Causa sui

The term Causa sui ( Latin Causa for reason, cause and sui for itself) in philosophy sometimes denotes the self- cause , i.e. that is, when something is the cause of its own being. In scholasticism , the term causa sui is used ablative ( causā as ablative) and is to be translated not with "cause of itself" but with "for its own sake".

The term u is used. a. in Plotinus , Descartes , Spinoza , Schelling , Hegel , Kant and Nietzsche . Often referred to as Causa sui , God is the unconditional being. In scholastic terminology, however, Causa sui , understood as "cause of itself", would be a contradiction, since nothing can cause itself to produce itself. The ablative use as "existing for its own sake" does not express a causative relationship to the self, but a teleological one : God exists for his own sake and no longer for an external purpose. In 1940 Robin George Collingwood recognized in his "Essay on Metaphysics" that no system can find its own justification within itself. However, the use of causa sui as "cause of oneself" is not necessarily contradictory: for example, freedom means being the cause of one's own actions. The neo-scholasticism rejects the application of the concept of God as Spinozistic from. In his answer to Caterus' objections to his "Meditationes de prima Philosophia", Descartes uses the term causa sui , applied to God, in the sense of "existing power of himself". While for classical scholasticism only the restricted principle was valid that all contingent things need a cause, but not God, Leibniz adopts the term causa sui as "cause of himself" and demands that all beings need a cause, including God. This conception of God (which contradicts classical theology or natural theology ) will later be described by Bertrand Russell as contradicting and arguing against the existence of God .

literature

• Rudolf Eisler : Dictionary of Philosophical Terms , 1904 [1]
• Friedrich Kirchner: Dictionary of Basic Philosophical Terms , 1907 [2]