The Four Causes: Aristotle's Exposition and the Ancients

Author(s): Robert B. Todd

Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1976), pp. 319-322
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2708827 .
Accessed: 26/03/2014 11:57

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of Pennsylvania Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Journal of the History of Ideas.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 200.24.23.76 on Wed, 26 Mar 2014 11:57:23 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE FOUR CAUSES: ARISTOTLE'S EXPOSITION AND
THE ANCIENTS

BY ROBERTB. TODD

The teacher's need to simplify the complex has rarely been better served
than by the familiar illustration of Aristotle's doctrine of the four causes. We
take a sculptor at work on a statue; the marble block is the material cause, the
action of sculpting the efficient cause, the formal cause is the shape of the
statue, and the final cause is the purpose for which the statue is intended. The
only problem with this illustration is that it does not appear in any Aristotelian
text; in fact Aristotle varies his illustrations of each of the four causes and uses
the case of the sculptor to demonstrate only the relation between the efficient
and material cause.' Observing this disparity, R. K. Sprague, in a note
published a few years ago,2 protested any illustration of the four causes by a
single example. On philosophical grounds her argument was entirely con-
vincing and I shall not try to restate it here. However, she cited only a handful
of modern scholars as exponents of such illustrations.3 Since this did justice
neither to the ancient lineage of the most famous of these-that of the sculptor
described above-nor to the question of its transmission to the modern lecture
room, I would like to supplement her note with some preliminary observations
on both topics.
There are, as far as I know, three ancient texts in which the four Aris-
totelian causes are illustrated by a sculptor at work on a statue. The earliest is
in Letter 65 of Seneca where in an important discussion of the Platonic and
Stoic causes4 he gives a more elaborate version of the exposition outlined
above. Next we find it in a work by the Peripatetic commentator Alexander of
Aphrodisias (c. A.D. 200) who in ch. 3 of his defato, a polemic against the Stoic
doctrine of fate, employs it in almost exactly the same terms as Seneca.5 This
passage was later quoted verbatim by Eusebius in his Praeparatio Evangelica.6
Finally, there is a very compressed statement of our illustration by
Alexander's contemporary, the Christian father Clement of Alexandria, in Bk.
8 of his Miscellanies.7
The contexts in which these authors employ the example differ widely.

'Phys. B3, 195a 6-8; cf. Metaph. A2, 1013b 6-8. At de gen. an. B18 the statue
example illustrates just the material cause.
2"The Four Causes: Aristotle's Exposition and Ours," The Monist, 52 (1968), 298-
300. 3Sprague, 299 n. . 4Ep. 65.4-6.
5Defato 3, 167. 2-12 Bruns. In describing the formal cause Seneca refers to the fact
that a statue is called "doryphoros" or "diadumenos" (the two most famous works of
Polyclitus) in virtue of its form; Alexander speaks in more general terms of a statue's
form being of a diskeuon or akontizon. Again one of the final causes mentioned by
Seneca is "religio, sidonum templum paravit [sc. the sculptor]" while Alexander refers
to eis theous eusebeia tis.
6P.E. VI. 9. 3-6, 328. 18-329.9 Mras.
7Strom. VIII. IX. 28. 2. For the final cause Clement mentions he time tou
gymnasiarchou while Alexander cites time tinos.
319

This content downloaded from 200.24.23.76 on Wed, 26 Mar 2014 11:57:23 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
320 ROBERT B. TODD

Seneca is giving a very general account of different theories of causation;

Alexander is using Aristotle's four causes in an attempt to show that an Aris-
totelian theory of fate can be constructed from the notion of the efficient
cause;8 Clement is providing a description of causation in which Stoic and
Aristotelian doctrines are being synthesized. The only common factor in these
texts is that they each provide a schematic account of Aristotle's doctrine and
are not intended as a commentary on his text. The presence of this
simplification in such contexts is as explicable, therefore, as its absence from
any of the ancient commentaries on the relevant Aristotelian works which are
controlled by the philosopher's actual words.9
There is no great significance in the juxtaposition of Stoic and Aristotelian
doctrines in the texts from Seneca and Clement. Seneca refers to the Stoic
causes, viz. God and matter,10while Clement cites a standard list of five types
of cause described in a highly technical terminology.11There could hardly have
been any rigid doxographical catalogue of Stoic and Aristotelian theories of
causation in which the sculptor/statue illustration is employed.12 Its origins
can perhaps be best understood if we assume that it was originally employed
by Peripatetics. Its presence in Alexander suggests this, and there are other
cases of illustrations employed by Aristotle for a single limited purpose which
were exploited by his exegetes in more elaborate ways.
Alexander, for example, in his de mixtione13illustrates Aristotle's theory
of organic growth (described in de generatione et corruptione A5) from the
manner in which the earth could assimilate an additional and larger mass
while, like a growing body, preserving its own shape; this illustration is,
however, only used as an hypothesis by Aristotle in a discussion of the
sphericity of the earth in de caelo B14. Again the image of puppets on a string,
employed in Aristotle's biological works with the restricted purpose of illus-
trating the nature of physical motion, is converted by Alexander into a general
characterization of the processes of nature. 1 The illustration of all four causes

8On this see G. Verbeke, Archiv fir Geschichte der Philosophie, 50 (1968), 73-100
at 77-87.
9Alexander's commentary on the Physics is lost, but this illustration is not in those
by Themistius (fourth century), Simplicius (first half of the sixth century), or
Philoponus (c.490-570), all of whom utilized Alexander's work.
10Theseare elsewhere described as Stoic principles (archai); Aet. Plac. I. 3. 25, and
Diog. Laert. VII. 139. For other evidence: Von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Frag-
menta, II, nos. 301, 304, 305, 310, 312.
1Strom. VII. IX. 25ff. (=Sto. Vet. Fr., II, no. 351). Alexander refers cursorily to
four of the items on this list at defato 22, 192. 18-18 Bruns. On the details of these and
related texts: A. A. Long, Archivfiir Geschichte der Philosophie, 52 (1970), 249 n. 10.
12In the doxography Aet. Plac. I. xii. 4 describes the Aristotelian causes without
illustration and contrasts them only with Stoic causes characterized in very general
terms.
1316. 237. 5-20 Bruns.
14Aristot. de gen. an. Bl, 734b 10ff. and de mot. an. 7, 701b 2-4 with Alexander ap.
Simplic. Phys. 311. 7-16, 30 Diels. Again the image of "heaven in a millet-seed" (ho
ouranos en te kenchro) that occurs in Aristotle's discussion of time (Phys. A 12, 221a22)
is employed by commentators to describe the general paradox of two bodies being in
the same place: Simplic. Phys. 530. 24 Diels, and Philop. Phys. 505. 24-25 Vitelli.

This content downloaded from 200.24.23.76 on Wed, 26 Mar 2014 11:57:23 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 ARISTOTLE'S EXPOSITION AND THE ANCIENTS 321

by the case of a sculptor at work on a statue rather than the two actually
illustrated in this way in the Aristotelian text is, I believe, best regarded as
another form of this scholastic tinkering.
At what point in the history of the Peripatetic school such an elaboration
might have taken place is a matter of guesswork. Since the illustration was a
commonplace for Seneca it must at least have been formulated in the period of
revived Peripatetic scholasticism that followed Andronicus of Rhodes's edition
of the Aristotelian schooltexts (the corpus as we now have it) in the later
decades of the Roman republic. Seneca, we know, had known a freedman or
possibly a relative, Lucius Annaeus Cornutus, who, although a Stoic, played a
part in this revival with a commentary in Greek on the Categories.15 Standard
Peripatetic illustrations could therefore have had wide currency among other
schools. On the other hand, our illustration could have originated from an
earlier period; certainly the works of Eudemus and Theophrastus, who
initiated Peripatetic scholasticism in the first generation after Aristotle's
death, were still read by Alexander of Aphrodisias.
If the ultimate origins of the sculptor/statue illustration remain obscure
we do at least know when the ancient works in which it occurs became
available in the medieval and modern worlds. It has quite recently been es-
tablished that probably between 1250 and 1280 William of Moerbeke trans-
lated Alexander's de fato into Latin;16three Latin translations of the work
were made in 1516, 1541, and 1544.17The first printed edition of Seneca ap-
peared in 1475. Eusebius' Praeparatio was translated into Latin as early as
1470 by George of Trebizond, and into Italian in 1550. Finally, there was a
major Greek edition of Clement of Alexandria in 1550 and a Latin translation
in the following year by Gentianus Hervetus, himself a translator of
Alexander's defato.
It seems likely that the medieval translation of the de fato did not have
wide currency.18The safest claim to make is that a teacher in search of a clear,
if slightly misleading, illustration of a central Aristotelian doctrine could have
easily found it in ancient sources by the last quarter of the fifteenth century.
But so far I have not found evidence that anyone so availed himself. My search
among sixteenth- and seventeenth-century works has not been extensive; cer-
tainly the major histories of philosophy of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries do not employ this illustration,19and I have in fact found
no earlier usage than the earliest quoted by Professor Sprague, that of H. H.

'5Simplicius refers to this work in his commentary on the Categories, e.g., 62. 27
Kalbfleisch.
16P. Thillet, Alexandre d'Aphrodise, De Fato ad Imperatores. Version de
Guillaume de Moerbeke (Paris, 1963); the dating is specifically discussed at 22-23.
'7F. Edward Cranz, Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, ed. P. Kris-
teller (Washington, D.C., 1960), I, 107-10.
'8Thillet, 27 n.4.
19E.g., Thomas Stanley, History of Philosophy (1st. ed., London, 1655), Jacob
Brucker, Historia Critica Philosophiae a mundi incanabulis ad nostram usque aetatem
deducta, 5 vols. (Leipzig, 1742-67), and E. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer
geschichtlichen Entwicklung (1st. ed., Tubingen, 1844-52).

This content downloaded from 200.24.23.76 on Wed, 26 Mar 2014 11:57:23 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
322 ROBERT B. TODD

Joachim in his posthumously published notes on Aristotle's Nicomachean

Ethics.20
Lecture notes are not of course philosophical treatises and are rarely
printed as were Joachim's; our famous illustration could have flourished in
pedagogy without necessarily surfacing in works written with close attention
to the details of the Aristotelian text. Until some evidence appears we shall not
know how influential were the ancient texts that we have discussed, or whether
different generations independently rediscovered the value of extending Aris-
totle's limited use of the sculptor/statue illustration to cover all four causes.
But it is very hard to believe that our ancient authors were without influence.
Charles B. Schmitt has shown how an ancient comparison of Aristotle to a
cuttlefish, like the sculptor example also loosely derived from an Aristotelian
text, was used widely in the works of Renaissance philosophers.21More exten-
sive research might uncover a similar popularity for a famous illustration of
one of this philosopher's doctrines. Then, although this overextended sculptor
will have long since been retired from the lecture room on the philosophical
grounds presented by Professor Sprague, we shall at least have established for
him a lineage worthy of his longevity.
University of British Columbia.
20Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford, 1951). The lectures date from the
first decade of the century.
1"Aristotle as a Cuttlefish: The Origin and Development of a Renaissance Image,"
Studies in the Renaissance, 12 (1965), 60-72.

This content downloaded from 200.24.23.76 on Wed, 26 Mar 2014 11:57:23 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions