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efeito

quinta-feira 25 de janeiro de 2024

  

It may seem that a clear example in Aristotle   of cause not being like effect is his divine mover of the heavens, who is unmoved, but Aristotle explains GC 1.6, 323a25-34, that the unmoved mover ‘touches’ the heavens only in the way that the person who grieves us ‘touches’ us, and in Metaphysics 12.5,1072b3, that he moves the heavens as the beloved moves the lover by inspiring motion, i.e. as a final cause. Elsewhere we do find an unmoved object of perception moving the perceptual faculty of the soul as efficient cause, De Anima 3.12, 434b27-435a10, but Philoponus   calls this moving a mere awakening (Philoponus   in DA 110,18-36) and awakenings of faculty and object turn out to be mutual, Aristotle DA 3.2, 426al5-26. More relevant is the fact that the soul in Aristotle acts as unmoved efficient cause of motion, DA 1.2, 403b29-31; 1.3, 406a3-8; b7-8; 1.4, 408b5-18; Phys. 8.5, 258a7.

Aristotle also sees that hardness may be produced by what is not hard nor even soft, but e.g. cold – there is no need to alter his text – and Philoponus comments on the point. In such cases the cause must still be in an actual state, e.g. actually cold, but there need not be even a genus in common, unless it be at the more remote level of being material properties, or unless being in an actual state is treated, as in Philoponus, as a sameness of genus. Alexander and Simplicius   give the further examples of rubbing producing heat and a whip producing weals.

Philoponus, however, goes on to qualify the point that cold can produce hardness, by saying that it does so only indirectly, or per accidens, by working on the heat in the body and hence on its fluidity. Philoponus in De Anima 332,5-22 gives another example of cause being unlike effect. The sun, on Aristotle’s view is not hot, being made of the fifth element, but this would not stop its activity, viz. light, heating the air by arousing the natural heat in the air.

The principle that cause must be greater than effect is accepted by Alexander, but only with a restricted application, because it is taken by him to imply a degree of similarity. [SorabjiPC2  :141]


Plotinus   accepts the principle that cause is greater than effect, but does not take it to imply similarity of cause and effect, at least in the case of the One, because the One is beyond actuality, life or form, yet produces these in Intellect, without having them itself.

The same is true at a lower level. Soul in plants has the power of growth, but what it produces is body, which is lifeless. Even with fire, the heat it spreads is different from the heat integral to it. Proclus  , and Porphyry   as reported by Proclus, agree: the Demiurge’s Reason is not extended, but is able to produce the extended physical universe. Porphyry compares what can be produced by the very small extension of a seed, but we shall see that Gregory of Nyssa   offers an alternative to Porphyry, that the physical universe is really a bundle of ideas. For Plotinus what is harmonious and good at a higher level of reality, like the ingredients in a seed, may at a lower level be disharmonious and evil, 3.2 [47] 2 (16-31); 4.4 [28] 39 (27-9). [SorabjiPC2:143-144]


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