Copy cause
The expression “ exemplar cause” comes from the philosophical epistemology and ontology of scholasticism and describes the relation between universals and the essence of individual things , including those that are only possible or only imagined. It is different from this u. a. the principle of explanation not of the essence, but of the existence of an actually existing individual thing, the so-called effective cause . God is, for example, Thomas Aquinas, Specimen cause of its own simple effect. The concept of the exemplar cause is initially a fifth type of cause in addition to the four differentiated by Aristotle . The specifically monotheistic modification lies in the fact that an ideal archetype of all things is thought to be pre-existent in God's eternal idea of creation, which particularly relates to the ethics of virtue and striving : God is good itself and thus the goal and model of all reasonable striving. While the effective and final causes come into question as delimitations, the exemplar cause is often combined with the formal causeof Aristotle identified or combined and spoken of a "causa formalis exemplaris". Scholastic theologians understand Christ as the exemplary cause of all that is. Francisco Suárez discusses the doctrine of causes in a degree of precision and detail that is largely conclusive for scholasticism.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Summa Theologiae I, q. 47, loc. 1.1
- ↑ For example Bonaventure , I Sent. d. 8, 1,1,1 - German also in: About the reason of certainty, 73
Web links
- Walter Brugger : Sum of a philosophical doctrine of God. Berchmans, Munich 1979.
- Michael Renemann: Comparisons on the subject of "De causa exemplari"