ARISTOTELIAN

BEING AND
BECOMING
 In Aristotle’s exploration of how to discuss beings, he proposes four concepts
which provide a way of understanding any particular being under
consideration. Any being, according to Aristotle, can be said to have four
causes.

• First, we recognize that any being we can see around is corporal, possessed of
a certain materiality of physical “stuff.” we can refer to this as the material
cause. A being is individuated- it becomes the unique, individual being that it
is- because it is made up of this particular stuff. Yet, we also realize that this
material takes on a particular shape: so a bird is different from a cat, which
is different from a man. This “shape” that makes a being a particular kind
can be called its form. Thus, each being also, has a formal cause.
• One can also realize that a being does not simply “pop up” from
nothing, but comes from another being which is prior to it. Parents
beget a child. A mango tree used to be a seed that itself came from an
older tree. A chair is built as the product of a carpenter. Thus, there is
something which brings about the presence of another being. This can
be referred to as the efficient cause. Also, since a being has an
apparent end of goal, a chair to be sat on, a pen for writing, a seed to
become a tree, or a child to become an adult, one can speak of the final
cause of each being. Identifying these four cause-material, formal,
efficient, and final- gives a way to understand any being.
four causes

• cause-material
• Formal

• Efficient
• final
Synthesis
• The idea of a transcendent good prior to all being resurfaces in Aquinas in the
form of the good and loving God, who is Himself the fullness of being and of
goodness; as Aquinas puts it. God is that which essentially is and is essentially
good. So we recognize that all being are only possible as participating in the
first being, which is God Himself? God’s act, like an emanation of light, is the
creation of being.

• Insofar as God is that from which all beings come, it is possible for us to speak
of Him as the first efficient cause. Insofar as God is that toward which all
beings seek to return, it is possible for us to speak of Him as the final cause.
We see here the beginning of the synthesis by nothing how the Neoplatonic
movement from and back toward the transcendent is fused with the
Aristotelian notion of causes.
• God communicates to each being His perfection and goodness.
Every creature then strives to its own perfection; thus the divine
goodness is the end of all actions. All things come from God and
are created by Him in order to return to Him.
• We now need to recall that beings are created by God in a
particular way. It is not accidental how beings emerge into
existence; each being is created as a determinate substance, as a
particular combination of from and matter. This applies to all
beings, including man. The particular form determines the
materiality which makes a being a certain kind of being; the
unique way that we have been created can be called our nature.
• While all beings are created by God in order to return to him, the way the human
being is directed toward God is unique. Given that we are being with a capacity for
reason, our way of reaching God is by knowing and loving him. It is of key
importance then that the presence of a capacity for reason is the prime
characteristics of the kind of beings we are, and how that capacity for reason is the
every tool which God had placed in our human nature as the way toward our
perfection and return to Him.
• This applies not only to an individual human being, but also to all humankind. But
we should not forget how the whole community of being, which is the universe itself,
is directed toward its return to God. This is not, as mentioned earlier, an
unthinking process, but is the very work of divine reason itself or God’s will. We can
think, then, of the whole work of creation as divine reason governing a community
toward its end. Under the governance of the Divine beings are directed as to how
their acts are to lead them to their end, which is to return to Him. We shall now try
to understand this dynamic once again, but this time think of it in terms of law.