Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

GLOSSARY 391
cause, efficient:
cause, final:
cause, primary and
secondary:
cause, procatarctic:
cause, proximate and
remote:
common notions:
logical consequence of E. The most famous exponent
of this theory was Spinoza.
a translation of ‘causa efficiens’, a term which was
used by medieval philosophers and which was still in
use in the seventeenth century. The term goes back to
Aristotle, who stated that an ‘efficient’ cause is a
source of change or of coming to rest (Physics, II, 3).
So, for example, a man who gives advice is an
efficient cause, and a father is the efficient cause of
his child.
a term that renders the Latin ‘causa finalis’. ‘Final’
does not mean here last or ultimate, as when one
speaks of a ‘final curtain’. Rather, a final cause is that
for the sake of which something is done. The term
goes back to Aristotle, who said that a final cause is
an end: e.g. health is the final cause of taking a walk
(Physics, II, 3). See also ‘teleology’.
as explained in a seventeenth-century textbook of
logic, a ‘primary cause’ is one which produces an
effect by its own power; a ‘secondary cause’ is one
which, in various ways, assists in the production of
the effect (Heereboord, Hermeneia Logica (1650),
pp. 106–9).
a term derived from the Greek ‘prokatarktikos’,
‘antecedent’. A procatarctic cause was regarded as
one kind of secondary cause (q.v.); it is external to a
primary cause, and excites it to action.
a proximate cause is one which is immediately prior
to the effect. Thus, if a billiard ball B moves because
it is struck by billiard ball A, the impact of A on B is
the proximate cause of the movement of B. The
movement of A is itself the effect of some other cause
or causes, say the movement of the cue which strikes
A. In such a case, the movement of the cue will be the
proximate cause of the movement of A, and the
remote cause of the movement of B.
a translation of the Latin term ‘notiones communes’,
which is in turn a translation of the Greek ‘koinai
ennoai’, by which Euclid referred to the axioms of his
geometry. The term is used by both Descartes and
Spinoza, who also employ the term ‘axioma’, a Latin
version of a Greek word whose use in mathematics is
mentioned by Aristotle (Metaphysics, Book Gamma,
ch. 3).