Aristotelian Categories of Causality (en)

2025-08-04

Prior to the premodern era, it was impossible to draw an absolute distinction between the physical and metaphysical categories of causality, or even between the material and the conditionally “spiritual.” The universe was seen as a complex and even mysterious interweaving of immanent and transcendent mediations and forces.

According to Aristotle, we can distinguish four categories of causality:

1. Material
2. Formal
3. Efficient
4. Final

The first is the prime matter from which everything is formed, the substratum, the bearer—like the glass from which a bottle is blown. This material substratum is so undefined that it contains nothing but pure potentiality and is devoid of any actuality.

The formal cause is what makes a particular substance what it is, including all the attributes pertaining to that bottle: coldness, static hardness, fragility, transparency, and so on.

The efficient cause is the creating or activating factor that unites form and matter into a single substance—such as the glassblower, together with their artisan tools, using them to blow a bottle from the material, constrained by its properties.

The final cause is the purpose. This is the ultimate goal, the function, and the meaning of a given thing—the existence, use, or good for which it is intended.

This structuring of being is not limited only to human artifacts.

Christian thought could delineate another, quite explicitly defined, type of causality—the ontological cause, which requires no substratum for creation but is capable of creating from nothing. The infinite and eternal source of being, which grants existence to every contingent thing and to the universe, without which even the very possibilities of things cannot exist.