Abstract

In this dissertation, I consider the views of Aquinas and Avicebron on the issue of the causality of corporeal creatures. I first discuss Aquinas's interpretation of A vicebron' s view of the activity of corporeal creatures, and then I examine Aquinas's and Avicebron's explanations of the causality of corporeal creatures, including, in particular, the causal relation that exists between God, as the primary cause, and corporeal creatures, as secondary causes. From his interpretation of Avicebron's Fons vitae, Aquinas concludes two points: Aquinas concludes that, according to A vicebron, a corporeal substance does not act from an internal principle of activity; Aquinas concludes that there is a significant difference between his own explanation of the causality of corporeal creatures, an explanation which is based on the notion of primary and secondary causality according to which, although God is the primary cause of any corporeal substance that is brought into being, corporeal creatures are real, though secondary, causes of the same substances because of their internal principle of activity, that is, their own form, in virtue of which they truly act with respect to other corporeal substances by bringing them into being, and Avicebron's explanation of the causality of corporeal creatures, an explanation which, on Aquinas's interpretation, is based on the notion that corporeal creatures do not bring other corporeal substances into being, since corporeal creatures do not act from an internal principle of activity. Yet, I establish a twofold thesis: according to Avicebron, corporeal substances do act from an internal principle of activity, that is, their own form; and far from explaining the causality of corporeal creatures in a way that differs significantly from Aquinas's way of explaining the causality of corporeal creatures, Avicebron presents an account of the causality of corporeal creatures that shares six general features with Aquinas's own account of primary and secondary causality, including the fact that corporeal creatures are real, though secondary, causes of other corporeal substances because of their internal principle of activity, that is, their own form, in virtue of which they truly act with respect to other corporeal substances by bringing them into being.