Abstract

Aristotle's doctrine of the four causes--formal, final, efficient and material--is famous. But Posterior Analytics B 11 lists "if certain things hold, it is necessary that this does" in place of a standard expression for the material cause. This cause has been dubbed the grounding cause. It has interested scholars since the Greek commentators, who simply assumed that Aristotle meant the material cause. This traditional thesis has been challenged by two views: first, that the grounding cause is a special type of material cause ; second, that it is no material cause at all . ;I set out two arguments for the traditional thesis and consider nine objections to it. Since most of these objections, which constitute the support for the revisionist thesis, can be answered, I reject the revisionist thesis. But in my treatment of one objection it also becomes clear that the traditional thesis is mistaken. The grounding cause is a necessitating cause, yet in Physics B 9 Aristotle makes it clear that many material causes are not necessitating causes. Thus, some form of the modified traditional thesis is true. ;But which form? D. M. Balme suggests that Aristotle means to include only mathematical causes because hypothetical necessity covers all of the relation between matter and product in things which come to be. But Aristotle seems to accept necessitating material causes in several passages in the biological works. In other passages he seems to adopt the position Balme attributes to him. I argue that he does not actually adopt this position, and that he does accept simple necessity in some things which come to be. Thus, the grounding cause is a necessitating material cause, and such causes are found not only in mathematics, but also among things which come to be