Formal and Proper: Substantial Form and Essential Accidents in Thomas Aquinas
Aquinas, following Aristotle, distinguishes between substances and their accidents: that is, between things and their attributes. He also distinguishes between proper accidents (also known as properties in Scholastic terminology) and accidental accidents, that is, between accidents that belong to a...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2025
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| In: |
American catholic philosophical quarterly
Year: 2025, Volume: 99, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-18 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Aquinas, following Aristotle, distinguishes between substances and their accidents: that is, between things and their attributes. He also distinguishes between proper accidents (also known as properties in Scholastic terminology) and accidental accidents, that is, between accidents that belong to a substance in virtue of what it is, and accidents that belong to it due to extrinsic factors. Aquinas says that a thing's proper accidents are caused by the thing's own essential principles. John Wippel interprets Aquinas as holding that a substance efficiently causes its own proper accidents. I argue that Aquinas is more plausibly read as holding that a substance formally causes its own proper accidents. Formal causality extends to more than just the informing of matter. Formal causality is a principle of determination: being a certain substance involves the determination of having certain proper accidents. |
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| ISSN: | 2153-8441 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: American catholic philosophical quarterly
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.5840/acpq2025416304 |
