxv.
theorizing about efficient causality. As we have repeatedly seen, theological

issues shape his theory of efficient causation decisively. Surez makes great
efforts to allow Gods creation to be a genuine instance of efficient causality
and to be able to conceive of him as the First Cause. He takes the mystery of
the Eucharist to provide evidence for the fact that accidents have their inde-
pendent causal significance, adopts a libertarian conception of freedom
(freedom of indifference) in order to account for our moral responsibility
and our ability to sin, and he takes the biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar to
prove that efficient causation requires Gods universal concurrence. Although
Surez is assiduous and exalted enough to often justify these claims with non-
theological arguments as well, it is incontestable that doctrines of Catholic
faith are very important for his reasoning, both as constraints and grounds for
justification.
His deep commitment to scholastic philosophy is apparent from yet another
aspect of his thinking, namely from his conciliatory attitude towards authori-
ties. In all claims that Surez defends, he is keen to present them as being as
faithful to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas as possible. Moreover, he is eager
toplace his views in a vast doctrinal landscape of scholarly positions, and to
clearly spell out the advantages of his own views as compared with other posi-
tions he dismisses. This conciliatory attitude renders his investigations often
highly dialectically complex such that it can be difficult at times to grasp
where Surez is indeed endorsing a view, or rather reporting or considering a
position. His attempt to reconcile central Christian doctrines of faith with the
hylomorphist framework of Aristotelian ontology is often a source of system-
atic difficulties, too. So conceiving of Gods creation as a genuine action and
thus as an instance of efficient causality remains a delicate ontological issue.
Similarly, there is reason to think that the reification of powers (by conceiving
of them as res) which is due to the Eucharist commits Surez to admit that
it is metaphysically possible that accidental properties can figure as full-blown
agents rather than mere principles of operations, which endow their bearers
with certain capacities.
A further important point of disagreement between Surez and early mod-
ern mechanists obviously consists in his indebtedness to Aristotelian meta-
physics. As it is well known, mechanist philosophers firmly rejected the general
hylomorphist ontology and often scorned the assumption of substantial and
accidental forms as obscure and explanatorily futile. Having come to know
about the significance of forms in Surezs theory of efficient causality, it is
evident that every account of causality that does not rely on the assumption of
substantial and accidental forms must be radically different from the one pro-
posed by Surez. Thus, if modern means holding similar views to Descartes,
120 Schmid
Hobbes, Spinoza & Co., Surez can, with regard to his theory of efficient cau-
sality in particular, not even be called modern in an analogical sense of the
term. However, this does not mean that his theory did not provide important
elements for later philosophers to build their modern theories upon. As I want
to finally argue, it was Surezs theory of divine concurrence in particular, that
left a notion of laws of nature to his mechanist successors, which, in their
hands, began to make an unprecedented career.97 But let me explain.
That the course of nature obeys certain laws was no new idea by the times
of Surez. Already Thomas Aquinas used the notion of a law in order to express
the idea that the processes of the universe exhibit firm regularities which all
accord to Gods providence.98 What is new in comparison to Aquinas is that
Surez explicitly turns laws of nature into requirements for efficient causation
among natural objects. This is due to his theory of divine concurrence. As seen,
Surez does not think that finite things are able to bring about effects on their
own. Instead, they need Gods concurrence. However this immediately raises
the question as to why finite things tend to bring about their effects in a sur-
prisingly regular way that exactly reflects their individual natures. Hot things
(almost always) heat, water (almost always) cools, rabbits (almost always)
beget other rabbits, heavy things (almost always) fall down, and so on. How is
this regularity to be explained if the forms of these things are insufficient to
account for their effects? Surezs answer to this question is that Gods concur-
rence respects the nature of the things and thus (almost always) assists finite
things in bringing about effects that conform to their natures. Of course God is
not forced to do so. Rather, he has freely decreed to concur with his creatures
according to their natures. But once he has decided to effect and conserve
secondary causes, he concurs with them in their operations with an infallible
law.99 For this reason Gods concurrence is indeed a natural necessity with
respect to the secondary cause they could not operate without it , but it is
only a hypothetical necessity or a necessity of immutability with respect to
God.100 That is, despite not being metaphysically necessary, laws of nature are
97 For a discussion of this career see Walter R. Ott, Causation and Laws of Nature in Early
Modern Philosophy (Oxford and New York, 2009).
98 See particularly his Summa Theologiae IaIIae.93.3, ed. P. Caramello et al. (Turin and
Rome, 19481950), p. 422. A short overview of the emergence of laws of nature is given by
Ott, Causation and Laws of Nature, pp. 5360.
99 dm 22.4.3 [25.829]: postquam decrevit causas secundas efficere et conservare, infallibili
lege cum eis concurrit ad earum operationem.
100 Ibid.: [sed] respectu secundae est necessitas naturalis; respectu autem primae est tan-
tum necessitas ex suppositione, seu immutabilitatis.
stable and uniform because God has freely issued them from eternity and will
by his immutability (almost) always abide by them.101
Now, if we turn to the early modern mechanists who banned the assump-
tion of substantial and accidental forms from their philosophy, it is clear that
Surezs partial outsourcing of the efficacy of finite things to God and his laws
of concurrence provided them an ideal surrogate in order to account for the
causality of natural things. Against this backdrop, it is all but surprising that
Descartes holds that
[f]rom Gods immutability we can also know certain rules or laws of

nature, which are the secondary and particular causes of the various
motions we see in particular bodies.102
If physical things are deprived of their causally efficacious properties it is clear

in this framework that their causality as secondary causes can only consist in
Gods operation according to his laws, which follow from him by necessity of
immutability. Thus even though one ought to be careful in describing Surez
with regard to his theory of efficient causality as a modern author, his theory
surely prepared the grounds for the respective accounts of his modern succes-
sors. And in view of all the venturesome theories his modern successors ended
up with (just think about Malebranches occasionalism, Leibnizs theory of
pre-established harmony or Humes theory of constant conjunction), one
might take it to be even an advantage of Surezs theory of efficient causation
that it is not modern yet.103
101 almost because God has of course from eternity left some room for miracles where he
withholds his concurrence like in the case described in Daniel 3.
102 Ren Descartes, Principia philosophiae II.37, eds. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Oeuvres
de Descartes) 8 (1905; repr. Paris, 1996), p. 62. English translation: The Philosophical
Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, 1
(Cambridge and New York, 1984), p. 240.
103 I am grateful to Sanja Dembi, Dominik Perler, Paolo Rubini, Robert Schnepf, Christopher
Shields and an anonymous referee for helpful remarks and criticisms. I would like to
express my special thanks to Jakob Leth Fink and Sydney Penner, whose detailed com-
ments helped me to sort my views on the role of efficient causality in Surez. This chap-
ter has profited a lot from them.
chapter 5
Final Causality: Surez on the Priority of Final

Causation
Sydney Penner
1 Introduction
A standard story has it that medieval philosophy which in practice usually

means Aquinas follows Aristotle in a commitment to ubiquitous final causa-
tion and that one of the hallmarks of early modern philosophy is a rejection of
final causation.1 When not neglected entirely, Surez is usually presented as an
intermediate figure who departs at least to some degree from medieval philos-
ophy and prepares the way for canonical early modern philosophers such as
Descartes. With respect to the subject at hand, final causation, the standard
view seems to be that Surez diverges from Aquinas, that he gives some sort of
priority to efficient causes (the causes that propriissime fit his definition of
what it is to be a cause), and that he diminishes the role of final causes (the
causes that he repeatedly describes as obscure).2 The general picture of Surez
1 Both parts of this story can be questioned, of course. Medieval commitment to final causation
may not have been so unproblematic, as Anneliese Maier, Das Problem der Finalkausalitt
um 1320, in Metaphysische Hintergrnde der sptscholastischen Naturphilosophie (Rome,
1955), pp. 27399 and Robert Pasnau, Intentionality and Final Causes, in Ancient and
Medieval Theories of Intentionality, ed. Dominik Perler (Leiden, 2001), pp. 30123, for exam-
ple, make clear. And early modern philosophers may have given more room to final causes
than is often thought. See, for example, Margaret J. Osler, From Immanent Natures to
Nature as Artifice: The Reinterpretation of Final Causes in Seventeenth-Century Natural
Philosophy, The Monist 79 (1996), pp. 388403 and Whose Ends? Teleology in Early Modern
Natural Philosophy, Osiris 16 (2001), pp. 15168, Tad Schmaltz, Descartess Critique of Scholastic
Teleology (forthcoming), in The Modern Turn, ed. Michael Rohlf (Washington, dc, The
Catholic University Press of America) and Timothy Shanahan, Teleological Reasoning in
Boyles Disquisitions about Final Causes, in Robert Boyle Reconsidered, ed. Michael Hunter
(Cambridge, 1994), pp. 17792. Finally, one could also question the judgement that modern
philosophy represents the triumph of reason over superstition that often accompanies
this story.
2 For an account more in line with the standard picture that diverges at least to some extent
from the one I present in this chapter, see Stephan Schmids chapter on efficient causality in
the present volume.

Final Causality 123
as an intermediate figure has some warrant.3 He certainly is not a slavish fol-

lower of Aquinas, whatever he himself may say about following Aquinas.4 With
respect to final causation, however, I wish to push against the prevailing schol-
arly winds and emphasize Surezs commitment to ubiquitous final causation.
Aquinas presents a line of thought to which Surez might be expected to
object if he wishes to minimize the role of final causes. Here is how Aquinas
introduces ends or final causes in De principiis naturae:
And since, as Aristotle says in book 2 of the Metaphysics, everything that

acts, acts only by intending something, there must be some fourth thing:
namely, that which is intended by that which is acting. And this is said to
be the end.5
We might extract the following argument:
1. Efficient causation depends on final causation.

2. There is efficient causation.
3. Therefore, there is final causation.
The crucial premise, of course, is the first one. It is the premise that would
require elucidation and defence in order for the argument to have any dialecti-
cal force against someone sceptical about final causation. At the moment,
3 I am broadly in agreement with Benjamin Hill, Introduction, in The Philosophy of Francisco

Surez, eds. Benjamin Hill and Henrik Lagerlund (Oxford, 2012), pp. 16.
4 De Gratia Proleg. VI, cap. 6, n. 28, in Opera omnia, eds. A.D.M. Andr and C. Berton, 7 (Paris,
185678), p. 322 [7.322]: cum in aliis lucubrationibus nostris ac theologis disputationibus,
D. Thomam semper tanquam primarium ducem et magistrum habuerimus, ejusque doctri-
nam pro viribus intelligere, defendere ac sequi conati fuerimus, in praesenti opere, multo
majori studio et affectu id praestare curabimus; speramusque cum divino auxilio consecu-
turos esse, ut a vera ejus mente atque sententia, in nulla re gravi aut alicujus momenti
discedamus; non ex nostro capite, sed ex antiquis ejus expositoribus ac sectatoribus, et ubi
illi defuerint, ex variis ejusdem locis inter se collatis eam eliciendo. For more on Surezs
relationship to Aquinas, see Marco Forlivesi, Francisco Surez and the Rationes Studiorum
of the Society of Jesus, in Francisco Surez and His Legacy: The Impact of Surezian
Metaphysics and Epistemology on Modern Philosophy, ed. Marco Sgarbi (Milan, 2010),
pp. 7790.
5 Thomas Aquinas, De principiis naturae 3.351, in Opuscula philosophica, ed. R.M. Spiazzi
(Turin and Rome, 1954), p. 123: Et quia, ut dicit Aristoteles in secundo Metaph., omne quod
agit, non agit nisi intendendo aliquid, oportet esse aliud quartum, id scilicet quod intenditur
ab operante: et hoc dicitur finis.
124 Penner
however, I am more interested in what making this argument and ipso facto a
commitment to the first premise says about a philosophers picture of causa-
tion than in defending the premise. At any rate, Aquinas claims to have
Aristotles authority on his side for the crucial premise6 and Aquinas is clearly
committed to the claim, making similar statements in a number of other texts.
For example, one chapter of Summa contra gentiles is devoted to arguing for the
claim that every agent in acting acts for the sake of an end.7 Similarly in Summa
theologiae: but an agent does not move except from an intention for an end.8
Final causation has priority because the final cause is the cause of causes,
i.e., it causes the causality of the other causes:
Hence, the end is the cause of the causality of the efficient cause, because
it makes the efficient cause be an efficient cause. Similarly, it makes the
matter be matter and the form be form, since the matter would not
receive a form except through an end and the form would not perfect the
matter except through an end. Hence, it is said that the end is the cause
of causes, since it is the cause of the causality of all the causes.9
How does the end cause the causality of the other causes? Not in an efficient
causal sense, as Aquinas makes clear elsewhere:
But the end is the cause of the efficient cause not in the sense of making it
be but in the sense of being the reason for its causality. For the efficient
cause is a cause insofar as it acts, but it acts only because of the final cause.10
6 I confess I fail to see any claim quite as strong in Metaphysics 2 (I take the relevant bit to
be 2.2.994b915).
7 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles 3.2.1, eds. not indicated (Turin and Rome, 1946),
p. 227: Ostendendum est igitur primo, quod omne agens in agendo intendit aliquem finem.
8 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae IaIIae.1.2, eds. P. Caramello et al. (Turin and Rome,
194850), p. 3: Agens autem non movet nisi ex intentione finis. Cf. Robert Pasnau,
Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature (Cambridge, 2002), p. 203.
9 De principiis naturae 4.356 (see above, n. 5), p. 125: Unde finis est causa causalitatis effici-
entis, quia facit efficiens esse efficiens: et similiter facit materiam esse materiam, et for-
mam esse formam, cum materia non suscipiat formam nisi propter finem, et forma [sc.
the text, incorrectly, reads formam] non perficiat materiam nisi per finem. Unde dicitur
quod finis est causa causarum, quia est causa causalitatis in omnibus causis.
10 In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio 5.2.775, eds. M.R. Cathala and
R.Spiazzi (Rome, 1950), p. 213: Finis autem est causa efficientis non quantum ad esse, sed
quantum ad rationem causalitatis. Nam efficiens est causa inquantum agit: non autem
agit nisi causa finis.
Final Causality 125
So the final cause provides the reason for the other causes being causes. Were
it not for this reason, the efficient cause would not act and without the efficient
cause matter would not receive form and form would not perfect matter. So on
Aquinass view, final causation is prior to all other causation (though in this
paper I will only be interested in final causations priority with respect to effi-
cient causation).
Aquinass claims are striking. I want to note two implications. First, given
efficient causation, final causation is a necessary feature of our world. One
might perhaps have a world in which there is no change and hence no need for
either efficient or final causation. But once we know that there is change, a
priori reasoning will get us to final causation. We do not, for example, need to
embark on programmes of observation and experimentation to establish
whether or not there are final causes in nature.11 Second, it looks like this argu-
ment, if successful, not merely establishes that there is at least one instance of
final causation but also the stronger claim that final causation is a universal
phenomenon. That is, the argument can be relativized to any domain human
action, biological organisms generally, rocks, or what have you and show that
there is final causation in that domain.12
Presumably not much work is needed to convince readers that Aquinass
picture of causation is alien to modern conceptions. Many modern philoso-
phers, of course, deny final causation altogether, at least if it is supposed to be
something irreducible to efficient causation. Those who are willing to enter-
tain the possibility of final causation typically wish to restrict it to certain
domains, e.g., to agents with certain cognitive capacities. The next paper in a
philosophy of biology journal that argues for the merit of teleological concepts
is unlikely to invoke the premise that efficient causation presupposes final
causation!
11 John Hawthorne and Daniel Nolan, What Would Teleological Causation Be? in
Metaphysical Essays (Oxford, 2006), pp. 26583, raise the issue of whether final causation
would be established by a posteriori discovery or a priori cogitation.
12 For more on Aquinass claims about the priority of final causation, see John Carriero,
Spinoza on Final Causality, Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 2 (2005), pp. 107
20, Paul Hoffman, Does Efficient Causation Presuppose Final Causation? Aquinas vs.
Early Modern Mechanism, in Metaphysics and the Good, eds. Samuel Newlands and Larry
M. Jorgensen (Oxford, 2009), pp. 295312, George P. Klubertanz, St. Thomas Treatment of
the Axiom, Omne Agens Agit Propter Finem, in An Etienne Gilson Tribute, ed. Charles J.
ONeil (Milwaukee, wi, 1959), pp. 10117 and Stephan Schmid, Finalursachen in der frhen
Neuzeit: eine Untersuchung der Transformation teleologischer Erklrungen (Berlin, 2011),
pp. 4658 and id. Teleology and the Dispositional Theory of Causation in Thomas
Aquinas, Logical Analysis and the History of Philosophy 14 (2011), pp. 2139.
126 Penner
We might also expect Surez to reject the premise, if he really wishes to

emphasize efficient causation at the expense of final causation. As it happens,
however, Surez makes statements in a number of passages that sound very
much like Aquinass claims. In fact, the very first sentence of his two disputa-
tions on final causation dm 23 and 24 appears to endorse the priority of
final causation thesis:
Although a final cause is in a certain way the foremost of all the causes
and even prior to the others, its ratio of causing is, nevertheless, more
obscure and was for that reason almost entirely unknown to the ancient
philosophers13
Surezs commitment to the priority of final causation perhaps seems more

diffident than Aquinass commitment, but the subordinate clause of this sen-
tence certainly suggests that he does accept that efficient causation presup-
poses final causation. I will in due course cite other texts that bolster this
suggestion.
2 Overview of Surez on Final Causation
Before I focus on the question of whether Surez affirms or denies the priority
of final causation, it will be helpful to have a sketch of his account of final cau-
sation in front of us. Lets start with his definition of cause in general:
A cause is a principle per se inflowing being to something else.14
Causes are a kind of principle all causes are principles, not all principles are
causes the kind of principle that per se inflows being to something else. The
phrase per se inflowing is intended to rule out privations, sine qua non condi-
tions, and per accidens causes as true causes.
The term inflowing requires some commentary. Surez is fond of using
influx (influxus) and cognate terms when discussing causation, but Leibniz
13 dm 23 prologue [25.843]: Quanvis finalis causa praecipua quodammodo omnium sit,

atque etiam prior, obscurior tamen est ejus causandi ratio, et ideo veteribus Philosophis
pene incognita fuit Final causes are also described as obscure in 12.2.6 (Vivs 12.2.7)
[25.385] and 17.1.3 [25.581].
Final Causality 127
has some justification for castigating Surez for using a most barbarous and
obscure expression that is metaphorical and more obscure than what it
defines.15 A paradigmatic use of the verb would be to say that the Nile flows
into (influit) the Mediterranean Sea. This might suggest that Surezs model of
causation is one in which some of the being from the cause flows into or is
transferred to the effect. The thought would be that when a hot body heats an
adjacent body, numerically the same heat that is in the first hot body is trans-
ferred to the heated body.16 That is not, however, Surezs model, at least not
for efficient and final causation.17 Unfortunately, it is a great deal easier to rule
out that model than to say just what inflowing being does mean.18 We can
note, however, that the denial of a model on which numerically the same being
is transferred to what is caused leaves more room for final causation, since final
causation requires, notoriously, that non-existent things be able to cause.
In order to get a somewhat better grip on the notion of inflowing being, we
might start by thinking of dependency. Surez gets to his preferred definition
from a definition from the Coimbran commentators spelled out in terms of
dependence rather than in terms of influx: a cause is that on which something
per se depends.19 Surez later characterizes influx as a mode of dependence.20
He does not, however, want to equate the two notions, since not all cases of
dependence are cases of causation. Surez is worried about the case of Christs
Incarnation. He thinks that Christs humanity depends on the Divine Word but
15 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Die philosophischen Schriften, ed. Carl I. Gerhardt, 4 (1880, repr.
Hildesheim, 1978), p. 148. English translation in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Philosophical
Papers and Letters, trans. Leroy E. Loemker, 2nd ed., (Dordrecht, 1969), p. 126.
16 Aquinas uses this example when he considers and rejects this model in Summa Contra
Gentiles 3.69, p. 303.
17 Surez thinks that matter and form do contribute their own being to the resulting com-
posite, though he also thinks that the composites being is distinct from the being of the
matter and the being of the form. See dm 12.3.19 [25.394].
18 For some further discussion, see Freddoso in Francisco Surez, On Creation, Conservation,
and Concurrence: Metaphysical Disputations 20, 21, and 22, trans. Alfred J. Freddoso (South
Bend, in, 2002), pp. xlviil, although he focuses on this issue with respect to efficient
causation in particular.
19 dm 12.2.3 (Vivs 12.2.4) [25.384]: Tertia definitio est, quam potissime afferunt aliqui mod-
erni, Causa est id a quo aliquid per se pendet. For more on this definition, see Robert
Schnepf, Zum kausalen Vokabular am Vorabend der wissenschaftlichen Revolution des
17. Jahrhunderts: Der Ursachenbegriff bei Galilei und die aristotelische causa efficiens im
20 dm 12.2.6 (Vivs 12.2.7) [25.385].
128 Penner
he does not think that the Divine Word causes the humanity. Surez then claims
that the reason there is no causation here is because there is no influx. But per-
haps Surez also has other, more ordinary cases in mind. As Rodrigo de Arriaga
points out when discussing these definitions of cause, one might well think that
effects depend not only on their causes but also on other necessary conditions.21
That the water is heated depends not just on the fire but also on the proximity
between the fire and water. Insofar as we want to maintain a distinction between
causes and mere necessary conditions, causation requires something stronger
than mere dependence. We might, then, think of the influx of being as a kind of
dependence that has whatever extra thing it is that fire has that makes it a cause
of the waters being heated and that proximity does not have.
So much for the genus to which final causes belong.22 Efficient and final
causes are distinguished by the way they inflow being or the way in which they
move. The terminology is rather slippery here. Surezs preferred term in the
case of final causation is metaphorical motion,23 but he also makes use of
intentional and animal (animalis) motion.24 In the case of efficient causation,
Surez often uses expressions such as real influx25 and really influences or
moves.26 When, however, he considers the argument that final causes are not
real causes because they have mere metaphorical motion rather than real
motion, he vigorously insists that final causes metaphorical motion is also real
motion. He then suggests the expression effective influx or physical motion
for efficient causation.27 Physical motion is problematic in its own way
when God creates an angel, is that an instance of physical motion? and effec-
tive influx is entirely unilluminating. All that to say that one needs to be careful
not to read too much into Surezs choice of terms.
21 Cursus philosophicus Disp. Physicae VII, Sect.1 (Paris, 1639), p. 284.

22 That final causes do belong to the genus of cause and that the definition just discussed
applies to them, Surez affirms repeatedly: dm 12.2.3 (Vivs 12.2.4) [25.3845], 12.2.6
(Vivs 12.2.7) [25.385], 12.2.12 (Vivs 12.2.14) [25.3878], 12.3.2 [25.388], 12.3.3 [25.3889],
12.3.6 [25.390], and 23.1.7 [25.845]. The claim that final causes belong to a genus might be
thought to sit uncomfortably with the claim that cause is not a univocal term. See
Section4.2 of Chapter 1.
23 See especially dm 23.4 [25.85864] and 23.5 [25.8648].
24 For example, in dm 12.3.19 [25.394] and 23.1.14 [25.847]. For the latter text, beware the
homeoteleutonic omission that renders the Vivs edition nonsensical here. This is a key
passage, but the discussions in the secondary literature that I have seen try to make sense
of the corrupted version. I quote the correct version in footnote 56.
25 E.g., dm 12.3.19 [25.394].
26 E.g., dm 17.1.3 [25.581].
27 dm 23.1.14 [25.847].
Final Causality 129
Terminology aside, we can start to see the picture by looking at Surezs dis-
cussion of the causality distinctive of ends or final causes:
The causality of an end consists in the metaphorical motion of the will by

which the end attracts the will to itself.28
Since the wills object is the good, final causes can only move under the aspect
of good, whether true or merely apparent.29 In order for the will to be attracted
to an end, the intellect must cognize the end and present it to the will.30 Since
the intellect can think about things that do not exist, the intellect can present
objects that currently exist only in the mind to the will.31 This is why final
causes unlike efficient causes do not need real existence in order to cause.32
This does not mean, however, that the final cause in truth is the mental entity.
When I intend to attain good health, I do not intend merely to attain the cogni-
tion of good health. Rather, I intend to have good health really existing in my
body. It is extramental good health that is the final cause, even though it need
only have mental existence in order to final-cause.33
But once the intellect presents a good object really existing or not, genu-
inely good or not to the will, that object is attractive to the will. The will can
then produce an act of love for the object. Assuming that the will does so, there
is an instance of actualized final causality (a final cause in second actuality, as
28 dm 23.5.2 [25.864]: Ratio autem est, quia causalitas finis consistit in motione metaphorica
voluntatis, qua illam ad se allicit. See also dm 23.4.8 [25.861] and 23.4.12 [25.8623].
29 dm 23.5 [25.8648].
30 dm 23.7 [25.8758].
31 See Robert Pasnau, Intentionality and Final Causes (see above, n. 1) for discussion of this
point.
32 dm 23.7.3 [25.875] and 23.1.11 [25.846].
33 dm 23.8.8 [25.880]. The question whether it is the intentional being or the real being of an
end that final-causes is a central one in medieval discussions of final causation, with
Avicenna and Averroes often seen as the archetypal representatives of the respective
views. See Anneliese Maier, Das Problem der Finalkausalitt um 1320 (see above, n. 1).
Robert Pasnau, Intentionality and Final Causes (see above, n. 1) raises some concerns
about Maiers picture of Avicenna, though he does not pursue them fully. Cecilia Trifogli,
Thomas Wylton on Final Causality, in Erfahrung und Beweis: Die Wissenschaften von der
Natur im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert, eds. Alexander Fidora and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann
(Berlin, 2007), pp. 24964, presents an unusual and interesting, but largely unknown,
chapter in the history of this discussion. Surezs answer is broadly in line with Averroes
position; see Erik kerlund, Nisi temere agat: Francisco Surez on Final Causes and Final
Causation, Dissertation (Uppsala, 2011), p. 117.
130 Penner
Surez would say). Notice that Surez does not think that there is an instance
of actualized final causality until the will produces the act of love, which it
does as an efficient cause.34 Furthermore, once there is an act of love, the final
cause does not produce a distinct act:
But just as we said above that one and the same action is the agents cau-
sality insofar as it flows from the agent but is the matters causality inso-
far as it is in the matter, so also [sc. the advocates of this position] say that
one and the same action of the will is caused by the end and by the will
itself. It is effective causality insofar as it is caused by the will and it is
final causality insofar as it is caused by the end. And for the former reason
it is a real and proper motion, because such an action flows from the
power as from a proper physical principle, but for the latter reason it is
metaphorical motion, because it flows from an object enticing and draw-
ing the will to itself.35
The end and the will are co-causes of one and the same act of love, the end as
final cause and the will as efficient cause. As he puts it elsewhere, there is a
mutual causality between efficient causes and final causes since their respec-
tive causalities are actualized only with the concurrence of the other.36
Presumably, this is why Surez says in a variety of contexts that there cannot
be final causation without efficient causation.37
What we have seen so far is the story for elicited or immanent acts of the
will. The story for external or transeunt actions is a derivative one. External
actions have final causes only insofar as they result from immanent acts that
have final causes.38
An obviously significant feature of Surezs account is the crucial role played
by cognition and will. Surez recognizes the implications of claiming that final
34 dm 23.4.47 [25.85961].
35 dm 23.4.7 (Vivs 23.4.8) [25.861]: Sed, sicut supra dicebamus, unam et eamdem actionem
prout fluit ab agente, esse causalitatem ejus, ut vero inest materiae, esse etiam causalita-
tem ejus circa formam: ita aiunt unam et eamdem actionem voluntatis causari a fine, et a
voluntate ipsa, et prout est a voluntate, esse causalitatem effectivam, prout vero est a fine,
esse causalitatem finalem, et priori ratione esse motionem realem ac propriam, quia talis
actio manat a potentia ut a proprio principio physico, posteriori autem ratione esse
motionem metaphoricam, quia manat ab objecto alliciente, et trahente ad se volunta-
tem. See also dm 23.1.15 [25.847], 23.4.9 [25.8612], and 23.4.13 [25.863].
36 dm 27.2.10 [25.955].
37 dm 20.1.25 [25.752], 27.2.10 [25.955], and 29.2.36 [26.46].
38 dm 23.4.1518 (Vivs 23.4.1517) [25.8634].
Final Causality 131
causation requires cognition of the end. In the Sixth Replies appended to the
Meditations, Descartes notoriously suggests that on the scholastic view of
things, rocks and the like must have minds.39 Knowledge is only found in
minds, after all, and without knowing that the centre of the earth is their end
and knowing where the centre is, the rocks wouldnt know which way to fall.
Descartes is, of course, offering a caricature of the scholastic view.40 Surez
thinks that final causation requires cognition of the end, but he is not at all
inclined to attribute little minds to rocks in order to allow them to cognize
their ends. Rather, when he considers the question of final causation with
respect to natural agents, i.e., agents without minds, he denies that they cog-
nize and intend ends the way intellectual agents do.41 As a consequence, he
also denies that final causation is operative in their case insofar as we abstract
from Gods causal contributions. But I will have more to say about the case of
natural agents, as well as the divine case, later in the paper.
3 The Priority of Efficient Causation?
That should be a sufficient introduction to Surezs account of final causation

to begin addressing the question of priority. I will first argue that on Surezs
view efficient causation is not prior to final causation, contrary to the claims of
a number of recent commentators, and then in the following section I will ask
whether final causation is prior.
It is commonly claimed that Surez endorses the priority of efficient causa-
tion. Tad M. Schmaltz, for instance, talks of Surezs main thesis of the priority
of efficient causes and points to a number of features that support such an
attribution.42 In what follows I will focus on Schmaltzs work, since it is well-
known and since he succinctly captures the main arguments for attributing
the priority of efficient causation thesis to Surez, but he is by no means the
only scholar who interprets Surez in this way.43
39 Meditationes de prima philosophia, Sextae Responsiones, eds. Charles Adam and Paul
Tannery (Oeuvres de Descartes) 7 (1904; repr. Paris, 1996), pp. 4412.
40 For more on this passage in Descartes, see Schmaltz Descartess Critique of Scholastic
Teleology (see above, n. 1).
41 Non-human animals provide a tricky intermediate case. Surez thinks that there is some
sort of imperfect metaphorical motion in their case since they do in some way cognize
ends and have elicited desires. Hence, such animals do participate in final causality in
some way. See dm 23.10.1215 [25.88990].
42 Tad Schmaltz, Descartes on Causation (Oxford, 2008), pp. 3334.
43 My explicit focus will be on Schmaltz but I also have the following works in mind: Gilles
Olivo, Lefficience en cause: Surez, Descartes et la question de la causalit, in Descartes
132 Penner
Priority, of course, can be said in many ways. If said in the same way, then a
priority of efficient causation thesis and a priority of final causation thesis
would be incompatible in a direct fashion. Two things cannot both be prior to
the other in the same respect. They can, however, both be prior to the other but
in different respects, so we should not immediately assume that Schmaltzs
attribution of a priority of efficient causation thesis to Surez is to be dismissed
should we find evidence for a priority of final causation thesis in Surez. That
said, when Schmaltz notes a putative priority of final causation thesis at the
opening of dm 23, he worries that it conflicts with his interpretation of Surez.
Exhaustive accounting of all the diffferent notions of priority in Surez44
and of all the notions that might be in play when scholars attribute the thesis
of the priority of efficient causation to Surez would, I suspect, be more cost
than reward. I suggest focusing on a central notion of priority ontological
et le moyen ge, eds. Jol Biard and Roshdi Rashed (Paris, 1997), pp. 94102, Dennis Des
Chene, Physiologia: Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Thought (Ithaca,
ny, 1996), Vincent Carraud, Causa sive ratio: La raison de la cause, de Suarez Leibniz
(Paris, 2002), pp. 14548 (Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Review of Causa sive Ratio: La Raison de
la cause, de Suarez Leibniz, by Vincent Carraud, The Leibniz Review 15 (2005), 16364
thinks that Carraud makes his case convincingly), Schmid, Finalursachen in der frhen
Neuzeit (see above, n. 12), pp. 10761, id., Surez and the Problem of Final Causation, in
Surezs Metaphysics in his Historical and Systematic Context, ed. Luk Novk (Berlin,
2014), pp. 293308 and id., Finality without Final Causes Surez Account of Natural
Teleology(Forthcoming), and kerlund, Nisi temere agat (see above, n. 33). See also the
opening section of Chapter 4 of this book. The accounts offered by these scholars are by
no means identical; my arguments will be less applicable to some than to others. I take
the interpretations of Surez of Julius Seiler, Der Zweck in der Philosophie des Franz Suarez
(Innsbruck, 1936), pp. 1217, Stephen Menn, On Dennis Des Chenes Physiologia,
Perspectives on Science 8.2 (2000), pp. 11943, and Marleen Rozemond, Leibniz on Final
Causation, in Metaphysics and the Good, eds. Samuel Newlands and Larry M. Jorgensen
(Oxford, 2009), pp. 27579 to be more congenial to my own, although they do not address
the same questions explicitly. Menn On Dennis Des Chenes Physiologia is a response to
Des Chene, Physiologia; Des Chene concedes at least in part in On Laws and Ends: A
Response to Hattab and Menn, Perspectives on Science 8.2 (2000), pp. 14463. Also of
some interest is that the ardent Thomist critic of Surez, Lon Mahieu, found relatively
little to criticize in Surezs account of final causation, a fact that would be surprising if
Surez departed significantly from Aquinass account. See Lon Mahieu, Franois Suarez:
sa philosophie et les rapports quelle a avec sa thologie (Paris, 1921), pp. 47585. In fact,
Mahieu reads Surez as giving superiority to final causation, an interpretation that he
does not feel the need to defend: Quant la cause final et la cause efficiente, aucune na
de supriorit sur lautre au point de vue de ltre, mais au point de vue de la causation
cest la cause finale qui mrite la prfrence. (p. 492).
44 See, for example, dm, Index 5.11.1 [25.XII] and 38.12 [26.498504].
Final Causality 133
priority spelled out in terms of ontological dependence. A is ontologically

prior to B if and only if A does not ontologically depend on B but B ontologi-
cally depends on A. A ontologically depends on B if and only if A cannot exist or
come to exist without B.45 Fully satisfactory definitions of ontological depen-
dence are notoriously difficult to come by,46 but this rough formulation should
do for now. Working through the arguments of this and the following sections
of this chapter will help fill in the picture.
A useful feature of ontological priority for present purposes is that it is a
strong form of priority that has implications for some other kinds of priority.
For example, if final causation is ontologically prior to efficient causation, then
it follows that efficient causation cannot be temporally prior to final causation
and that final causation cannot be reduced to efficient causation. On the other
hand, the ontological priority of final causation might be compatible with the
explanatory priority of efficient causation. So I suggest taking the notion of
ontological priority as central for the following discussion, although it may also
be worth asking of individual arguments whether they would seem more satis-
factory with a view to an alternative kind of priority.
One further preliminary observation: while I will evaluate the following
points individually, some of them are no doubt more convincing in conjunc-
tion with other points. The first point is of such a kind:
1.Efficient causation receives the bulk of the attention. Scholars often point out
that Surez devotes a great deal of attention to efficient causation. Put posi-
tively, the claim can be that Surez wrote the longest, most profound, and
most thorough tract ever written on creaturely efficient causation from an
Aristotelian perspective.47 But often the claim is put in a way to introduce
doubt about Surezs commitment to other kinds of causation, including final
causation. Here is how Schmaltz puts the point:
[D]isputations XVII through XXII, which coverclose to half of the trea-

tise on causality, concern exclusively the case of efficient causes. This
imbalance reflects Surezs conclusion at the start of his discussion of
causation that the whole definition of the cause is most properly suited
to efficient [causes]. Such a conclusion in fact provides a bridge from a
45 Note that as I am defining the terms, priority cannot be mutual but dependence can be.
46 See Jonathan E. Lowe, Ontological Dependence, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Spring 2010 edition), URL: <http://plato.stanford.edu/
archives/spr2010/entries/dependence-ontological/> for a discussion.
47 Freddoso in Surez, On Efficient Causality; Metaphysical Disputations 17, 18, and 19, trans.
Alfred J. Fredosso (New Haven, 1994), p. xvii.
134 Penner
traditional Aristotelian account of the four causes to Descartess restric-

tion of explanations in natural philosophy to efficient causes.48
We have here two putative reasons for thinking that Surez considers efficient
causes prior: (i) the fact that he devotes a lot more pages to efficient causes and
(ii) his claim that the definition of cause most properly applies to efficient
causes. I will consider the second reason shortly. Regarding the first reason,
note that it is primarily suggestive and supportive; that is, a page count by itself
does not say much about an authors views. There could well be reasons to
devote more pages to efficient causes that have nothing to do with a commit-
ment to their priority. One might also worry about how clear it is which pages
should be counted. Arguably the entire De Fine Hominis is about God as final
cause in a way corresponding to God as efficient cause as treated in dm 2022.
Perhaps Surez did not include more such material in the dm because he con-
sidered it the domain of moral theology rather than of metaphysics.
2.Efficient causes better fit Surezs definition of cause. As Surez puts it:
Therefore, the whole definition of cause is most properly suited to the effi-
cient cause.49 It is worth noting the context of this oft-quoted passage.50
Surez here is not considering priority claims. Rather, the question under con-
sideration is whether efficient causes are causes at all. He is not asking whether
other Aristotelian kinds of causes are really causes he is asking the question
of efficient causes themselves. His answer is that of course they are causes. In
fact, efficient causes are causes propriissime, so there really is no question
about whether they are causes. Surez makes the point in several other places
as well.51
But just what is the import of saying that the definition of causes is most
properly suited to efficient causes?52 Suppose someone argued that we know
mammals better than insects, that the name animal was first imposed for
mammals, that mammals better fit the definition of animal than insects do,
and so on. Presumably nothing follows about mammals being more real than
insects or being more important for explaining the workings of ecological
48 Schmaltz, Descartes on Causation, p. 24.

49 dm 12.3.3 [25.389]: ergo tota definitio causae propriissime convenit efficienti.
50 See, e.g., Schmaltz, Descartes on Causation, p. 24 and Schmid, Finalursachen in der frhen
Neuzeit (see above, n. 12), pp. 11112.
51 For two other uses of the term, see dm 27.1.8 [25.951] and 27.1.1011 [25.952].
52 One might compare the present case to Aristotles claim in the opening section of book
Theta of Metaphysics that potentiality most properly so called is not the sort of potenti-
ality most useful for his discussion of potentiality and actuality. My thanks to Christopher
Shields for drawing my attention to this passage.
Final Causality 135
systems. Or, if you prefer, one can easily imagine Surez claiming that we know
created good better than uncreated good, that we first imposed the name on
created good, and so on, yet going on to argue that uncreated good is ontologi-
cally prior to created good. Likewise, the mere fact that efficient causes better
fit the definition of cause may mean that efficient causes are prior in that par-
ticular sense, but it may not have immediate implications for other, more inter-
esting sorts of priority, such as ontological priority.53 Furthermore, one might
note that the definition of cause being most properly suited to efficient causes
is perfectly compatible with the definition being properly (proprie) suited to
final causes or the other kinds of causes.
3.Final causes have merely metaphorical motion as opposed to the real motion
of efficient causes. Of course, if final causes fail to fit the definition of cause for
the right reason, there might be reason to doubt their priority. Schmaltz sug-
gests that the reason final causes fail to fit the definition as well is that they
communicate being indirectly via metaphorical motion.54 As I noted earlier,
Surez does in his less careful moments suggest a contrast between metaphori-
cal motion and real motion, which in turn suggests that metaphorical motion
is not quite up to par.55 But, as I also noted, when faced with an explicit ques-
tion about the status of metaphorical motion, he leaves no doubt that he
thinks it is also real motion and sufficient to count as true causality:
Its motion, however, is called metaphorical, not because it is not real,

but because it does not happen through effective influx nor through
physical motion but through intentional and animal motion. And
therefore nothing prevents it from being the case that its causality is
true and proper.56
53 Here it is worth noting that the scholars cited in n. 43 who argue for the priority of effi-
cient causation may have a variety of different theses in mind. Stephan Schmid, for exam-
ple, takes the claim under discussion here to mean that efficient causation is conceptually
prior rather than ontologically prior (see p. 84 below).
54 Schmaltz, Descartes on Causation, p. 29 and Schmid, Surez and the Problem of Final
Causation (see above, n. 43).
55 Some scholastics did, in fact, contrast metaphorical motion with real motion. Paul Soncinas,
for example, says, Quaestiones metaphysicales 4.2 (Venetiis, 1576), p. 54, It is one thing to
move properly and really, but another thing to move something metaphorically (Sciendum
est secundo quod aliud est movere proprie et realiter: aliud vero est movere aliquid meta-
phorice). My thanks to Stephan Schmid for drawing my attention to this passage.
56 dm 23.1.14 [25.847]: Ejus autem motio dicitur metaphorica, non quia non sit realis, sed quia
non fit per influxum effectivum, nec per motionem physicam, sed per motionem intentio-
nalem et animalem: et ideo nihil obstat, quominus vera ac propria sit ejus causalitas.
136 Penner
Metaphorical motion is real motion; it is just not the sort of motion that effi-
cient causes have. Given this, talk of merely metaphorical motion is mislead-
ing. I think it best just to recognize metaphorical motion as a technical term
standardly used in the medieval philosophical tradition to designate the sort
of motion that final causes have whatever sort that is and whatever status it
has in contrast to the sort of motion that efficient causes have. Given that
they are different kinds of causes, they have different kinds of causality, and so
one needs terminology to pick out the different kinds of motion.
4.Final causation is dependent on efficient causation. A lingering issue from
the previous one is whether spelling out Surezs account of metaphorical
motion will give us reason to worry about the status of final causation. Schmaltz
thinks so:
The ends of action that we cognize are final causes insofar as they incline
the will in first act to pursue these ends as opposed to others. The motion
associated with this inclination is merely metaphorical insofar as we do
not actually pursue the particular ends toward which we are inclined in
first act. The pursuit is actual, and thus the ends are efficacious, only
when our will produces by means of an immanent action the desire for or
love of those ends.57
Schmaltz rightly points out here that the only way to get actualized final cau-
sality is for the will to make an efficient-causal contribution. This seems to
leave final causation dependent on efficient causation and so one might con-
clude that efficient causation is prior.58 But this is too fast. As we saw earlier in
my sketch of Surezs account of final causation, he seems to think that the
dependence is mutual. Final causes and efficient causes have to concur have
to be co-causes in order for the wills act of desire or of love to come into
being.59 But mutual dependence is no more an argument for the priority of
efficient causation than an argument for the priority of final causation.
The Vivs edition makes a hash of this key passage, thanks to a homeoteleutonic omission
of physicam, sed per motionem, leaving readers with: Ejus autem motio dicitur meta-
phorica, non quia non sit realis, sed quia non fit per influxum effectivum, nec per motio-
nem intentionalem et animalem et ideo nihil obstat quominus vera ac propria sit ejus
causalitas.
57 Schmaltz, Descartes on Causation, p. 34.
58 See also Olivo, Lefficience en cause (see above, n. 43), pp. 99100 and Carraud, Causa
sive ratio (see above, n. 43), pp. 14563.
59 dm 23.1.15 [25.847], 23.4.713 (Vivs 23.4.813) [25.8613], and 27.2.10 [25.955].
Final Causality 137
5.Final causation is restricted to intellectual agents. As we saw earlier, on

Surezs account, final causation depends on agents with certain kinds of
capacities: they need an intellect to cognize ends and a will to elicit acts of love
or of desire. Since Surez does not wish to attribute little minds to natural
agents, i.e., plants, rocks, and other creatures below humans on the chain of
being (non-human animals are a tricky borderline case), it seems that final
causation does not apply in their domain. As Surez puts it:
And so it happens that there is no proper final causality in these actions

insofar as they are from natural agents, but only a disposition (habitudo)
to a certain terminus.60
Assuming that the actions of natural agents count as efficient causality, this
might suggest that there can be efficient causation independently of final cau-
sation, which would lend some support to thinking that efficient causation is
prior. But the quotation above is not the end of Surezs story, however, since
he thinks there is a way in which final causality is involved even in the domain
of natural agents. He continues:
But insofar as they are from God, there is final causality in them just as in
Gods other external and transeunt actions. For the adequate principle of
these actions is not the proximate natural agent alone except perhaps
speaking with qualification, namely, in such an order but speaking
without qualification the principle is especially the first cause. And for
this reason an intellectual cause intending their end is included in the
adequate principle of such actions.61
This passage makes at least two points clearly: (i) even though natural agents
considered strictly in themselves do not introduce final causality, their actions
do involve final causality and (ii) the final causality comes in via God. Though
this is less clear, it also seems that Surez has two distinct types of divine contri-
bution in mind: creative activity and concurring activity. They are certainly not
60 dm 23.10.6 [25.887]: Atque ita fit ut in his actionibus, ut sunt a naturalibus agentibus, non
sit propria causalitas finalis, sed solum habitudo ad certum terminum.
61 dm 23.10.6 [25.887]: ut vero sunt a Deo, ita sit in illis causalitas finalis, sicut in aliis exter-
nis et transeuntibus actionibus Dei. Adaequatum enim principium harum actionum non
est solum proximum agens naturale, nisi forte secundum quid, scilicet in tali ordine;
tamen absolute praecipuum est prima causa: ideoque in adaequato principio talium
actionum includitur intellectualis causa intendens finem earum.
138 Penner
distinguished sharply in the quoted passage, but there is perhaps a hint of

them and the ensuing discussion is certainly easier to understand if one keeps
two types of contribution in mind, both of which in their own way introduce
final causality.62 The case of Gods creative activity is the more familiar and the
easier to understand one. Surez granted that the natural agent has a disposi-
tion to a terminus; he just argued that this was insufficient for the agent to be
said to act for the sake of an end. But this disposition needs to be explained.
Surez argues that the first cause, i.e., God, introduced these dispositions into
the world, since matter in and of itself is indifferent, i.e., has no dispositions.
Since God introduced these dispositions for the sake of ends, we have final
causality in the picture. Furthermore, it is not just that these dispositions exist
for the sake of ends; Surez also seems to think that any actions resulting from
these dispositions inherit purpose from the dispositions.63
Surez is also a concurrentist. That is, he thinks that secondary agents, i.e.,
agents other than God, provide genuine causal contributions to effects, but
they do so only if God cooperates immediately such that the resulting actions
are both their actions and Gods actions.64 As concurrentists opponents never
failed to point out, concurrentism is a difficult doctrine to explicate in a coher-
ent fashion. But for our purposes the point just is that final causality is again
introduced because all the actions in the natural world are also Gods actions
and Gods transeunt actions are for the sake of ends:
One should consider, therefore, what we related above, namely, that all
the actions of secondary agents are also actions of God. For chiefly on
that account God is said to concur per se and immediately with all those
62 I take dm 23.10.6 [25.887] to talk about Gods concurring activity and creative activity (in
that order). Paragraph 7 further explains how the creative activity relates to the issue.
Paragraph 8 raises some objections, to which Surez replies in paragraph 9, first relying on
the necessity of Gods concurring activity and then noting that, even if that were not
granted, we would still have final causality because of Gods creative activity.
63 See also dm 29.3.29 [26.57], where Surez says that it would be absurd to say that things
tend to their ends by natural inclination but without any final causality.
64 For more on concurrentism, see Chapter 4, pp. 11317. Also, Alfred J. Freddoso provides an
excellent introduction to concurrentism and its rivals in medieval and early modern phi-
losophy in Medieval Aristotelianism and the Case against Secondary Causation in
Nature, in Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism, ed. Thomas
V. Morris (Ithaca, ny, 1988), pp. 74118 and Gods General Concurrence with Secon
dary Causes: Why Conservation Is Not Enough, Philosophical Perspectives 5 (1991),
pp. 55385.
Final Causality 139
actions as the first efficient cause. From this it is inferred that those
actions are for the sake of an end, and truly are caused by some end, not
only as they are from proximate agents but also indeed, much more as
they are from the first agent. For the first agent, just as in all his actions he
operates through intellect and will, so in all his actions he operates for the
sake of an end in a much more excellent way than any other agent. And
thus every action, insofar as it is transeunt beyond God and flows imme-
diately from God, is caused by some end having also been intended by
God himself.65
The crucial result is that all actions in the natural world are for the sake of ends
even though natural agents, strictly speaking, do not act for the sake of ends.
You might think this puzzling. How can actions be for the sake of ends without
the agents whose actions they are acting for the sake of ends? Surely it is an
agent acting for the sake of an end that explains an actions being for the sake
of an end rather than the other way around.
Here it helps seeing more of Surezs causal ontology.66 Rather than events,
Surezs causal ontology has substances which act, i.e., agents, and substances
which are the recipients of actions, i.e., patients, at the foundation. Efficient
causation is a relation between agents and patients. Agents have causal powers
which are poised to be actualized when all the conditions for action are satis-
fied. In the case of transeunt actions, i.e., actions that have effects outside the
agent, the actualization of the agents causal power results in a modification in
the patient. Importantly for our purposes, the action is thought to exist in the
patient. Furthermore, actions are individuated by their effects rather than by
the causal powers that produced them. So in the case of concurrence the very
same action can be attributed to both God and the secondary agent.
Now we can see how Surez can talk of an action being for the sake of an
end without the actions agent acting for the sake of that end. We might be
65 dm 24.2.7 [25.896]: Est ergo considerandum, quod supra tradidimus, omnes actiones
secundorum agentium esse etiam actiones Dei, nam ea potissimum ratione dicitur Deus
ad omnes illa concurrere per se et immediate ut prima causa efficiens. Ex quo infertur,
illas actiones esse propter finem, atque adeo esse causatas ab aliquo fine, non solum ut
sunt ab agentibus proximis, sed etiam, ac multo magis ut sunt a primo agente. Quia pri-
mum agens, sicut in omni actione sua operatur per intellectum et voluntatem, ita in omni
sua actione operatur propter finem longe excellentiori modo quam quodlibet aliud agens:
atque ita omnis actio quatenus extra Deum est transiens, et a Deo immediate manat,
causata est ab aliquo fine ab ipso etiam Deo intento.
66 For more on the ontology of causation see Section 4 of Chapter 4. Freddoso, Gods
General Concurrence with Secondary Causes is also helpful on this.
140 Penner
tempted to see two agents and two actions in the case of God concurring with
a natural agent. But on Surezs view we have two agents but only one action.67
Since this action is also Gods action, it inherits final causality from the fact
that God performed it for the sake of an end.
The appeal to Gods causal contribution is not entirely unproblematic.
Recall that Surez spelled out final causality in terms of metaphorical
motion: namely, an end attracting a will to itself so that the will elicits an act
of love. External actions inherited final causality insofar as they depend on
such an act of will. But as readers familiar with scholastic theology will no
doubt have already worried about, God is supposed to be pure act and
immune to causal influence. God can cause but cannot be caused. So it looks
like metaphorical motion has no place in the case of God. Surez recognizes
the worry:
The reason for doubting [sc. that there is final causality in divine actions
and effects] is taken from what was said about created intellectual agents.
For in their case the causality of the end has no place with respect to
external actions except by means of the causality in the very will of the
agent cause. But an end cannot have its causality in the will of God and so
it cannot have it in the external effects or actions which proceed from
Gods will.68
In response to this argument, Surez grants that there is no final causality with
respect to Gods immanent acts.69 If the metaphorical motion of final causes
were in fact not real motion, it might perhaps be allowed even in the case of
God. But Surez does not have that option:
Hence I deny that the metaphorical motion of an end has a place in the
divine will the way it does in ours. For in our will that motion is called
metaphorical in such a way that it is still true causality, because there is a
true dependency on the end itself in the act elicited for the sake of the
end. In the divine will, however, there is no such metaphorical motion,
but there is a certain eminent reason for loving, which, just as it is without
67 Menn, On Dennis Des Chenes Physiologia (see above, n. 43), p. 124 also emphasizes this point.
68 dm 23.9.1 [25.882]: Ratio dubitandi sumitur ex hactenus dictis de agentibus intellectuali-
bus creatis, nam in his non habet locum causalitas finis quoad actiones externas, nisi
media causalitate in ipsam voluntatem causae agentis, sed finis non potest habere cau-
salitatem suam in voluntatem Dei: ergo neque in effectus vel actiones externas quae ab
illa voluntate procedunt.
69 dm 23.9.3 [25.8823].
Final Causality 141
distinction of act or potency, so also it is without any true motion, even

metaphorical.70
But as we saw earlier, external actions have final causes insofar as they result from
immanent actions that have final causes. It would seem, then, that Gods external
or transeunt actions will not have final causes either. It may come as a surprise,
then, to find Surez asserting that Gods external actions and effects do have final
causes.71 It is easy to see why some of the worries about final causality in the case
of immanent actions are not applicable in the case of transeunt actions:
For a transeunt action of God neither is God nor in God, but is in some-
thing created. And so it can have a final cause and be ordered to an end.
And thus, although God does not have an end for himself, he nevertheless
has an end for his transeunt action, which, if the end is proximate, can be
something outside of God.72
Since transeunt actions are located in the created order, worries stemming
from Gods nature need not apply. But, of course, this is no reply yet to the
argument that Gods transeunt actions cannot have final causes since there is
no metaphorical motion in their background. Surezs response to this argu-
ment is to deny that metaphorical motion is always necessary:
And in this way there is a ready response to the reason for doubting: for
we deny that it is always necessary that there be causality of an end inter-
nal to the agent itself in order for it to be able to have a place beyond the
agent in its other effects.73
70 dm 23.9.6 [25.883]: Unde ad primum negatur metaphoricam motionem finis ita habere
locum in divina voluntate sicut in nostra, nam in nostra ita illa motio dicitur metaphor-
ica, ut tamen sit vera causalitas, quia est vera dependentia in actu propter finem elicito ab
ipso fine, in divina autem voluntate non est talis motio metaphorica, sed est eminens
quaedam amandi ratio, quae sicut est sine distinctione actuum vel potentiarum, ita etiam
est sine ulla vera motione etiam metaphorica.
71 dm 23.9.812 [25.8845]. Note especially that in article 10 he says that the actions and
effects of God have a proper final cause (propriam causam finalem).
72 dm 23.9.12 [25.885]: nam actio Dei transiens non est Deus, nec in Deo, sed in creatura,
et ideo habere potest causam finalem, et ordinari in finem. Atque ita, licet Deus non
habeat finem sui esse, habet tamen finem suae actionis transeuntis: qui si sit finis proxi-
mus, esse potest aliquid extra Deum.
73 dm 23.9.9 [25.8845]: Atque ita facilis est responsio ad rationem dubitandi: negamus
enim esse semper necessariam causalitatem finis intra ipsum agens, ut habere possit
locum extra ipsum in alios effectus ejus.
142 Penner
This denial might seem at odds with Surezs earlier assertion that final causality
consists in the metaphorical motion of the will.74 One response to Surezs
claims would be to emphasize that he has told us that final causality consists in
metaphorical motion, that such motion has no place in God, and so, whatever
Surez may say about final causation in Gods transeunt actions, it cannot be real
final causation. I am not convinced that is the correct interpretation. Surez already
indicated in several earlier passages that his story about metaphorical motion
would only be a partial story. In the first section on final causation, he divides
agents into three classes: the uncreated intellectual agent (God), created intellec-
tual agents (e.g., human beings), and natural agents (e.g., plants). He then says:
Therefore, the causality of the end, although it has a place in its own way
in the actions of all these agents, is, nevertheless, better known to us in
created intellectual agents and it has more of a certain quality and spe-
cial mode in them. For this reason, we will explain this causality of the
end especially in their case and resolve the difficulties that arise concern-
ing this causality. But afterwards we will talk about the other agents.75
Surez returns to the other kinds of agents in Sections9 and 10 of dm 23. So

when he gives his account of metaphorical motion in Section 4, he is still
restricting his attention to created intellectual agents. In other words, when he
says that final causality consists in metaphorical motion, he should not be
understood to be saying that all final causality consists in metaphorical motion
but, rather, to be saying that final causality in the case of created intellectual
agents consists in metaphorical motion.
Then, when we get to the discussion of the divine case in Section9, we learn
that there is a more eminent analogue to metaphorical motion in the divine
case that can play the same role as metaphorical motion plays in the case of
created intellectual agents:
Wherefore it should be said that, although a final cause does not properly
cause its effects except in a certain way via an agent that it moves and
entices to acting, nevertheless, in order for an end to be a proper cause of
74 dm 23.5.2 [25.864].
75 dm 23.1.8 [25.845]: Causalitas ergo finis licet suo modo locum habeat in actionibus horum
omnium agentium, tamen in creatis agentibus intellectualibus nobis notior est, et majorem
quamdam proprietatem, et specialem modum habet; et ideo in illis peculiariter declara-
bimus hanc causalitatem finis, et expediemus difficultates circa eam insurgentes: postea
vero de aliis agentibus dicemus. Cf. dm 23.4.14 [25.863].
Final Causality 143
an agents effects, it is not necessary that it first have some proper causal-
ity in the agent itself. For although this happens in the case of created
intellectual agents by the fact that they immediately move or apply them-
selves to acting or to loving through some real motion and proper causal-
ity, it is, nevertheless, not necessary in the case of the uncreated
intellectual agent. For in a most simple and eminent way it applies (if I
may speak in this way) or determines itself to freely loving and acting
without any change, real addition, dependency, or causality in it.76
The lesson to be drawn here is that it is the case that final causation requires
the mediation of intellectual agents, but that there are different ways in which
that mediation may occur. In created agents, the way is metaphorical motion;
in God, there is a more simple and eminent way (this is not the only case
where Gods way is more simple and eminent). But both ways play the relevant
role of ensuring that resulting external actions have final causes. With these
two ways in place, final causality is secured for both Gods external actions and
for the actions of natural agents.
It is no doubt the case that Surez worries about the status of final causes in
a way that he does not about efficient causes. His first section on final causa-
tion asks whether they are true causes; there is no corresponding section in his
disputations on efficient causation. As I noted earlier, the question of efficient
causations status does come up, but Surez does not consider the question a
threat and devotes less than a paragraph to answering it.77 But none of this
need mean that he gives a diminished role to final causation. It might just
mean, for example, that there are more worries about final causation in his
intellectual milieu than about efficient causation, and so reason to say more
about the views of others than about his own views. It seems to me that Surez
clearly affirms the reality of final causation, both for actions in the rational
domain and in the natural domain, and affirms the dependence of efficient
76 dm 23.9.9 [25.884]: Quare dicendum est, quod licet causa finalis non causet proprie effec-
tus suos nisi quodammodo medio agente quod movet et allicit ad operandum, tamen, ut
finis sit propria causa effectus agentis, necessarium non est, ut prius habeat in ipso agente
aliquam causalitatem propriam. Nam licet hoc contingat in agentibus intellectualibus
creatis, eo quod immediate ipsa se movent, seu applicant ad operandum, vel amandum
per aliquam realem motionem, et propriam causalitatem: tamen in agente intellectuali
increato id non est necessarium, quia sine ulla sui mutatione, vel reali additione, depen-
dentia, aut causalitate, simplicissimo et eminentissimo modo sese applicat (ut ita dicam)
seu determinat ad libere amandum et operandum.
77 dm 12.3.3 [25.389].
144 Penner
causation on final causation. Such dependence rules out the ontological prior-
ity of efficient causation.
4 The Priority of Final Causation
But does Surez affirm the priority of final causation? He opens both his dis-
cussion of efficient causation and his discussion of final causation in the
Metaphysical Disputations with a claim that sounds in keeping with Aquinass
characterization of the final cause as the cause of causes. We already saw the
passage from the opening of dm 23, but here it is again:
Although a final cause is in a certain way the foremost of all [sc. the
causes] and also prior [sc. to the others], its ratio of causing is, neverthe-
less, more obscure and was for that reason almost entirely unknown to
the ancient philosophers78
When I first read this passage, I read it as providing some handy wiggle room
to escape from the sort of priority thesis that Aquinas has in mind. Surez does
not say that final causes are principal and prior without qualification; rather,
he says that final causes are principal in a certain way. My thought was that
we can see what he means by a certain way in the opening disputation on
causation where he is dealing with the question of whether all four kinds of
Aristotelian causes are genuine causes. In the course of answering the ques-
tion, he entertains an argument from authority based on the claim that
Socrates in the Phaedo considers only final causes true causes.79 In response,
Surez claims that Socrates was talking from the perspective of morality rather
than of physics. In moral matters, the suggestion is, the final cause really is the
more excellent cause and really is the cause prior to the other causes.80 But this
would then be compatible with the claim that from the perspective of physics,
efficient causation is prior to final causation.
But there are too many other passages that affirm the priority of final causa-
tion that are not amenable to such a deflationary reading. Here are two such
passages:
78 dm 23 prologue [25.843]: Quamvis finalis causa praecipua quodammodo omnium sit

atque etiam prior, obscurior tamen est ejus causandi ratio, et ideo veteribus philosophis
pene incognita fuit. See also dm 17 prologue [25.580].
79 dm 12.3.4 [25.389].
80 dm 12.3.8 [25.390].
Final Causality 145
For everything that is caused has a final cause, for this is the first of the
causes81
That the end is the cause of the efficient cause with respect to causality is
clear, since the end excites and moves the efficient cause to acting.82
Both passages come from contexts that leave it entirely clear that there is
nothing peculiar to moral philosophy that is in view. Ends are the cause of
efficient causes causality because efficient causes simply cannot exercise their
causality without the help of ends. An end must attract or excite an efficient
cause before the efficient cause can actually cause.
Surezs language certainly suggests that he sees an important asymmetry
between final causes and efficient causes. Final causes are the first of the
causes. It is not obvious, however, that such a priority is licensed by Surezs
account of the relationship between efficient and final causation. Both of the
quoted passages are followed by discussions in which Surez draws the picture
of mutual dependence that I sketched earlier. One and the same act of love or
desire depends on both an efficient cause and a final cause. The efficient cause
cannot act without the concurrence of the final cause and the final cause can-
not cause anything to come to be without the concurrence of the efficient
cause. So an efficient cause depends on a final cause for its actual causality and
a final cause depends on an efficient cause for its actual causality:
An end, therefore, is a cause attracting the power of the agent so that it

causes and consequently in its own genus gives influence into its actual
causality. From this I gather further that an efficient cause can also be
called in its genus the cause of an end with respect to actual causality. For
although the power of causing of the end insofar as it precedes in inten-
tion is not from the efficient cause, nevertheless, the actual causality of an
end cannot be without the efficiency of the agent, as was demonstrated
above. And for this reason just as an efficient cause is constituted in sec-
ond act by the concurring end for the sake of which it causes (and for this
reason is said to be caused by the end with respect to its causality), so also,
81 dm 26.3.3 [25.926]: Deinde, quia omne causatum habet causa finalem, nam haec est
prima causarum.
82 dm 27.2.7 [25.954]: Quod autem finis sit causa efficientis quoad causalitatem patet, quia
excitat et movet efficientem causam ad agendum. Also dm 27.2.10 [25.955]: In this way,
therefore, it is readily clear in what way an end is the cause of an efficient cause with
respect to its causality (Sic igitur facile constat quomodo finis sit causa efficientis cau-
sae quoad causalitatem ejus).
146 Penner
conversely, the final cause is not constituted in second act except by the
efficient cause concurring in its genus for its causality. In this they have,
then, a mutual causality between each other in their genera, just as mat-
ter and form have between each other.83
Both efficient cause and final cause can exist in first act, able and ready to
cause, without the other, just as a man and a woman can both exist indepen-
dently as potential parents.84 But for the efficient cause and final cause to exist
in second act that is, actually to exercise their causality they need to concur
with each other, in a way akin to the man and woman depending on each other
to become actual parents.
But where is the priority in this? I indicated earlier that it is a mistake to infer
from final causations dependence on efficient causation that efficient causation
is prior. It would seem precisely the same kind of mistake to infer the priority of
final causation from efficient causations dependence on final causation, at least
if the priority is supposed to be of a sort not also possessed by efficient causa-
tion. Surezs language of concurrence, natural connection, and co-causation
seems more apt for the presented picture than language of priority or being the
first of the causes. Surez does, however, want to preserve the priority claim,
even though he is aware that the picture of concurrence threatens it:
And, although agents also concur with the causality of ends, as we showed,
nevertheless, this is attributed more to ends, since ends are first in moving
and inflowing to the causality of agents, as was also shown above.85
83 dm 27.2.10 [25.955]: Est ergo finis causa alliciens virtutem agentis ut causet, et conse-
quenter in suo genere influens in actualem causalitatem ejus. Ex quo ulterius colligo etiam
efficientem causam posse dici in suo genere causam finis quoad actualem causalitatem.
Quamvis enim virtus causandi finis prout antecedit in intentione non sit ab ipso efficiente,
tamen actualis causalitas finis non potest esse sine efficientia agentis, ut supra demonstra-
tum est, et ideo sicut causa efficiens constituitur in actu secundo, concurrente fine propter
quem causat, et ob hanc rationem dicitur causari a fine quoad causalitatem suam, ita e
converso causa finalis non constituitur in actu secundo nisi concurrente causa efficiente in
suo genere ad causalitatem ejus, ergo habent in hoc mutuam inter se causalitatem in suis
generibus, sicut materia et forma inter se. See also dm 26.3.35 [25.92021].
84 Of course, sometimes an efficient cause might depend for its existence in first act on the
same final cause on which it depends for moving from first act to second act. See dm
27.2.12 [25.9556].
85 dm 27.2.13 [25.956]: Et quanvis agens etiam concurrat ad causalitatem finis, ut declaravi-
mus, tamen hoc magis attribuitur fini, quia ipse est primus in movendo et influendo ad
causalitatem agentis, ut supra etiam declaratum est.
Final Causality 147
Here he claims to have already established the desired conclusion earlier. He

may have the previous section in mind, in which he asks which causes are more
perfect. He argues that efficient causes and final causes are often equal in vari-
ous respects, but then notes that strictly speaking, final cause is thought to be
first and foremost in causing.86 Surez picks up the thought a little later with:
End also seems especially to exceed in this, namely, that it itself is the first
beginning and principle of every action, since it excites and attracts the
efficient cause to effecting. Although in the case of the first efficient cause
it is found without any causality of the end in the efficient cause itself but
the causality is only found in the causes external action, nevertheless
according to this argument we understand that the first motor or (if I may
speak in this way) first procurator of every causality is an end. For this
reason the end is usually called the first cause or the cause of causes87
This picture might seem obviously correct. First, the end attracts the will. Then,
the will forms a desire for the end. In this way, it is not difficult to see why the
final cause is thought of as the first of the causes. But recall that Surezs offi-
cial account is that there is no distinct act of the final cause that precedes the
wills act of love or desire. Rather, the one act of love, dependent on both the
end and the will, brings both the final cause and the efficient cause into second
act. If, however, we talk of the end first attracting the will, this sounds rather
like there is first an act of attraction that then results in an act of love. Calling
the final cause the first principle of action or the first motor seems to pull
against the picture Surez generally presents of two causes concurring with
each other to produce a single act. It seems to me, then, that Surezs consid-
ered account no more provides for the priority of final causation than for the
priority of efficient causation.88
86 dm 27.1.6 (Vivs 27.1.7) [25.951]: simpliciter autem causa finalis censetur prima ac prae-
cipua in causando.
87 dm 27.1.8 [25.9512]: Deinde ac praecipue videtur superare finis in hoc, quod ipse est
primum initium et principium omnis actionis, quia ipsummet efficiens excitat et allicit
ad efficiendum: quod, quanvis in primo efficienti inveniatur absque causalitate finis in
ipsum efficiens, sed tantum in externam actionem ejus, nihilominus secundum eam
rationem intelligimus primum motorem, vel (ut ita dicam) primum procuratorem omnis
causalitatis esse finem. Qui propterea appellari solet Prima, et Causa causarum.
88 Surez is prone to hanging on to traditional doctrines even when they do not seem to fit his
considered views. As Karl Eschweiler, Roderigo de Arriaga S.J.: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte
der spanischen Sptscholastik, in Spanische Forschungen der Grresgesellschaft, Reihe 1,
148 Penner
Whether entitled to the claim or not, it does seem clear that Surez wishes to
keep the priority of final causation thesis. This suggests that Surezs account of
causation is closer to Aquinass than is often thought. One might note, in par-
ticular, that Surez is also committed to the argument for final causation pre-
sented at the beginning of the paper, along with its striking implications. Even
if not entitled to that priority thesis, Surez certainly would have reason to
object to having the priority of efficient causation thesis attributed to him. As
we saw, on Surezs view final and efficient causes must concur to produce
actions. If either cause is missing, no action is produced. Insofar as this account
of the concurrence between efficient and final causes calls into question the
priority of final causation, it obviously also calls into question the priority of
efficient causation. It seems to me that the strongest claim for efficient causa-
tion that can be made on Surezs account is that efficient causation, too, is
necessary for action and change in a way parallel to final causations necessity.
5 Conclusion
My primary focus in this chapter has been the standing of final causation rela-
tive to efficient causation in Surezs account, arguing that it is a mistake to
read Surez as positing the priority of efficient causes. There are many stan-
dard questions about final causation, some of which Surez discusses at length,
that I have said little or nothing about. I do, however, want to make a few con-
cluding remarks about one issue that becomes especially salient when faced
with the claim that efficient causation requires final causation. A claim so
striking to modern ears raises a question about how to respond to it. One pos-
sible response is to take the claim at face value. One can then conclude that
those who made such claims simply fell prey to a bizarre view. More charitably,
one could try reconstructing a broader metaphysical story in which this strik-
ing claim would make sense and would seem justifiable.89 A second possible
response is to start wondering if the claim meant something different for its
advocates than it does for us. Perhaps their understanding of what final causa-
tion amounts to is different than our understanding. The less we build into the
Band 3 (1931), p. 255 puts it: Das eigentmlich Neue dieser Schulphilosophiewird bei
Suarez noch gern im Kompromi mit den aus der Hochscholastik berkommenen
Denkgewohnheiten vorgetragen. Perhaps Surezs comments about the priority of final
causation should be seen as merely an instance of this.
89 I take this to be what John Carriero attempts to do in Spinoza on Final Causality (see above,
n. 12) when confronted with the claim in Aquinas.
Final Causality 149
notion of final causation, the more plausible it is that whatever is picked out by
that notion is pervasive. If the claim seems more plausible on a deflationary
account of final causation, that might be a reason to attribute such a deflation-
ary account to advocates of the claim.90
This is not the place to explore those options, but it is worth noting that ele-
ments of Surezs account provide reasons both for and against a deflationary
strategy. His commitment to the claim that all efficient causation depends on
final causation might motivate a search for a deflationary account of final cau-
sation. On the other hand, his view that final causation requires the cognition of
a rational agent suggests a more robust account. A fully satisfactory exposition
of Surezs account would require explaining and connecting these two ele-
ments. What is there about a rocks falling that requires appeal to final causa-
tion and why does that instance of final causation have to involve cognition?91
90 I take this to be Hoffmans interpretation of Aquinas in Does Efficient Causation

Presuppose Final Causation? (see above, n. 12) in response to Carriero, Spinoza on Final
Causality (see above, n. 12).
91 I thank participants of the Centre for the Aristotelian Traditions seminar out of which
this book grew for friendly but stimulating and illuminating discussion of the material in
this paper and surrounding issues. Sten Ebbesen, Jakob Fink, and Stephan Schmid deserve
to be singled out for special gratitude.
Bibliography
Ancient and mediaeval authors are listed under their first names, e.g. Aquinas=Thomas
Aquinas, Abelard=Peter Abelard etc.
Adams, Marilyn McCord: William Ockham, 2 vols., Notre Dame, in: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1987.
Anonymous: Liber de causis, in Pattin, Adriaan (ed.), Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 28 (1966),
90203.
Aristotle: Physica: Translatio Vetus, Fernand Bossier and Josef Brams (eds.), Aristoteles
Latinus, vol. 7.1.1., Leiden and New York: Brill, 1990.
Arriaga, Rodrigo de: Cursus philosophicus, Paris: Jacob Quesnel, 1639.
Ashworth, E. Jennifer: Les thories de lanalogie du XIIe au XVIe sicle, Paris: Vrin,
2008.
Ayesta, Cruz Gonzles: Sobre el Escotismo de Surez: El Caso de la Causalidad de la
especie, in Agustn Echavarra and Juan F. Franck (eds.), La causalidad en la filoso-
fia moderna: De Surez a Kant precrtico (Cuadernos de Anuario Filosfico) 246
(Navarra, 2012), 916.
Broad, Charlie Dunbar: Ethics and the History of Philosophy: Selected Essays, London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952.
Burns, J. Patout: Action in Surez, The New Scholasticism 38 (1964), 45372.
Cajetan, Thomas: Summa Theologiae, in Thomas Aquinas, Opera omnia iussu impen-
saque Leonis XIII P.M. edita, tome 5, Rome: Polyglotta, 1882ongoing
Cantes, Bernardo: Francisco Surez, in Graham Oppy and Nick Trakakis (eds.), Early
Modern Philosophy and Religion, The History of Western Philosophy of Religion, vol. 3,
Durham: Acumen, 2009, 7587.
Carraud, Vincent: Causa sive ratio: La raison de la cause, de Suarez Leibniz, Paris:
Presses universitaires de France, 2002.
Carriero, John: Spinoza on Final Causality, Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy
2 (2005), 10547.
Charles, David: Teleological Causation in the Physics, in Lindsay Judson (ed.), Aristotles
Physics: A Collection of Essays, Oxford: Clarendon, 1991, 10128.
Clarke, Randolph: Libertarian Accounts of Free Will, Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press, 2003.
Clatterbaugh, Kenneth: The Early Moderns, in Helen Beebee et al. (eds.), The Oxford
Handbook of Causation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, 5572.
Cobos, Christophorus de los, Expositio in libros metaphysicae, Salamanca: Bibliotecas
Universidad de Salamanca, ub 1410.
152 Bibliography
Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis Societatis Jesu: In octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis,

Lyon, 1594, repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1984.
Copleston, Frederick: A History of Philosophy, vol. 3, New York et al.: Image Books, 1963,
repr. 1993.
Courtine, Jean-Franois: Suarez et le systme de la mtaphysique, Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1990.
Cross, Richard: Duns Scotus, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Darge, Rolf: Surez transzendentale Seinsauslegung und die Metaphysiktradition,
Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 80, Leiden and Boston:
Brill, 2004.
Des Chene, Dennis: Physiologia: Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian
Thought, Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1996.
. On Laws and Ends: A Response to Hattab and Menn, Perspectives on Science 8.2
(2000), 14463.
: From Natural Philosophy to Natural Science, in Donald Rutherford (ed.), The
Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006, 6794.
. Surez on Propinquity and the Efficient Cause, in B. Hill and H. Lagerlund
(eds.), The Philosophy of Francisco Surez, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012,
89100.
Descartes, Ren: in Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (eds.), Oeuvres de Descartes, 11 vols.,
Paris: Vrin, 1996.
. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 vols., Translated by John Cottingham,
Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
Doyle, John P.: Surez on the Analogy of Being, in Collected Studies on Francisco
Surez, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2010, 4188.
Eschweiler, Karl: Roderigo de Arriaga S.J.: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der spanischen
Sptscholastik, in Spanische Forschungen der Grresgesellschaft, Reihe 1, Band 3,
1931, 22585.
Forlivesi, Marco: Impure Ontology: The Nature of Metaphysics and Its Object in
Francisco Surezs Texts, Quaestio 5 (2005), 55986.
: Francisco Surez and the Rationes Studiorum of the Society of Jesus, in Marco
Sgarbi (ed.), Francisco Surez and His Legacy: The Impact of Surezian Metaphysics
and Epistemology on Modern Philosophy, Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2010, 7790.
Freddoso, Alfred J.: Medieval Aristotelianism and the Case against Secondary
Causation in Nature, in Thomas V. Morris (ed.), Divine and Human Action: Essays in
the Metaphysics of Theism, Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1988, 74118.
: Gods General Concurrence with Secondary Causes: Why Conservation Is Not
Enough, Philosophical Perspectives 5 (1991), 55385.
Bibliography 153
: Gods General Concurrence with Secondary Causes: Pitfalls and Prospects, The
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 68 (1994), 13156.
Gilson, tienne: Notes pour lhistoire de la cause efficiente, Archives dhistoire doctri-
nale et littraire du moyen ge 29 (1962), 731.
: Le thomisme: Introduction la philosophie de Saint Thomas dAquin, 6th edition,
Paris: Vrin, 1997.
: Ltre et lessence, 3rd edition, Paris: Vrin, 2008.
Gracia, Jorge E.: Surez and Metaphysical Mentalism: A Last Visit, American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly 67 (1993), 34954.
Gracia, Jorge E. and Novotn, Daniel D.: Fundamentals in Surezs Metaphysics:
Transcendentals and Categories, in Daniel Schwartz (ed.), Interpreting Surez:
Critical Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 1938.
Hankinson, Robert J.: Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1998.
Hattab, Helen, Descartes on Forms and Mechanisms, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2009.
: Surezs Last Stand for the Substantial Form, in Benjamin Hill and Henrik
Lagerlund (eds.), The Philosophy of Francisco Surez, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2012, 10118.
Hawthorne, John and Daniel Nolan: What Would Teleological Causation Be? in John
Hawthorne (ed.), Metaphysical Essays, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006, 26583.
Heider, Daniel, F. Surez a J. Senftleben: Reifikace prvn ltky [F. Surez and J.
Senftleben: Reification of Prime Matter], in Slnsk Rozhovory: panelsko, Slan,
2004, 3742.
: Surez on Material Substance: Reification of Intrinsic Principles and the Unity
of Material Composites, Organon F 15 (2008), 42338.
: The Unity of Surezs Metaphysics, Medioevo 34 (2009), 475505.
Hellin, Jos, Existencialismo escolastico suareziano I, Pensamiento 12 (1956),
15778.
: Existencialismo escolastico suareziano II: La existencia es lo principal en el
ente, Pensamiento 13 (1957), 2138.
Hill, Benjamin: Introduction, in Benjamin Hill and Henrik Lagerlund (eds.), The
Philosophy of Francisco Surez, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 121.
Hill, Benjamin and Lagerlund, Henrik (eds.): The Philosophy of Francisco Surez,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Hoffman, Paul: Does Efficient Causation Presuppose Final Causation? Aquinas vs.
Early Modern Mechanism, in Samuel Newlands and Larry M. Jorgensen (eds.),
Metaphysics and the Good, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, 295312.
Honnefelder, Ludger: Scientia transcendens: Die Bestimmung der Seiendheit und
Realitt in der Metaphysik des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit, Hamburg: Meiner, 1990.
154 Bibliography
Hutchison, Keith: Dormitive Virtues, Scholastic Qualities, and the New Philosophies,
History of Science 29 (1991), 24578.
James of Venice, see Aristotle, Physica: Translatio Vetus.
Jordan, Mark D.: Theology and Philosophy, in Norman Kretzmann (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Aquinas, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, 23251.
King, Hugh R.: Aristotle without Prima Materia, Journal of the History of Ideas 17
(1956), 37089.
Klubertanz, George P.: St. Thomas Treatment of the Axiom, Omne Agens Agit Propter
Finem, in Charles J. ONeil (ed.), An Etienne Gilson Tribute, Milwaukee, wi: The
Marquette University Press, 1959, 10117.
Knuuttila, Simo, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy, London and New York, 1993.
Lecn, Mauricio: Resultancia, Formas e Inmanencia en Francisco Surez, in Agustn
Echavarra and Juan F. Franck (eds.), La causalidad en la filosofia moderna: De
Surez a Kant precrtico (Cuadernos de Anuario Filosfico) 246 (Navarra, 2012),
1727.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm: Philosophical Papers and Letters, Translated and Edited by
Leroy E. Loemker, 2nd edition, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1969.
: Die philosophischen Schriften, in Carl I. Gerhardt (ed.), 7 vols., Berlin: Weidmann,
18751890, repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1978.
Lewis, David: On the Plurality of Worlds, Malden: Blackwell, 1986.
Liber de causis see Anonymous, Liber de causis.
Locke, John: in Peter H. Nidditch (ed.), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1975 (1690).
Lohr, Charles H.: Latin Aristotle Commentaries II: Renaissance Authors, 2 vols., Florence:
Leo S. Olschki, 1988.
: Metaphysics, in Charles B. Schmitt et al. (eds.), The Cambridge History of
Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, 537638.
Lowe, E. Jonathan: Ontological Dependence, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2010 edition, URL: <http://plato.stanford.edu/
archives/spr2010/entries/dependence-ontological/>.
Ludwig, Joseph: Das akausale Zusammenwirken (sympathia) der Seelenvermgen in der
Erkenntnislehre des Surez, Munich, 1929.
Mahieu, Lon: Franois Suarez: sa philosophie et les rapports quelle a avec sa thologie,
Paris: Descle, 1921.
Maier, Anneliese: Das Problem der Finalkausalitt um 1320, in Metaphysische
Hintergrnde der sptscholastischen Naturphilosophie, Rome: Edizioni di Storia e
Letteratura, 1955, 27399.
Making, Stephen: An Ancient Principle about Causation, Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society 91 (1991), 13552.
Bibliography 155
Marenbon, John: The Medievals, in Helen Beebee et al. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook
of Causation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, 4054.
Marschler, Thomas: Die spekulative Trinittslehre des Francisco Surez S.J. in ihrem phi-
losophisch-theologischen Kontext, Mnster: Aschendorf, 2007.
Mayr, Erasmus: Understanding Human Agency, Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 2011.
Melamed, Yitzhak Y.: Review of Causa sive Ratio: La Raison de la cause, de Suarez
Leibniz, by Vincent Carraud, The Leibniz Review 15 (2005), 16368.
Menn, Stephen: Surez, Nominalism, and Modes, in Kevin White (ed.), Hispanic
Philosophy in the Age of Discovery, Washington, dc: The Catholic University of
America Press, 1997, 22656.
: On Dennis Des Chenes Physiologia, Perspectives on Science 8.2 (2000), 11943.
Moravcsik, Julius M.: What Makes Reality Intelligible? Reflections on Aristotles
Theory of Aitia, in Lindsay Judson (ed.), Aristotles Physics: A Collection of Essays,
Clarendon, Oxford, 1991, 3147.
Olivo, Gilles: Lefficience en cause: Surez, Descartes et la question de la causalit, in Jol
Biard and Roshdi Rashed (eds.), Descartes et le moyen ge, Paris: Vrin, 1997, 91105.
Osler, Margaret J.: From Immanent Natures to Nature as Artifice: The Reinterpretation
of Final Causes in Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy, The Monist 79 (1996),
388403.
: Whose Ends? Teleology in Early Modern Natural Philosophy, Osiris 16 (2001),
15168.
Ott, Walter R.: Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy, Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Pasnau, Robert: Intentionality and Final Causes, in Dominik Perler (ed.), Ancient and
Medieval Theories of Intentionality, Leiden: Brill, 2001, 30123.
: Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
: Form, Substance, and Mechanism, The Philosophical Review 113 (2004), 3188.
: Metaphysical Themes: 12741671, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2011.
Penner, Sydney: Free and Rational: Surez on the Will, Archiv fr Geschichte der
Philosophie 95 (2013), 135.
Pereira, Jos: Surez: Between Scholasticism and Modernity, Milwaukee: Marquette
Peter Abelard, in Lambertus M. De Rijk (ed.), Dialectica, 2nd edition, Assen: Van
Gorcum, 1970.
Perler, Dominik: Medieval Debates on Faculties, in Dominik Perler (ed.), Faculties,
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
Perler, Dominik and Rudolph, Ulrich: Occasionalismus: Theorien der Kausalitt im arabisch-
islamischen und im europischen Denken, Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000.
156 Bibliography
Rozemond, Marleen: Leibniz on Final Causation, in Samuel Newlands and Larry M.

Jorgensen (eds.), Metaphysics and the Good: Themes from the Philosophy of Robert
Merrihew Adams, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, 27294.
: Unity in the Multiplicity of Surezs Soul, in Benjamin Hill and Henrik Lagerlund
(eds.), The Philosophy of Francisco Surez, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012,
15472.
Sanford, David H.: Causation, in Jaegwon Kim et al. (eds.), A Companion to Metaphysics,
Malden: Blackwell, 2009, 310.
Schmaltz, Tad: Descartes on Causation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
: Descartess Critique of Scholastic Teleology, in Michael Rohlf (ed.), The Modern
Turn, Washington, dc: The Catholic University Press of America, forthcoming.
Schmid, Stephan: Finalursachen in der frhen Neuzeit: eine Untersuchung der
Transformation teleologischer Erklrungen, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011.
: Teleology and the Dispositional Theory of Causation in Thomas Aquinas, Logical
Analysis and the History of Philosophy 14 (2011), 2139.
: Surez and the Problem of Final Causation, in Luk Novk (ed.), Surezs
Metaphysics in His Historical and Systematic Context, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014, 293308.
: Finality without Final Causes Surez Account of Natural Teleology,
forthcoming.
Schmutz, Jacob: La doctrine mdivale des causes et la thologie de la nature pure,
Revue Thomiste 101 (2001), 21764.
Schnepf, Robert: Zum kausalen Vokabular am Vorabend der wissenschaftlichen
Revolution des 17. Jahrhunderts: Der Ursachenbegriff bei Galilei und die aristo-
telische causa efficiens im System der Ursachen bei Surez, in Andreas Hutteman
(ed.), Kausalitt und Naturgesetz in der frhen Neuzeit, Studia Leibnitiana, Sonderheft
31, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2001, 1546.
: Die Frage nach der Ursache, Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006.
Schwartz, Daniel (ed.): Interpreting Surez: Critical Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge
Seiler, Julius: Der Zweck in der Philosophie des Franz Suarez, Innsbruck: Felizian Rauch,
1936.
Sgarbi, Marco (ed.): Francisco Surez and His Legacy: The Impact of Surezian
Metaphysics and Epistemology on Modern Philosophy, Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2010.
Shanahan, Timothy: Teleological Reasoning in Boyles Disquisitions about Final
Causes, in Michael Hunter (ed.), Robert Boyle Reconsidered, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994, 17792.
Shields, Christopher: Aristotle, London and New York: Routledge, 2007.
: Shadows of Beings: Francisco Surezs Entia Rationis, in Benjamin Hill and
Henrik Lagerlund (eds.), The Philosophy of Francisco Surez, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2012, 5774.
Bibliography 157
: The Reality of Substantial Form, Metaphysical Disputations XV, in Daniel

Schwartz (ed.), Interpreting Surez: Critical Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2012, 3961.
: Virtual Presence: Psychic Mereology in Francisco Surez, in Klaus Corcilius and
Dominik Perler (eds.), Partitioning the Soul: Debates from Aristotle to Leibniz, Berlin
and New York: De Gruyter, forthcoming.
Simplicius: in Hermann Diels (ed.), In Aristotelis Physicorum libros quattuor priores
commentaria, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, vol. 9, Berlin: Reimer, 1882.
Soncinas, Paul: Quaestiones metaphysicales, Venetiis: apud Haeredem Heronymi Scoti,
1576.
South, James B.: Francisco Surez on Imagination, Vivarium 39 (2001), 11958.
Specht, Rainer: ber den Stil der Disputationes metaphysicae, Allgemeine Zeitschrift
fr Philosophie 13.3 (1988), 2335.
Surez, Francisco: Disputationes Metaphysicae, Salmanticae: apud Ioannem et Andream
Renaut fratres, 1597.
: Opera Omnia, A.D.M. Andr and C. Berton (eds.), 28 vols., Paris: Louis Vivs,
18561878.
: Francisco Surez: On the Various Kinds of Distinction, Translated with an
Introduction by Cyril Vollert, Milwaukee, wi: Marquette University Press, 1947.
: Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in libros Aristotelis De anima, 3 vols.,
Salvador Castellote (ed.), Madrid: Fundacin Xavier Zubiri, 19781991.
: Surez on Individuation, Metaphysical Disputation V: Individual Unity and
Its Principle, Translated from the Latin with an Introduction, Notes, Glossary
and Bibliography by Jorge E. Gracia, Milwaukee, wi: Marquette University Press,
1982.
: Francis Surez: On the Essence of Finite Being as Such; On the Existence of that
Essence and Their Distinction, Translated with an Introduction by Norman J. Wells,
Milwaukee, wi: Marquette University Press, 1983.
: Francisco Surez: On Efficient Causality; Metaphysical Disputations 17, 18, and 19, by
Francisco Surez, Translated by Alfred J. Freddoso [with an Introduction], New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
: Francisco Surez: On the Formal Cause of Substance; Metaphysical Disputation
XV, Translated by John Kronen and Jeremiah Reedy, Explanatory Notes by J. Kronen,
Milwaukee, wi: Marquette University Press, 2000.
: Francisco Surez: On Creation, Conservation, and Concurrence: Metaphysical
Disputations 20, 21, and 22, Translation, Notes and Introduction by Alfred J. Freddos,
South Bend, in: St. Augustines Press, 2002.
: Francisco Surez: On Real Relation; Disputatio Metaphysica XLVII, A Translation
from the Latin with Introduction and Notes by John P. Doyle, Milwaukee, wi:
Marquette University Press, 2006.
158 Bibliography
: Disputationes Metaphysicae, 2 vols., repr. of Opera Omnia vols. 25 and 26,

Hildesheim: Olms, 2009.
Thomas Aquinas: Summa contra gentiles, eds. not indicated, Turin and Rome: Marietti,
1946.
: Summa theologiae, P. Caramello et al. (eds.), 3 vols., M.-R. Cathala and
R.M. Spiazzi (eds.), Turin and Rome: Marietti, 19481950.
: In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio, M.-R. Cathala and R.M.
Spiazzi (eds.), Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1950.
: De principiis naturae, in R.M. Spiazzi (ed.), Opuscula philosophica, Turin and
Rome: Marietti, 1954a, 12128.
: In octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis expositio, P.M. Maggilo (ed.), Turin and
Rome: Marietti, 1954b.
: In librum de causis expositio, Ceslai Pera et al. (eds.), Turin and Rome: Marietti,
1955.
Trentman, John A.: Scholasticism in the Seventeenth Century, in Norman Kretzmann
et al. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982, 81837.
Trifogli, Cecilia: Thomas Wylton on Final Causality, in Alexander Fidora and Matthias
Lutz-Bachmann (eds.), Erfahrung und Beweis: Die Wissenschaften von der Natur im
13. und 14. Jahrhundert, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2007, 24964.
Uscatescu, Jorge: Zur Eigenart der Akzidenzienlehre von Surez, in Salzburger Jahrbuch
fr Philosophie LIII (2008), 7399.
Wieland, Wolfgang: Poiesis: Das Aristotelische Konzept einer Philosophie des Herstellens,
in Thomas Buchheim et al. (eds.), Kann Man Heute noch Etwas anfangen mit Aristoteles?
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2003, 22347.
kerlund, Erik: Nisi temer: Francisco Surez on Final Causes and Final Causation,
Dissertation, Uppsala University, 2011.
Index Locorum
Anonymous Physics
Commentarii Collegii Conimbricenses in Phys. Arist. 1.5.188a313411n39
Lib. II. Cap. VII, Qu. I, Ar. I30n21 1.7.190a31b117n60
1.7.190b17208n24
Anonymous 1.7.191a7816
Liber de causis15 1.8.191a34b211n40
3530n19 2.1.192b299n29
2.1.193a28318n24
Aristoteles Latinus 2.1.193b358n27
Physica: Translatio Vetus13n44 2.2.194b898n22
2.2.194b14158n26
Aristotle 2.318n62
Categories 2.3.194b17237n17
1.1a6733n33 2.3.194b23357n19
2.3.194b262765n1
Generation of Animals 2.3.195a17198n21
1.1.715a476n16 2.7.198a226n16
1.1.715a58n25 2.7.198a222710n32, 10n33
1.1.715a9118n20 3.3.202a13b2999n38
3.7.207b34356n16
Metaphysics
1.3.983a26276n16 Posterior Analytics
1.3.983b3610n36 2.11.94a20246n16
1.7.988a182310n36 2.11.94a229n28
2.2.994b915124n6 2.11.94a24258n21
3.2.996a18b2641n61
5.27n19 Topics
5.2.1013b3611n38 1.4510n36
5.2.1013b491n25
5.6.1016b3117a333n32 Arriaga, Rodrigo de
7.3.1029a113017 Cursus Philosophicus
Disp. Phys. VII.1128n21
Nicomachean Ethics
6.2.1139b139n31 Bible
Daniel
On Generation and Corruption 3115n87, 121n101
1.711n39
Cajetan, Thomas
On the Soul Summa theologiae
2.1.412a9108n23 1.54.382n61
1.77.182n61
Parts of Animals
1.1.639a112111n37 Christophorus de los Cobos
1.1.640b2241a1411n37 Expositio in libros metaphysicae (Salamanca,
1.5.645b14209n30 ub 1410)23n2
160 index locorum
Descartes, Ren 3.2.3 [25.108]37n49

Meditationes de prima philosophia 3.2.11 [25.110]38n50
Sext. Resp.131n39 4.3.1 [25.125]35n43
Principia philosophiae 5.1.5 [25.147]117n92
II.37121n102 5.3.31 [25.173]117n90
5.6.1 [25.180]117n91
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 5.7.4 [25.189]117n91
Philosophische Schriften (Gerhardt, 1880) 6.9.22 [25.243]34n37
4.148127n15 7 [25.25074]50n26
7.1.15 (Vivs 7.1.16) [25.255]96n34
Locke, John 7.1.16 (Vivs 7.1.17) [25.255]95n32
Essay Concerning Human Understanding 7.1.17 (Vivs 7.1.18) [25.256]96n33
II.21.20104n52 7.1.18 (Vivs 7.1.19) [25.2567]71n22, 101n45
7.2.68 [25.263f.]96n34
Paul Soncinas 7.2.910 [25.264f.]96n34
Quaestiones metaphysicales 12 prologue [25.372]26n8, 27n11, 36n44,
4.2 38n51
12.1.1 [25.373]28n13
Peter Abelard 12.1.2 [25.373]28n12
Dialectica (ed. De Rijk, 1970) 12.1.5 [25.374]29n14, 29n16, 45n7
41413n43 12.1.56 [25.374]29n15
12.1.6 [25.374]31n24
Simplicius 12.2.1 [25.384]25n7, 29n17, 41n61
In Arist. Phys. 12.2.2 [25.384]30n18, 30n20
227.192116n52 12.2.3 (Vivs 12.2.4) [25.3845]25n7, 30n19,
30n20, 30n22, 31n24, 31n26, 44n3, 66n3,
Surez 66n4, 67n5, 67n6, 67n7, 85n2, 126n14,
Commentaria una cum quaest. in libros Arist. 127n19, 128n22
De anima21 12.2.6 (Vivs 12.2.7) [25.385]126n13, 127n20,
1.175n37 128n22
3.388n11 12.2.10 [25.386]32n27
6.2.1387n8 12.2.11 (Vivs 12.2.13) [25.387]25n7, 32n28, 91
12.2.12 (Vivs 12.2.14) [25.3878]26n9, 27n10,
De Gratia 33n29, 128n22
Prol. VI.6.28 [7.322]123n4 12.3.2 [25.388]128n22
12.3.3 [25.3889]68n8, 68n9, 68n10, 68n11,
Disputationes Metaphysicae 128n22, 134n49, 143n77
Ad lectorem [25 no pagination]24n4 12.3.4 [25.389]144n79
Prooem. [25.1]23n1 12.3.6 [25.390]128n22
Index 5.11.1 [25.XII]132n44 12.3.8 [25.390]144n80
1.1.27 (Vivs 1.1.29) [25.1112]40n57, 40n59 12.3.19 [25.394]44n5, 128n24, 128n25
1.2.1516 (Vivs 1.2.1718) [25.18]24n5 12.3.22 [25.395]33n30
1.5.14 [25.40]34n37 13 prologue [25.395]46n10, 47n13
1.5.36 (Vivs 1.5.37) [25.48]40n55 13.1.13 [25.3956]47n14
1.5.37 (Vivs 1.5.38) [25.48]40n56, 40n57, 13.1.3 [25.396]48n17
40n58, 40n59 13.1.4 [25.396]47n15, 48n18
1.5.3839 and 41 (Vivs 1.5.3940 and 42) 13.1.5 [25.397]47n16
[25.489]41n60 13.1.8 [25.397]48n19
2 prologue [25.64]38n51 13.2.7 [25.401]49n23
Index Locorum 161
13.2.8 [25.401]49n20, 49n21 15.10 [25.53657]48n19

13.2.9 [25.402]49n22 16.1.2 [25.566]71n20
13.3.5 (Vivs13.3.6) [25.403]55n41 16.1.4 [25.567]71n21
13.3.10 (Vivs 13.3.11) [25.405]48n19 17 prologue [25.580]144n78
13.3.13 (Vivs 13.3.14) [25.406]55n42 17.1.2 [25.581]91n20
13.3.20 (Vivs 13.3.21) [25.408]53n34 17.1.3 [25.581]92n24, 126n13, 128n26
13.4.1 [25.409]46n11 17.1.4591n23
13.4.4 [25.410]56n45 17.1.5 [25.582]94n27
13.4.5 [25.410]50n25 17.1.6 [25.582]91n21, 93n26
13.4.13 [25.4123]50n24, 52n31, 52n32, 55n43 17.2.7 [25.585]104n51
13.4.15 [25.413]51n27 17.2.8 [25.586]104n53
13.4.16 [25.4134]51n28 18.1.513 [25.5947]115n84
13.4.17 [25.414]51n29 18.2.1 [25.5989]104n51
13.5.1 [25.414]53n35 18.2.2 [25.599]78n45
13.5.6 (Vivs 13.5.7) [25.415]55n44 18.2.4 [25.599]79n46, 79n47
13.5.7 (Vivs 13.5.8) [25.416]53n36 18.2.9 [25.601]79n48
13.5.8 (Vivs 13.5.9) [25.416]43n1 18.2.10 [25.6012]79n49, 79n50, 79n51
13.5.11 (Vivs 13.5.12) [25.417]54n38 18.2.22 (Vivs 18.2.23) [25.6067]81n57
13.5.18 (Vivs 13.5.19) [25.419]54n37 18.3.3 (Vivs 18.3.5) [25.616]81n59, 82n60
13.5.19 (Vivs 13.5.20) [25.420]56n46 18.3.4 (Vivs 18.3.6) [25.6167]73n30, 82n62,
13.10.1 [25.434]57n49 82n63, 83n64, 88n9, 88n10
13.10.25 [25.4346]57n50 18.3.7 (Vivs 18.3.9) [25.618]88n11
13.10.7 [25.436]57n51 18.3.13 (Vivs 18.3.15) [25.620]105n56
13.10.8 [25.437]58n52 18.4.3 [25.624]105n57
13.10.9 [25.437]58n53, 59n54 18.4.5 [25.625]103n50
13.11.9 [25.441]60n57 18.4.7 [25.626]105n57
13.11.13 [25.443]59n55, 61n59 18.5.23 [25.628]108n62
13.11.16 [25.444]60n56, 61n59 18.5.4 [25.629]106n59
13.11.24 (Vivs 13.11.25) [25.447]61n58 18.5.5 [25.629]107n60
13.14.14 [25.459]61n60 18.6.2 [25.630]106n58
13.14.15 [25.45960]61n61, 62n62, 62n63 18.7.4551 [25.6457]89n12
15.165 18.7.47 [25.646]91n22
15.1.1 [25.498]73n27 18.8111n69
15.1.7 [25.499]73n28, 73n29 18.8.17 [25.656]111n70
15.1.81373 18.9111n68
15.1.1473 18.10.593
15.1.14 [25.502]74n32 18.10.8 [25.682]95n28, 95n30, 96n35
15.1.15 [25.5023]74n33, 74n34 18.1190n18
15.1.18 [25.504]75n35, 76n39, 76n40, 77n41, 19.1.1 [25.688]89n13, 110n67
77n42, 77n43 19.1.2110
15.5.1 [25.517]57n47, 69n12, 75n36 19.1.4110
15.5.2 [25.5178]69n13, 69n14, 69n15, 69n16, 19.1.14 [25.692]118n94
72n23 19.2.10 (Vivs 19.2.9) [25.695]112n73
15.6.10 (Vivs 15.6.11) [25.522]34n37 19.2.13 (Vivs 19.2.12) [25.697]112n73
15.8.2 [25.525]70n17 19.2.14 (Vivs 19.2.13) [25.697]112n72
15.8.7 [25.527]70n18 19.2.19 (Vivs 19.2.18) [25.698]112n74
15.9 [25.5326]54n39, 56n48 19.4.1 [25.706]89n14, 113n76
15.9.1 [25.532]107n61 19.4.9 [25.7089]89n15
15.9.5 [25.533]54n39 19.5.9 [25.714]112n75
162 index locorum
19.5.11 [25.714]113n75 23.9.9 [25.8845]141n73, 143n76

19.5.12 [25.715]113n75 23.9.12 [25.885]141n72
19.6.9 [25.722]114n79 23.10.6 [25.887]137n60, 137n61, 138n62
19.6.10 [25.722]113n78 23.10.1215 [25.88990]131n41
19.8.9 [25.729]114n80 24.2.7 [25.896]139n65
20.1.14 [25.749]99n39 25 prologue [25.899]18n62
20.1.1589 26.3.3 [25.926]145n81
20.1.162089 26.3.35 [25.92021]
20.1.2189 27.1.6 (Vivs 27.1.7) [25.951]147n86
20.1.25 [25.752]130n37 27.1.8 [25.9512]134n51, 147n87
20.5.27 (Vivs 20.4.27) [25.777]102n47 27.1.9 [25.952]33n31
20.5.28 (Vivs 20.4.28) [25.777]102n48 27.1.10 [25.952]33n34, 45n8, 85n3
20.6.6 [25.780]53n30 27.1.1011 [25.952]134n51
21.1.14 [25.789]90n17, 90n19 27.1.11 [25.952]33n33, 34n36
22.1.8 (Vivs 22.1.7) [25.804]114n83 27.2.7 [25.954]145n82
22.1.10 (Vivs 22.1.9) [25.804]115n85 27.2.10 [25.955]130n36, 130n37, 136n59,
22.1.11 (Vivs 22.1.10) [25.804]115n86 146n83
22.1.12 (Vivs 22.1.11) [25.804]116n88 27.2.12 [25.9556]146n84
22.1.13 (Vivs 22.1.12) [25.805]116n89 27.2.13 [25.956]146n85
22.1.25 [25.8078]86n4 28.1.4 [26.2]90n16
22.4.1114n82 28.3.11 [26.16]36n41
22.4.3 [25.829]120n99, 120n100 29.2.36 [26.46]130n37
23 prologue [25.843]126n13, 144n78 29.3.29 [26.57]138n63
23.1.7 [25.845]128n22 30.7114n82
23.1.8 [25.845]142n75 30.8.2 [26.113]99n42
23.1.11 [25.846]129n32 30.9.38 [26.128]100n43
23.1.14 [25.847]128n24, 128n27, 135n56 31 [26.224312]52n33
23.1.15 [25.847]130n35, 136n59 31.1 [26.2248]52n33
23.4 [25.85864]128n23 31.1.13 [26.228]52n33
23.4.47 [25.85961]130n34 31.2.12 [26.32223]35n42
23.4.7 (Vivs 23.4.8) [25.861]130n35 31.2.14 [26.323]34n38
23.4.713 (Vivs 23.4.813) 31.2.20 [26.325]35n39
[25.8613]136n59 31.2.21 [26.325]35n40
23.4.8 [25.861]129n28 37.2.7 [26.494]105n54
23.4.9 [25.8612]130n35 38.12 [26.498504]132n44
23.4.12 [25.8623]129n28 47.3.10 [26.797]98n37
23.4.13 [25.863]130n35 47.498n37
23.4.14 [25.863]142n75 48.2.1 [26.8734]89n12
23.4.1518 (Vivs 23.4.1517) 48.2.16 [26.878]97n36
[25.8634]130n38 48.4.7 [26.890]99n40
23.5 [25.8648]128n23, 129n29 48.4.12 (Vivs 48.4.13) [26.891]100n44
23.5.2 [25.864]129n28, 142n74 48.4.14 [26.892]101n46
23.7 [25.8758]129n30 49.1.8 [26.899]99n41
23.7.3 [25.875]129n32 54.3.3 [26.10267]31n24
23.8.8 [25.880]129n33
23.9.1 [25.882]140n68 Thomas Aquinas
23.9.3 [25.8823]140n69 De principiis naturae (ed. Spiazzi, 1954)
23.9.6 [25.883]141n70 1.33817n58
23.9.812 [25.8845]141n71 1.34017n59
Index Locorum 163
2.34616n54 1.1.2415n47, 15n50

2.34916n55 1.1.313915n49
3.351123n5
3.35214n45 In octo libros Phys. Arist. (ed. Maggilo, 1954)
4.356124n9 1.13.11817n56
5.360114n46
Summa contra gentiles (eds. not indicated,
In duodecim libros Metaph. Arist. (eds. Marietti ed., 1946)
Cathala and Spiazzi, 1950) 3.2.1124n7
Prooem.39n52, 39n53 3.6946n12, 127n16
5.2.775124n10
6.1.114939n54 Summa theologiae (eds. Caramello et al,
7.2.12819617n56 19481950)
7.2.129216n54 Ia.77.180n53, 80n54, 80n55
Ia.77.680n56
In librum de causis (eds. Ceslai et al., 1955) IaIIae.1.2124n8
Prooem.9 15n48 IaIIae.93.3120n98
Index Nominorum
Adam, Charles and Tannery, Paul121n102 Doyle, John P.25n6

Adams, Marilyn McCord89n15 Durandus of Saint Pourain113n75
Alexander of Hales112n75
Andr, A.D.M and Berton, C.123n4 Ebbesen, Sten42n63, 149n91
Aristotle613, 41, 6567, 98, 101, 119, 124 Echavarra, Agustn and Franck, Juan F.4n8
Arriaga, Rodrigo de128 Eschweiler, Karl147n88
Ashworth, Jennifer E. 34n35
Averroes129n33 Fidora, Alexander and Lutz-Bachmann,
Avicenna129n33 Matthias129n33
Ayesta, Cruz Gonzles22n63 Fink, Jakob Leth121n103, 149n91
Fonseca, Petrus34, 95n31
Beebee, Helen2n3 Forlivesi, Marco4n9, 123n4
Biard, Jol and Rashed, Roshdi4n8 Franck, Juan F. see Echavarra, Agustn
Bloch, David42n63 Freddoso, Alfred J.5n12, 5n14, 12n41, 78n45,
Boethius13 86n6, 114n81, 116n84, 118n96, 127n18,
Bossier, Fernand and Brams, Josef13n44 133n47, 138n64, 139n66
Brams, Josef see Bossier, Fernand
Broad, Charlie Dunbar109n65 Gerhardt, Carl I.127n15
Buchheim, Thomas9n31 Gilson, tienne2, 3n5, 4n11, 16n51
Burns, J. Patout95n29 Gracia, Jorge E.26n9, 86n7
Gracia, Jorge E. and Novotn,
Cajetan, Thomas79, 8182 Daniel D.36n45, 37n48
Cantes, Bernardo109n66
Carraud, Vincent4n10, 4n11, 27n10, 28n12, Hankinson, Robert J.9n30, 10n32, 12n42
86n5, 132n43, 136n58 Hansen, Heine42n63
Carriero, John125n12, 148n89, 149n90 Hattab, Helen3n8, 42n62, 56n47, 63n67,
Castellote, Salvador76n37 65n2, 72n24, 76n38, 78n44
Cathala, M.-R. and Spiazzi, R.M.16n54 Hawthorne, John and Nolan, Daniel125n11
Charles, David10n35 Heider, Daniel4n9, 54n40, 63n66
Chene, Dennis Des3n8, 5n13, 6n15, 17n61, Hellin, Jos3n6
31n25, 54n39, 62n64, 78n44, 132n43 Hill, Benjamin123n3
Christophorus de los Cobos23 Hill, Benjamin and Lagerlund, Henrik1n1,
Clarke, Randolph113n77 1n2, 2n4
Clatterbaugh, Kenneth2n3 Hobbes, Thomas118, 119
Copleston, Frederick3n7 Hoffman, Paul125n12, 149n90
Corcilius, Klaus see Perler, Dominik Honnefelder, Ludger2n4
Cottingham, John, Stoothoff, Robert and Hunter, Michael122n1
Murdoch, Dugald121n102 Hume, David121
Courtine, Jean-Franois2n4 Hutchison, Keith104n52
Cross, Richard89n15 Huttemann, Andreas4n10
Darge, Rolf2n4, 37n48 James of Venice13

Dembi, Sanja121n103 Jesus Christ105, 105n55, 107, 127
Descartes, Ren5n13, 6n15, 76, 87n7, 118, 119, John Duns Scotus89n15
121, 122, 131, 134 Jordan, Mark D.118n96
index nominorum 165
Jorgensen, Larry M. see Newlands, Samuel Pasnau, Robert5n13, 16n53, 17n61, 43n1,
Judson, Lindsay7n18, 10n35 63n65, 64n2, 72n25, 72n26, 84n65, 84n66,
92n25, 95n31, 122n1, 124n8, 129n31
Kant, Immanuel2 Pattin, Adriaan30n19
Kim, Jaegwon103n49 Paul V, pope109n66
King, Hugh R.17n57 Penner, Sydney42n63, 112n71, 121n103
Klubertanz, George P.125n12 Pera, Ceslai15n47
Knuuttila, Simo50n26 Pereira, Jos2n4
Kretzmann, Norman3n7, 118n96 Perler, Dominik108n62, 121n103, 122n1
Kronen, John and Reedy, Jeremiah69n12 Perler, Dominik and Corcilius, Klaus
108n63
Lagerlund, Henrik see Hill, Benjamin Perler, Dominik and Rudolph, Ulrich117n93
Lecn, Mauricio4n8, 22n63 Peter Abelard13
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm31n23, 121, 126 Pope, see Paul V
Lewis, David109n64
Locke, John104n52 Rashed, Roshdi see Biard, Jol
Loemker, Leroy E.127n15 Richardson, Kara29, 56n48
Lohr, Charles23, 24n3 Rijk, Lambertus M. De13n43
Lowe, Jonathan E.133n46 Rohlf, Michael122n1
Ludwig, Joseph87n8 Rozemond, Marleen74n33, 132n43
Rubini, Paolo121n103
Maggilo, P.M.17n56 Rudolph, Ulrich see Perler, Dominik
Mahieu, Lon131n43 Rutherford, Donald31n25
Maier, Anneliese122n1, 129n33
Makin, Stephen12n41 Sanford, David H.103n49
Malebranche, Nicolas121 Schmid, Stephan42n63, 114n80, 122n1,
Marenbon, John2n3 125n12, 132n43, 134n50, 135n53, 135n54,
Marschler, Thomas28n12 135n55, 149n91
Mayr, Erasmus109n65 Schmutz, Jacob2n3, 42n63
Melamed, Yitzhak Y.132n43 Schmaltz, Tad5n13, 86n5, 87n7, 122n1,
Menn, Stephen50n26, 71n22, 95n31, 101n45, 131n40, 131n42, 131n43, 134n48, 134n50,
132n43, 140n67 135n54, 136n57
Mora-Mrquez, Ana Mara42n63 Schnepf, Robert4n10, 36, 36n46, 37n47,
Moravcsik, Julius M.7n18 42n63, 121n103, 127n19
Morris, Thomas V.5n12 Schwartz, Daniel1n1, 4n8
Murdoch, Dugald see Cottingham, John Seiler, Julius132n43
Sgarbi, Marco1n1
Nebuchadnezzar115n87, 119 Shanahan, Timothy122n1
Newlands, Samuel and Jorgensen, Shields, Christopher4n8, 10n34, 25n6,
Larry M.125n12 73n31, 74n33, 108n63, 121n103, 134n52
Nidditch, Peter H.104n52 Simplicius16n52
Novk, Luk114n80 Smith, Charles B.24n3
Novotn, Daniel D. see Gracia, Jorge E. and Soncinas, Paul135n55
South, James B.87n8
Olivo, Gilles4n8, 70n19, 131n43, 136n58 Specht, Rainer25n7
ONeil, Charles J.125n12 Spinoza, Baruch de118, 119
Oppy, Graham and Trakakis, Nick109n66 Stoics16n52
Osler, Margaret J.122n1 Stoothoff, Robert see Cottingham, John
Ott, Walter R.5n13, 6n15, 42n62, 120n97, 120n98 Surez, Francisco passim
166 index nominorum
Tannery, Paul see Adam, Charles Wells, Norman J.118n96

Thomas Aquinas1418, 39, 70, 7981, White, Kevin50n26
11920, 12325, 144, 148 Wieland, Wolfgang9n31
Trakakis, Nick see Oppy, Graham William Ockham89n15
Trentman, John A.3n7
Trifogli, Cecilia129n33 Zalta, Edward N.133n46
Uscatescu, Jorge71n22 kerlund, Erik44n3, 44n4, 45n6, 129n33,

132n43
Vollert, Cyril50n26
Index Rerum
A priori Because-of-what? see Causes, Aristotelian

Procedure of arguing25 Being
A quo see Efficient cause, As principle Accidental17
ac (Aristotelian Causality) see Causality, Convertible with cause27
Aristotelian Distinction between infinite and
Act, actuality finite24
Immanent130 Division of finite B. into substance and
Metaphysical distinguished from accident25
physical43 Objective concept of B. as real being24
Actus purus see God Ratio entis27
Accident Substantial17
And natural cases107 Transcendental properties of24
Causal status of107
Free-floating100, 102, 1078 Catholic (Christian) faith2, 119
Real71 Causal axiom (effect not more perfect than
Accidental form see Form cause)78
Action Causal conditions see Condition
As mode of effect see Efficient cause, Causal ontology139
Action Causality
Human88 Aristotelian1113
Immanent8889 And artefacts13
In general, Surezs conception Model of (ac)12
of97102 As an element in Surezs
Not an effect of efficient causes93 metaphysics2324
Relational conception of9798, 100 Distinguished from cause28
Transeunt86, 130 General account of (Surez)24, 2832
Gods138 Remarkably modern118
Agent (cause)1112, 11011 Res-C. (Surez committed to)105, 108
Created intellectual142 Causation
Division of142 And logical necessity6n15
Free89 Cause see also Efficient, Final, Formal,
Natural (no cognition)131, 142 Material cause
And final causation13738 And effect11
Secondary138 Aristotelian611
Uncreated intellectual142 As because-of-what? answers67
Agere sequitur esse46 As co-extensive10
American current (of Surez End910
scholarship)46 First origin of change or rest9
Angel128 Form8
Annihilating90 No sufficiency proof for10
Aristotelianism101 Priority among11
Orthodox91 That from which8
Surezs21, 98 As a real entity (ens)26
Artefact see Causality, Aristotelian Convertible with being27
Attendant form see Substance, Separate Definition of (Surez)2832
168 Index Rerum
Cause see also Efficient (cont.) Date see Problem of date

Criticized by Leibniz12627 Dependency see Cause
Dependency relation28 Determinism113
Distinctness criterion70 Distinction
Distinguished from causality28 Modal, real, rational50
Distinguished from principle28 Divine Word12728
Exemplary18, 24 Doctor eximius110
Extrinsic14
Formal concept of26 Early modern philosophy5
Free11213 Mechanist103, 11821
Intrinsic14 Rejects final causation122
Mediaeval names for13 Effect11
Objective concept of26 Not more perfect than cause, see Causal
Primary14 axiom
Relata see Relata, causal Efficient causality
Ratio causae2832 A non-reductive analysis of94
Terminological interlude26 As a relation between events103
Study of R. belongs to Events not relata of (Surez)103
metaphysics27 Power theories of104
Secondary14 Predominant in scholarship46
The four see Causes, Aristotelian Priority of (alleged)122, 131
Un-aristotelian (the exemplary)18 Theological issues decisive119
Change Efficient causation
Accidental12, 116 As physical motion128
And sublunary things47 Depends on final causation123
Aristotles account of6667, 9899, 110 Not prior to final131
Substantial16, 116 Efficient cause
Not essential to material things59 Action as mode of the effect95103
Choice1078, 11213 Action as the causality of93
Christian see also Trinitarian Action vs. change9192
Dogma5 Action vs. effect93
Reconciliation of C. doctrine with And (human) action88, 92
Aristotelianism101 As principle unde or a quo9293
Co-causes see Will, And end see Efficient Asymmetry between ec and final
cause and Final cause cause145
Co-extensive (causes) see Causes, Co-causes with final cause136, 145
Aristotelian Conceptually privileged85
Concurrentism86, 138 Distinguished from final92
And laws of nature120 Exists independently from its effect91
Cognition130 Explains processes87
Conditions for causal operation11017 Explains all non-necessary existence89
Conservation89 Extensional sense of8791
Concurrence a consequence of114 External (often, not always)9
Constant conjunction121 Extrinsic principle91
Council of Trent105 First origin of change or rest, the
Creatio ex nihilo91 (Aristotle)9
As a proper action100101 Inflows being (pours) most
Creation89 properly85
Creature38, 92, 102, 115, 120, 137 Ontologically prior85
Index Rerum 169
Empiricist positions on causality, Inflows being to the effect67

contemporary5 Only conceptually separable from matter
End see Final cause (Aristotle)8
Essence Presupposes matter50
Rational distinction between E. and Principle of efficient causal
existence52 operations116
Eucharist105, 107, 119 Substantial17, 50, 116
European current (of Surez scholarship)24 And generation of material
Events see Efficient causality substance78
Exemplary cause see Cause And production of species-appropriate
External see Efficient cause properties78, 8183
Extrinsic see Causes And soul7980
Arguments for the existence of7477
Faculty104, 112 As the act of a physical body69
Cognitive108 Causality of in dispute83
Final causation Completes the essence77
Deflationary account of14849 Construed as efficient cause65, 72
Priority of124, 125, 126, 14448 Descartes characterization of76
Necessary feature of our world125 Makes the composite a thing of a
Not all fc is metaphorical motion142 certain species77
Surez committed to123 Not an immediate principle of action
Universal phenomenon125 (Aquinas)79
Final cause Objection to (cannot explain
And function (Aristotle)9 phenomena)7273
And human purposive agency (Aristotle)9 Physical aspect of8384
Asymmetry between fc and efficient Role in natural philosophy84
cause145 Surezs definition of68
Cause of causes 124 Two different causal roles (formal and
Cause the causality of the other efficient)75
causes12425 Formal cause
Co-causes with efficient cause Accidental formal causality7071
136, 145 Completes proper and specific being68
Identical with form (Aristotle)10 Distinguished from material cause72
Not external with respect to natural things Gives being in tandem with the material
(Aristotle)10 cause68
Not the mental entity129 Formal concept see Cause
Principle propter quam 92 Formaliter25 see also Surez, Mode of
Finite (being) see Being exposition
First origin of change or rest, the (Aristotle) Free cause see Cause
see Efficient cause Free will see Will
Form Freedom of indifference112
Accidental17, 108
And power80 God
As formal cause71 As final cause134
Account of the essence (Aristotle)8 As (first) efficient cause85, 9192, 119
And actuality (Aristotle)9 Cause of secondary causes15
And individuality116 Continuous conservation89
Attendant see Substance, Separate Creative and concurring
Identical with end (Aristotle)10 contribution137
170 Index Rerum
God (cont.) Matter

Creator24, 91 And potentiality (Aristotle)8
Concurrence a consequence of As dependent on God51
conservation114 As something and separate
Concurring with secondary causes16, existence50
11112, 114117 Complex (Aristotle)8
Creates matter directly51 Has partial substantiality56
Creates an angel128 Heavenly44
Distinct types of divine contribution137 Intelligible8
Determines individuality117 Looks like a substance54
Immune to causal influence140 Persists through change16, 47
Perfect99 Prime1617
Pure act99, 140 And substantial change57
As one4849
Handmaid of theology see Philosophy As pure potency16, 43, 53
Heavenly (celestial) bodies44, 5761, 75 Absolute and relative53
And creation89 Cannot be a body55
And quantity57 Intrinsic relation to form55
Different from sublunary only in Partial essence of55
proximate matter5961 Partial existence of55
Reification of63
In communi25 see also Surez, Mode of Symmetry between pm and substantial
exposition form56
Incompatibilist accounts of freedom113 What ultimately remains4748
Individuality11617 Proximate60
And God see God Real distinction between matter and
Individuation117 form5051
Infinite (being) see Being That in which forms inhere47
Influx, inflow6667 Mediaeval assumptions about causes
And form67 1317
Positive29 Mentalist-realist debate26n9
Intellect89, 113, 129 Metaphorical motion see Motion
Intentionality12 Metaphysics
Intrinsic see Causes Study of the ratio causae belongs to see
Cause, Ratio causae
Jesus Christ107 Mode50, 52, 71, 9597, 115, 142
Incarnation127 Accidental71
Modification of real things95
Laws of nature120 Not an entity in its own right71
Libertarian113 Substantial69
Logical level26 see also Surez, Mode of Mode of exposition in dm see Surez
exposition Moral theology134
Logical necessity see Causation Mortal sin108
Motion
Material cause As actualization of form (Aristotle)98
Contributes real influence44 Intentional and animal128
Constituting the effect45 Metaphorical (final cause)114, 128, 135
Distinguished from formal cause72 As a technical term136
Gives being in tandem with the formal Not always necessary141
cause68 Physical128
Index Rerum 171
Natural philosophy27, 84 Reconciliation of Aristotelianism and

Necessity Christian doctrine101
Hypothetical120 A source of systematic difficulties119
Logical6n15 Reification
Metaphysical118, 120 Of powers119
Natural120 Of prime matter63
Neo-platonic15, 41 Of substantial form63
Nominalist school62 Relata, causal
Aristotle12
Objective concept26 see also Cause Events (contemporary)103
Occasionalism16, 121 Res-causality see Causality
Ontological level26 see also Surez, Mode
of exposition Soul7981, 108
Stuff see Causes, Aristotelian, That from
Patient (effect)11, 11011 which
Per se29 Surez, passim
Philosophy as handmaid of theology118 And freedom of indifference113
Phenomena7273 As a philosopher in his own right12
Platonic15 As a transitional figure in the history of
Potency philosophy26, 122
Pure see Matter, Prime Causality as an element of metaphysics
Only relatively54 see Causality
Power Causality, general account of see
Immediate principle of operation Causality
(Aquinas)80 Remarkably modern118
Pre-established harmony121 Close to nominalist school on matter and
Prime matter see Matter quantity62
Principle28 Committed to res-causality105
Definition of29 Mediaeval assumptions of1418
Priority Metaphysics, view of Surezs M.
Among the four causes see Causes, changing4
Aristotelian Mode of exposition in dm2425
Explanatory133 Modernity of87
Ontological85, 13233 Ontology, as study of pure essence3
Said in many ways132 Ontology, not pure4
Temporal12, 133 Teaching of metaphysics prior to
Privation16, 2931, 54, 60, 6667, 126 dm2324
Problem of date, the109 Sublunary things47
Propter quam see Final cause, Different from heavenly only in proximate
Principle matter5961
Psychological level26 see also Surez, Mode Substance
of exposition As causal relatum (Aristotle)12
As genus of substantial form69
Quantity6162 Immaterial89
And heavenly bodies57 Material89
As the proper property of matter61 Separate69, 7577
Attendant form 75
Ratio causae see Cause Substantial form see Form
Ratio entis see Being Sufficiency proof for the four causes, no see
Realist26 Causes, Aristotelian
172 Index Rerum
Thinking89 Will89, 108, 112, 113, 130

Thomist and Peripatetic Act of love129
philosophers7984 And end as co-causes130
Transubstantiation71, 107 Attracted to an end129
Trinitarian problems28 Free will debate113
The good as object of129
Unde see Efficient cause, As principle Willing89

IMP 009 Leth Fink - Suárez On Aristotelian Causality PDF

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

IMP 009 Leth Fink - Suárez On Aristotelian Causality PDF

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Surez on Aristotelian Causality

Investigating Medieval Philosophy

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/imp

Jakob Leth Fink

Surez on Aristotelian causality / edited by Jakob Leth Fink.

Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

1 Surez on Aristotelian Causality23

2 Material Causality Dissolving a Paradox: The Actuality of

3 Formal Causality: Giving Being by Constituting and Completing64

4 Efficient Causality: The Metaphysics of Production84

5 Final Causality: Surez on the Priority of Final Causation121

Jakob Leth Fink

All quotes from and references to Surezs Disputationes Metaphysicae are to

dm (Disputationes Metaphysicae) is the only abbreviation used in this volume.

References to dm follow the standard manner: disputation, section, article.

15.2.16 (Vivs 15.2.17) [25.504]

meaning: disputation 15, Section 2, article 16 in the Salamanca edition, but

Jakob Leth Fink

1 Theme and Aim of the Volume

Interest in the metaphysical thought of Surez has increased in recent years.

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015|doi 10.1163/9789004292161_002

2 The European Current

The focus on Surez as a transitional figure in the history of metaphysics posi-

metaphysics and early modern pre-Kantian transcendental philosophy (Wolff).

3 The American Current

and Lagerlund, pp. 10118; Mauricio Lecn, Resultancia, Formas e Inmanencia en

philosophical frame within which his interpretation of Aristotelian causality

4 Aristotelian Causes and Aristotelian Causality

One obvious challenge facing any interpreter of Aristotelian causes and

4.1 The Four Causes

17 Aristotle, Physics 2.3.194b1723.

This text raises any number of questions, philosophical as well as terminologi-

20 E.g. Aristotle, Generation of Animals 1.1.715a911.

28 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 2.11.94a22: .

4.2 Aristotelian Causality

It is apparently legitimate to think about causality in terms of an agent doing

According to Aristotle, any account of causality should be able to answer sat-

5 Some Mediaeval Assumptions about Causes

51 tienne Gilson, Le thomisme: Introduction la philosophie de Saint Thomas dAquin, 6th

Metaphysics 7.3.1029a1130.56 It is in dispute among contemporary scholars

6 Structure of the Volume

The chapters have been structured so as to follow Surezs exposition of causality

both an Aristotelian framework for causal explanations and a Christian belief

7 Main Results and Further Perspectives

In addition to the overall, and general, comprehensive discussion of Surez on

The Problem concerning Aristotelian Causality in Early Modern Philosophy. It

Surez on Aristotelian Causality

2 Why Study Causality. External Reasons

Causality has not received much attention from contemporary Surezian

1 dm, Prooem. [25.1].

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015|doi 10.1163/9789004292161_003

3 Why Study Causality. Internal Reasons

It is admittedly a bit dull to argue that we should take an interest in causality in

incomplete sense, since he employs an account of cause which implies

Terminology aside, the claim in this quite compressed argument is that it

Firstly, because the account of cause, or causality as they say, partakes to

Slightly reformulated Surezs position comes out as the following claims.

metaphysician should study the causes as causes. We would perhaps expect

4 The Ratio Causae

4.1 Causa, Quid Sit?

discussed some not strictly philosophical accounts of the term principle

In another and more philosophical manner of speaking a principle is the

dm (Disputationes Metaphysicae) is the only abbreviation used in this volume.