%0 Book
%A Boris Hennig
%D 2019
%C New York, United States of America
%I Peter Lang Verlag
%@ 9781433159305
%T Aristotle's Four Causes
%R 10.3726/b14400
%U https://www.peterlang.com/document/1057328
%X This book examines Aristotle’s four causes (material, formal, efficient, and final), offering a systematic discussion of the relation between form and matter, causation, taxonomy, and teleology. The overall aim is to show that the four causes form a system, so that the form of a natural thing relates to its matter as the final cause of a natural process relates to its efficient cause. Aristotle’s Four Causes reaches two novel and distinctive conclusions. The first is that the formal cause or essence of a natural thing is not a property of this thing but a generic natural thing. The second is that the final cause of a process is not its purpose but the course that processes of its kind typically take.
%G English