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This essay explores Suárez’s commitment to the important causal principle of propinquity or spatial contiguity. Like many, Suárez accepted the principle of no action at a distance. It is argued that this commitment can be retained even though Suárez fundamentally altered the conception of efficient causality because this principle is independent of causality’s nature. Central to understanding Suárez’s commitment to the principle of propinquity is his account of the medium. Furthermore, the contrast between Suárez’s and René Descartes’ accounts of the causal medium are historically significant for understanding the rise of mechanical philosophy during the seventeenth century.

Chapter 4 uses Clauberg’s theory of the mind–body union to show how a Cartesian thinker could respond to perceived problems with Descartes’ interactionism without adopting occasionalism. Section 4.1 presents Clauberg’s theory, according to which the mind is a “moral cause” of motions in the body, and corporal motions are “procatarctic causes” of ideas in the mind. Section 4.2 shows how Clauberg reconciles this account with the causal principles that “an effect may not be more noble than its cause,” and that a cause must formally or eminently contain whatever it brings about in its effect. Section 4.3 argues that Clauberg takes moral and procatarctic causes to be types of efficient causes. This is consistent with a broad conception of efficient causation, which section 4.4 argues Clauberg came to hold by the 1660s. The position that emerges thus represents an alternative to that of Cartesian occasionalists, such as Geulincx and Malebranche.

This introduction begins with a consideration of the assumption—central to the Oxford Philosophical Concepts series—that it is possible to write a history of philosophical concepts that crosses different historical periods and social contexts. One objection to such an assumption is that there are no timeless concepts, but only conceptions of efficient causation from different historical periods that are “incommensurable” (to use a term Thomas Kuhn has made famous). One response is that a history of a concept may have as its object not a timeless and immutable unit, but rather something akin to a biological “population” that consists in a collection of different contextually dependent conceptions. It is then an empirical question whether particular conceptions are sufficiently interrelated to preclude total incommensurability. After a discussion of these issues, the introduction closes with a summary of the content of each of the eleven chapters and four “Reflections” in the volume.

The Platonic understanding of efficient causation restricts this entirely to the operations of the soul. Bodies are not to be counted as substances, and therefore lack what is required for involvement in genuine relations of efficient causation, a view both affirmed and entrenched within the Christian tradition by Augustine’s discussion of the sense in which the human soul exercises free will. The ninth-century figure Eriugena presents a detailed picture of how nature looks under this assumption. By the late eleventh century, however, a tradition of natural speculation is clearly developing, which is open to the idea of construing relations of efficient causation as holding among bodies. Even in the writings of Anselm we find early intimations of this outlook. But we see it present in developed and unmistakable form in the scientific speculations of such twelfth-century figures as Adelard of Bath and William of Conches.

Chapter 1 explains the doctrine of occasionalism. Section 1.1 unpacks the occasionalist claim that God is the only efficient cause, by explaining the concept of an efficient cause, as it was typically understood in medieval and early modern texts. Section 1.2 contrasts occasionalism with a theory of divine providence developed by Thomas Aquinas, which says that God “concurs” with the actions of created substances. Section 1.3 clarifies the difference between occasionalism and the Thomistic theory of divine concurrence using the notion of a causal power: According to this analysis, occasionalism entails that created substances do not have intrinsic active causal powers. Malebranche expresses this claim by saying that created beings are “occasional causes” that merely “give occasion” to God’s actions. However, section 1.4 argues that there is also a Scholastic tradition that uses terms such as “occasion” and “occasional cause” to refer to a type of true efficient cause.

Both Nicholas Malebranche and George Berkeley maintained that what was becoming a paradigmatic example of efficient causation—body-body causation at impact—is in fact not that at all, that God must be the efficient cause of such corporeal change. On some recent interpretations, they secure this conclusion by maintaining that only volitions, or beings with wills, are legitimate candidates to be efficient causes. This chapter argues against these interpretations. Malebranche does not rule out corporeal causes by fiat, but rather (and rightly) sees bodily impact as a serious challenge to his occasionalism, one which motivates him to emphasize his argument from continuous creation. And Berkeley does not rule in spiritual causes by fiat, nor by conflating efficient with final causation. The chapter also considers the extent to which their occasionalist conclusions overlap, and their divergence when it comes to drawing implications for physics from their metaphysical results.

There is considerable scholarly division regarding the fundamentals of Hume’s account of efficient causation. The majority opinion reads him as offering an austere metaphysics wherein efficient causation consists in regularities of a certain kind, whereas a minority read Hume as circumscribing severely what we can understand of the causal relation. Without deciding this issue, this chapter draws attention to the fact that on either reading Hume’s view starkly contrasts with the metaphysically rich discussions that preceded A Treatise of Human Nature. There is an investigation here of the grounds for Hume’s radical break from his predecessors. These grounds are located not in a simple application of meaning-empiricism, but instead in a “subject-naturalism” that focuses on the explanation of the nature of our causal inference in order to illuminate what we understand by causation. The chapter closes with a discussion of Thomas Reid’s reaction to Hume.

The concept of artistic inspiration in the realm of music composition has changed notably over the last millennium. Using portraits of composers as evidence, this essay presents, in chronological order, three different views of the causation of artistic inspiration as related to the reception of specific composers: Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). As discussion of these composer portraits reveals, contemporary perceptions of the efficient causation of musical inspiration went from divine inspiration in the medieval era, to rational “invention” in the Baroque era and secular transcendence in the modern era.

According to a standard narrative concerning the history of philosophy, Descartes set out on a new path by replacing the four causes of the scholastics with the efficient causes required for his mechanistic physics. Drawing on the work of the early modern scholastic Suárez, this chapter shows that Descartes’s break with the scholastic past was less clean than this narrative suggests. An initial point is that Descartes’s emphasis on efficient causality was anticipated in scholastic reconceptualizations of causation that culminated in the work of Suárez. Moreover, in some respects scholasticism provided the basic framework for Descartes’s account of efficient causation, as shown by his claims both that a cause must “contain” its effect and that conservation differs only “in reason” from creation. Finally, there are important connections to scholasticism in Descartes’s treatments of causation in physics and of mind–body interaction.

This chapter attempts to contextualize Aristotle’s writings on the efficient cause by considering a few ways in which the Iliad—still central to Greek education and thought in Aristotle’s day—raises and explores questions of causation. The poem’s provocative opening lines challenge the reader (or, originally, listener) to consider: is Achilles’ “anger” against Agamemnon more truly the cause of the deaths of the Achaeans than the Trojans who slay them? What is the relationship of Zeus’ “plan” to causation on the human plane? Finally, when once we begin investigating the causes of a given event, how do we decide that we have reached a satisfactory “beginning” in the chain? By introducing these difficult questions right away, Homer prepares us to consider the ethical implications of our answers later in the poem.

Aristotle’s efficient cause differs radically from the mechanistic causes characteristic both of his atomist predecessors and of the post-Aristotelian science of the seventeenth century. Like Anaxagoras’ Mind, Aristotle’s efficient cause fundamentally differs from what it causes to move. It is importantly the first origin of a change, and so unsuited to be a link in a chain of causes-that-are-also-effects. Efficient causes are not substances, but rather forms: either powers, which cause changes in substances other than those in which they reside, or natures (including souls), which essentially reside in the substances which they cause to move. The analysis of these kinds of efficient cause, all in their own way unmoved movers, provides possible models for understanding the most enigmatic case of Aristotelian efficient causality: that by which eternal immaterial minds move the celestial spheres.

Later medieval philosophers typically recognize natural, rational, and divine agents. This generous view of the scope of efficient causality invites several debates about its character. Some of these focus on differences between creative and natural efficient causes. Others have to do with differences between natural and free agents. The relationship between efficient causality and final causality is also at issue. These debates contribute to the development of several influential ideas related to efficient causation: the definition of the efficient cause as a giver of being, the view that causal necessity is akin to logical necessity, the identification of a self-moving will as the source of freedom, the view that the efficient cause depends on the final cause for its causality, and the view that only cognitive agents can act for ends. This chapter traces the development of these ideas in the work of several philosophers, starting with Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) and ending with William of Ockham.

The seventeenth century was nearly unanimous in regarding causation as a necessary connection. If the cause exists or occurs, then, necessarily, the effect exists or occurs. The source of this unanimity has puzzled scholars. That causation is a necessary connection was not commonly held by medieval philosophers nor is it a commonly held opinion today. What accounts for this surprising seventeenth century consensus? In this chapter, I examine both Spinoza and Leibniz on efficient causation and argue that both regard efficient causation as a form of necessitation. But I conclude that their explicit reasons for doing so are not shared. Thus, their explicit reasoning sheds little light on the puzzle.

One of the central assumptions of Western art is that the artist is the efficient cause of the work of art. One source of this idea is the Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo, who famously refused to work with assistants, contributing to a conception of art making that has remained hegemonic for centuries. A major challenge arose in the twentieth century, particularly when Duchamp emphasized the role of the viewer (and chance processes) in the determination of the work’s ultimate form and meaning. Duchamp’s ideas were popularized by Warhol, who claimed to want to efface himself entirely from the artistic process. Though the attempt by successive generations of artists to distance themselves from their work is one of the major stories of twentieth-century art, the art market today undermines this attempt by fetishizing the artist’s name as guarantee of a work’s quality.

Although there are many contemporary Humean approaches to efficient causation, there is also an alternative, which can be thought of as broadly Aristotelian in origin. The key ideas that characterize the neo-Aristotelian view are: potentialities and natures; there being a source of change within things (the powers); some form of “conditional” necessity; processes, continuous change rather than discontinuity; mutual manifestations; simultaneity and contiguity of cause and effect; and powers that have to be held back rather than stimulated. Empiricist accounts suggest that powers stand in need of stimulus conditions. But this already suggests that without them, they are passive. The Aristotelian idea, in contrast, is that powers tend to manifest when in propitious circumstances. They are released, indeed they will always be active unless they are held back. The neo-Aristotelian metaphysics favors continuity, with natural causal processes having their various stages essentially.

Aquinas writes in an Aristotelian idiom, adopting and developing the four-causal explanatory scheme, which provides the general framework for those working in this tradition. He makes the tradition his own, however, by appropriating and recasting its basic terms for his own purposes.

The term “efficient causation” derives from the Aristotelian tradition. However, Aristotle himself treats the efficient cause as only one of four “causes” that are more or less on all fours with one another. In contrast, Michael Frede has argued in an influential paper that it is the Stoics who first insisted that causes, properly speaking, are what produce an effect. This chapter places this analysis of (efficient) causation in the context of Stoic materialism, providentialism and compatibilist accounts of free human action. There is also an investigation of how the Stoic conception of efficient causation was taken up and adapted by the subsequent medical (Galenic) tradition. This investigation is complicated by the fact that our remains of Stoicism are fragmentary and usually mediated through unfriendly, and sometimes actively hostile, sources.

This chapter returns to idea that the manifest image concerns a higher-level reality, dependent on, but distinct from a more fundamental reality, the characterization of which falls to physics, noting that a more appealing option is available. Although the universe depicted by physics is apparently at odds with the Aristotelian character of the manifest image, the two images are not images of distinct realities, but different ways of depicting a single reality. The possibility that the scientific image is Humean in the manner of Lewis and Williams is explored and its implications for change and efficient causation discussed, setting the stage for Chapter 13, which concerns the reconciliation of the manifest and scientific images.

Aristotle acceptance of [A] and [B], as set out in the Introduction, reflects his general hylomorphic theory of natural objects. That theory, as developed in the Physics and Metaphysics, is best understood in terms of the Impure Form and not the Pure Form Interpretation. More specifically, it is argued that he held that [A] The forms of natural objects are inextricably enmattered, inseparable in definition from material features or material activities, and that [B] The matter of natural objects is inextricable in definition from such forms. Further, it is suggested that he held [A] because he believed that [C] The forms of natural objects have to be inextricably enmattered to play the causal roles required of them. Aristotle’s discussion of forms was, it seems, partly motivated by the role of forms as causes of materal change. This way of interpreting Aristotle’s version of the hylomorphic structure of natural objects is contrasted with several other interpretations. Several problems are raised for the Impure Form Interpretation which will be addressed in subsequent chapters.