The Four Causes
What are there four of?
Aristotles doctrine of the four causes is crucial, but easily misunderstood.
It is natural for us (post-Humeans) to think of (what Aristotle calls) causes
in terms of our latter-day notion of cause-and-effect. This is misleading
in several ways:
Only one of Aristotles causes (the efficient cause) sounds even remotely
like a Humean cause.
Humean causes are events, and so are their effects, but Aristotle
doesnt limit his causes in that way. Typically, it is substances
that have causes. And that sounds odd.
But to charge Aristotle with having only a dim understanding of causality
is to accuse him of missing a target he wasnt even aiming at. We must keep
this in mind whenever we use the word cause in connection with Aristotles
We will begin with the question, What is it that Aristotle says there are four of? The Greek word is aition
(plural aitia); sometimes it takes a feminine form, aitia (plural
aitiai). And what is an aition? Part of Aristotles point is
that there is no one answer to this question.
An aition is just whatever one can cite in answer to a why? question.
And what we give in answering a why? question is an explanation. So an
aition is best thought of as an explanation than as a cause.
Even so, thats not enough. First, Aristotle thinks that you can ask what the aitia of this table are, and its
not clear what sense, if any, it makes to ask for an explanation of the table. Second, he
thinks that, in some sense, a carpenter is an aition of a table, and its not clear in
what sense, if any, a carpenter (or anything like a carpenter) could be an explanation of
Here perhaps Ackrills “explanatory factor” is a more illuminating translation of
aition. That is, an aition is something that plays a role as an explanatory
factor in the explanation of something. But, as well see, there are many kinds of explanations.
Where to find the doctrine in Aristotles texts
In RAGP: Phys. II.3; and (extensively) in Metaph. A.3
ff. See also Part. An. 639b12ff
Additionally (not in RAGP): APo. II.11; Metaph. D.2;
Gen. et Corr. 335a28-336a12.
The traditional picture
The picture is Aristotles, but the names of the causes are not. Quotations from Physics II.3, 194b24 ff:
This account makes it seem as if Aristotle is offering a catalog of causes, and is claiming that
each thing has four different kinds of cause. But what the account misses is the idea that there
is something ambiguous about the notion of aition.
“that from which, <as a constituent> present in it, a thing comes to be … e.g., the bronze and silver, and their genera, are causes of the statue and the bowl.”
“the form, i.e., the pattern … the form is the account of the essence … and the parts of the account.”
“the source of the primary principle of change or stability,” e.g., the man who gives advice, the father (of the child). “The producer is a cause of the product, and the initiator of the change is a cause of what is changed.”
“somethings end (telos)—i.e., what it is for—is its cause, as health is <the cause> of walking.”
The ambiguity of aition
Aristotle warns us of the ambiguity at 195a5: aition is said in many ways. This is his usual formula for telling us that a term is being used ambiguously.
That is, when one says that
x is the aition of y, it isnt clear what is meant until
one specifies what sense of aition is intended:
This makes it hard for us to get clear on what Aristotle was up to, since
neither cause nor explanation is ambiguous in the way Aristotle claims
aition is. There is no English translation of aition
that is ambiguous in the way (Aristotle claims) aition is. But if
we shift from the noun cause to the verb makes we may get somewhere.
x is what y is [made] out of.
x is what it is to be y.
x is what produces y.
x is what y is for.
The ambiguity of makes
Aristotles point may be put this way: if we ask what makes something
so-and-so? we can give four very different sorts of answer - each appropriate
to a different sense of makes. Consider the following sentences:
The table is made of wood.
Having four legs and a flat top makes this (count as) a table.
A carpenter makes a table.
Having a surface suitable for eating or writing makes this (work as) a table.
Aristotelian versions of (1) - (4):
1a. Wood is an aition of a table.
2a. Having four legs and a flat top is an aition of a table.
3a. A carpenter is an aition of a table.
4a. Having a surface suitable for eating or writing is an
aition of a table.
These sentences can be disambiguated by specifying the relevant sense of
aition in each case:
1b. Wood is what the table is made out of.
2b. Having four legs and a flat top is what it is to be a table.
3b. A carpenter is what produces a table.
4b. Eating on and writing on is what a table is for.
Static vs. Dynamic Causes
Matter and form are two of the four causes, or explanatory factors. They
are used to analyze the world statically - they tell us how it is
at a given moment. But they do not tell us how it came to be that way.
For that we need to look at things dynamically - we need to look at
causes that explain why matter has come to be formed in the way that it has.
Change consists in matter taking on (or losing) form. Efficient and final
causes are used to explain why change occurs.
This is easiest to see in the case of an artifact, like a statue or a table.
The table has come into existence because the carpenter put the form of the
table (which he had in his mind) into the wood of which the table is
The carpenter has done this for the purpose of creating something he can
write on or eat on. (Or, more likely, that he can sell to someone who wants
it for that purpose.) This is a teleological explanation of there
being a table.
This seems like a plausible doctrine about artifacts : they can be explained both statically (what they are, and what theyre made of) and dynamically (how they came to be, and what they are for).
Causes of natural objects
But what about natural objects? Aristotle (notoriously) held that
the four causes could be found in nature, as well. That is, that there is
a final cause of a tree, just as there is a final cause of a table.
Here he is commonly thought to have made a huge mistake. How can there be
final causes in nature, when final causes are purposes, what
a thing is for? In the case of an artifact, the final cause is the
end or goal that the artisan had in mind in making the thing.
But what is the final cause of a dog, or a horse, or an oak tree?
What they are used for? E.g., pets, pulling plows, serving as building materials,
etc. To suppose so would be to suppose Aristotle guilty of reading
human purposes and plans into nature. But this is not what he has
Perhaps he thinks of nature as being like art, except that the artisan is
God? God is the efficient cause of natural objects, and Gods purposes are
the final causes of the natural objects that he creates.
No. In both (a) and (b), the final cause is external to the object.
(Both the artisan and God are external to their artifacts; they impose form
on matter from the outside.) But the final causes of natural objects are
internal to those objects.
Final causes in nature
The final cause of a natural object - a plant or an animal - is
not a purpose, plan, or intention. Rather, it is whatever lies at
the end of the regular series of developmental changes that typical
specimens of a given species undergo.
The final cause need not be a purpose that someone has in mind.
I.e., where F is a biological kind: the telos of an F
is what embryonic, immature, or developing Fs are all tending to grow
into. The telos of a developing tiger is to be a tiger.
Aristotle opposes final causes in nature to chance or
randomness. So the fact that there is regularity in nature - as Aristotle
says, things in nature happen always or for the most part - suggests to
him that biological individuals run true to form. So this end, which
developing individuals regularly achieve, is what they are aiming at.
Thus, for a natural object, the final cause is typically identified
with the formal cause. The final cause of a developing plant or animal
is the form it will ultimately achieve, the form into which it grows
References: Physics 198a25, 199a31, De Anima 415b10, Generation of Animals
This helps to explain why form, mover, and telos often coincide, as
Aristotle says (198a25). I.e., why one and the same thing can serve as three of the causes - formal, efficient, and
The telos of a (developing) tiger is just (to be) a tiger (i.e. to
be an animal with the characteristics specified in the definition of a tiger).
Thus, the final cause (telos) and formal cause (essence) amount to the same thing.
And Aristotle also says that a source of natural change (efficient cause) is a things
form, or what it is, for that is its end and what it is for (198b3). Hence,
one and the same thing serves as formal, final, and efficient cause.
Claims like a tiger is for the sake of a tiger or an apple tree is for
the sake of an apple tree sound vacuous. But the identification of formal
with final causes is not vacuous. It is to say, about a developing entity,
that there is something internal to it which will have the result that
the outcome of the sequence of changes it is undergoing - if it runs
true to form - will be another entity of the same kind - a tiger,
or an apple tree.
So form and telos coincide. What about the efficient cause?
The internal factor which accounts for this cubs growing up to be a tiger
(a) has causal efficacy, and (b) was itself contributed by a tiger (i.e.
the cubs father).
This can be more easily grasped if we realize that for Aristotle questions
about causes in nature are raised about universals. Hence, the answers
to these questions will also be given in terms of universals. The questions
that ask for formal, final, and efficient causes, respectively, are:
What kind of thing do these flesh-and-bones constitute?
What has this (seed, embryo, cub) all along been developing into?
What produces a tiger?
The answer to all three questions is the same: a tiger. It is in this sense
that these three causes coincide.
Aristotles account of animal reproduction makes use of just these points
(cf. GA I.21, II.9 and Metaph. Z.7-9):
The basic idea (as in all change) is that matter takes on form. The form
is contributed by the male parent (which actually does have the form), the
matter by the female parent. This matter has the potentiality to be informed
by precisely that form.
The embryonic substance has the form potentially, and can be called by the
same name as what produces it. (E.g., the embryonic tiger can be called
a tiger, for that is what it is, potentially at least.) [But there
are exceptions: the embryonic mule cannot be called by the name of its male
parent, for that is a horse (1034b3).]
The form does not come into existence. Rather, it must exist beforehand,
and get imposed on appropriate matter. In the case of the production of
artifacts, the pre-existing form may exist merely potentially. (E.g., the
artist has in mind the form he will impose on the clay. Nothing has
to have the form in actuality.)
But in the case of natural generation, the pre-existing form must exist in
actuality: there must exist beforehand another actual substance
which produces it, e.g. an animal must exist beforehand if an animal is produced
So the final cause of a natural substance is its form. But what is the form
of such a substance like? Is form merely shape, as the word
suggests? No. For natural objects - living things - form is more complex.
It has to do with function.
We can approach this point by beginning with the case of bodily organs. For
example, the final cause of an eye is its function, namely, sight.
That is what an eye is for.
And this function, according to Aristotle, is part of the formal cause
of the thing, as well. Its function tells us what it is. What it is
to be an eye is to be an organ of sight.
To say what a bodily organ is is to say what it does - what
function it performs. And the function will be one which serves the purpose
of preserving the organism or enabling it to survive and flourish in its
Since typical, non-defective, specimens of a biological species do survive
and flourish, Aristotle takes it that the function of a kind of animal is
to do what animals of that kind typically do, and as a result of doing
which they survive, flourish, and reproduce. Cf. Charlton (Aristotles
Physics, p. 102):
. . . the widest or most general kind of thing which all non-defective members
of a class can do, which differentiates them from other members of the next
higher genus, is their function.
To say that there are ends (telê) in nature is not to
say that nature has a purpose. Aristotle is not seeking some one answer to
a question like What is the purpose of nature? Rather, he is seeking a
single kind of explanation of the characteristics and behavior of natural
objects. That is, plants and animals develop and reproduce in regular ways,
the processes involved (even where not consciously aimed at or deliberated
about) are all toward certain ends.
There is much that can be said in opposition to such a view. But at least
it is not ridiculous, as is sometimes supposed. In so far as functional
explanation still figures in biology, there is a residue of Aristotelian
teleology in biology. And it has yet to be shown that biology can get along
without teleological notions. The notions of function, and what something
is for, are still employed in describing at least some of nature.
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Copyright © 2006, S. Marc Cohen