Heidegger begins by repeating the names and the common way of viewing the four causes of change or motion. It is well known that the four causes are the matter, the form, the agent (or efficient cause), and the end or purpose (the final cause). The prototypical example is a statue. What are the causes of the coming into existence of a statue? First, the matter, the marble, is a cause as that which is to receive the form of the statue. The shape or form (e.g., the shape of a horse and rider) is a cause as that which is to be imposed on the marble. The sculptor himself is the efficient cause, the agent who does the imposing of the form onto the matter. And the purpose, the honoring of a general, is a cause as the end toward which the entire process of making a statue is directed. All this is well known, indeed too well known. It has become a facile dogma and bars the way to the genuine sense of causality as understood by the ancients.
Heidegger maintains that the ancients did in fact not mean by “cause” what we today mean by the term. Thus Heidegger’s interpretation of the doctrine of the four causes is a radical one: it strikes down to the root, to the basic understanding of causality that underlies the promulgation of the four causes. Yet, Heidegger’s position is not at first sight so very profound, since three of the causes, the matter, the form, and the end or purpose, are most obviously not what we mean today by causes. We would today hardly call the marble the cause of the statue, so there must of course have been a different notion of causality operative in Aristotle, or, at least, Aristotle must have had a much broader notion than we do.
Our contemporary understanding of causality basically amounts to this: a cause is what, by its own agency, produces an effect. Hence, for us, the cause of the chalice is not the silver but the artisan who imposes on the silver the form of the chalice. The silversmith herself is, for us, the one responsible for the chalice. She is the only proper cause of the chalice, since it is by her own agency, her own efficacy, that the thing is produced; the chalice is her product, and we even call it her “creation.” Accordingly, the silversmith herself takes credit for the chalice; that is what is meant by saying that she is the one “responsible” for the chalice. She answers for it; it is entirely her doing, and she deserves the credit. For us, the silver is merely the raw material upon which the agent works; the silver does nothing, effects nothing, does not at all turn itself into a chalice. Therefore we do not think of the matter as a cause. The matter merely undergoes the action of the other, the agent; it is the patient, that which suffers or undergoes the activity of the agent. The matter does not impose the form of a chalice onto itself. The matter imposes nothing; on the contrary, it is precisely imposed upon. The matter is entirely passive; in the terms of the traditional understanding of the Aristotelian four causes, matter plays the role of sheer potentiality. It has no determinations of its own but is instead the mere passive recipient of the determinations imposed upon it. As utterly passive, the matter would not today be considered a cause. A thing is a cause by virtue of its actuality, and matter is precisely what lacks all actuality of its own. The matter is thus not responsible for what is done to it and does not receive the credit or take the blame for the forms some external agent has imposed upon it. The matter is therefore the complete antithesis of what we mean today by cause.
In fact, only one of the four causes, the so-called efficient cause, would today be recognized as a cause. The common interpretation of Aristotle, then, is that he did include in his theory what we mean by cause, but that is to be found only in his concept of the efficient cause. Aristotle, however, also included other factors of change or motion (the matter, the form, and the end) under an expanded concept of cause. On this understanding, the concept of cause is therefore not a univocal one in [17] Aristotle: the silversmith and the silver are not causes in the same sense. They do both contribute to the chalice, but the one acts and the other is acted upon; these may conceivably both be called causes, but only the efficient cause is a cause in the proper sense. The silver is a cause in some other, improper sense, a sense we today feel no need to include under our concept of cause.
Heidegger’s position is that for Aristotle the four causes are all causes in the same sense. And that sense does not correspond to anything we today call a cause. In particular, Aristotle’s so-called efficient cause is not in fact what we today mean by cause; that is, what Aristotle speaks of cannot rightfully be called an efficient cause: “The silversmith does not act . . . as a causa efficiens. Aristotle’s theory neither knows the cause that would bear this title nor does it use a correspondent Greek term for such a cause” (FT, 11/8).
This says that even the so-called efficient cause is not understood by Aristotle and the Greeks as the responsible agent, as something that produces an effect by its own agency. The Greeks do not know the concept of efficacy or agency as that which imposes a form onto a matter. Correspondingly, change or motion does not mean for the Greeks the imposition of a form onto a matter by an external agent. Furthermore, since change is not the imposition of a form, ancient technology will not be an affair of imposition either.
What then exactly does Aristotle understand by a cause, such that all four causes can be causes in the same sense? In particular, how can both the silver and the silversmith be included in the same sense of cause? According to Heidegger, in the first place, the Aristotelian distinction between the matter and the agent is not the distinction between passivity and activity. Aristotle did not understand the matter as entirely passive nor the maker as entirely active. In other words, the matter is not that which is imposed upon, and the maker is not that which does the imposing. To put it in a preliminary way, we might say that the matter actively participates in the choice of the form; the matter suggests a form to the craftsman, and the craftsman takes direction from that proffered form. Accordingly, the matter is already pregnant with a form and the role of the craftsman is the role of the midwife assisting that form to come to birth. Instead of an imposed upon and an imposer, we have here something like a mutual participation in a common venture, a partnership where the roles of activity and passivity are entirely intermingled.
Heidegger expresses this interpretation of causality by saying that the causes are for Aristotle the conditions to which the produced thing is obliged. Obligation is the one common concept by which all four causes are causes in the same sense. The thing produced is indeed obliged to the various conditions for something different in each case, but the general [18] relation of obligation is the same. What then does Heidegger mean by obligation in this context?
Heidegger’s German term is Verschulden. This word has a wide range of meanings, but it is only one particular nuance that is invoked here. The term is derived from the ordinary German word for “guilt,” die Schuld. Therefore Heidegger has to say explicitly that he does not mean moral obligation in the sense of being guilty for some lapse or failure. Furthermore, the term Verschulden also possesses the connotation of “responsibility.” Again Heidegger rejects this sense: he does not mean here responsible agent, that which brings about an effect by its own agency and so personally takes the credit for that effect. We might say, then, that what Heidegger rejects is both the passive (being guilty for some failure) and the active (responsibility as effective agent) meanings. The sense he is invoking will in a certain manner lie between, or partake of both, activity and passivity.
Perhaps the nuance Heidegger is seeking is expressed in our colloquial expression of gratitude, “Much obliged.” What do we mean when we say to another person that we are much obliged to him or her? We mean that that other person has fostered us in some way or other. Specifically, we do not mean that we owe everything to that other person, that that other person created us, but only that he or she has “helped us along.” The other person has not been so active as to bear the entire responsibility for what we have done or have become, nor has the other person been totally passive. The other, in a certain sense, has neither acted nor failed to act. Our being obliged to the other amounts, instead, to this: he or she has provided for us the conditions out of which we could accomplish what we did accomplish, i.e., the conditions out of which our own accomplishment could come forth. We are much obliged to another not for creation, or for taking away our accomplishment by accomplishing it himself or herself, but for abetting us in our own accomplishment.
That is the nuance Heidegger is trying to express: the four causes are ways of abetting. The thing produced is obliged to the four causes in the sense that the causes provide the conditions, the nurture, out of which the thing can come forth. The causes make it possible for the thing to emerge out in the open, the causes may even coax the thing out, but they do not force it out. The causes are not “personally” responsible for the thing: that means the causes do not effect the thing by their own agency, by external force. All the causes do is to provide the proper conditions, the nourishment, the abetting, required by the thing in order to fulfill its own potential. The causes do not impose that fulfillment, do not force the desired form onto the thing, they merely let that fulfillment come forth, in the active sense of letting, namely abetting.
Thus the fundamental difference between Aristotle’s understanding of cause and our current understanding is that between nurture and force, letting and constraint, abetting and compulsion. That is why for Aristotle there can be four causes and for us there is only one. A chalice can be obliged to the matter, the silver, but cannot be forced into existence by it. If causality is force, then there is only one cause — since the force must be applied by an active agent. If, instead, causality means nurturing, then not only the craftsman, but also the matter, the form, and the purpose may all be causes — by way of providing required conditions. These each provide a different condition, but the sense of their causality is the same: i.e., precisely the sense of abetting or nurture, of providing a favorable condition. The four causes, therefore, are all causes by virtue of being obligations of the thing produced; it is “much obliged” to all four of them. But the thing has no efficient cause in the sense of an external agent to which it owes everything, by which it was compelled into existence. Nothing external forced it into existence, but it did receive assistance in coming to its own self-emergence. That is Heidegger’s radical understanding of the doctrine of the four causes: the causality of each of the causes, including the so-called efficient cause, is a matter of abetting only, not imposition.
Two general questions immediately arise regarding this reading. In the first place, where in Aristotle does Heidegger find this understanding of causality; i.e., what is the textual basis in the Aristotelian corpus for Heidegger’s interpretation? Secondly, where in Heidegger do I find that this is in fact his understanding; i.e., what is the textual basis in Heidegger for this interpretation of Aristotle? These questions arise because the answers are by no means obvious, especially to anything less than the closest possible reading.
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FT (Questão da Técnica):