Aitia aristotle biography

Topic in Aristotelian philosophy

See also: Potentiality and actuality

This article uses the word 'cause' in its traditional scholarly philosophical sense, not to be confused with the word's main usage in current ordinary language.

The four causes or four explanations are, in Aristotelian thought, categories of questions that explain "the why's" of something that exists or changes in nature.

The four causes are the: material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause, and the final cause. Aristotle wrote that "we do not have knowledge of a thing until we have grasped its why, that is to say, its cause."^[1][2] While there are cases in which classifying a "cause" is difficult, or in which "causes" might merge, Aristotle held that his four "causes" provided an analytical scheme of general applicability.^[3]

Aristotle's word aitia (αἰτία) has, in philosophical scholarly tradition, been translated as 'cause'.

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