Suárez's Theory of Prime Matter
Creators: name: Åkerlund, Erik
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019

description: Prime Matter as a Material Cause Suárez’s treatment of the prime matter is set within his treatment of causes in the <em>Disputationes metaphysicae </em>(<em>DM</em>). This treatment of causes comprises around on third of the whole <em>DM </em>(disputations 12 through 27). The placement of his treatment of prime matter – as a material cause – is important for understanding it, and prime matter plays a role in at least three ways in Suárez’s philosophy. First, Suárez’s treatment of the prime matter is “vicarious” for the treatment of material causation <em>per se</em>. As he writes, Praetermitto disputationem in communi de causa materiali, ut abstrahit a causa substantiae, vel accidentis: quoniam potissima ratio hujus causae cernitur in materia prima: et, si in illa declaretur, facile erit reliqua cum proportione intelligere (<em>DM</em> 13, <em>Prologue</em>) I leave aside a general discussion of the material cause, as this abstracts from a substantial or accidental cause, because the nature of this cause is best discerned in prime matter. And if the nature [of the material cause] were to be shown on account of this [i.e., of prime matter], it would be easy to understand in the remaining [kinds of material causes] by proportion. So, what Suárez writes about the prime matter should be understood also as a treatment of material causation, generally. Second, and connected to the first point, the treatment of prime matter shows what it means for something to be a subject of something else in general. When treating accidents, for example, Suárez writes that Explicata causalitate materiali in prima radice et causa illius generis, facile est eam applicare ad omnia subjecta quae hujusmodi genus causalitatis exercent circa accidentia (<em>DM </em>14, <em>Prologue</em>) . Having explicated material causality with regards to the primary root and cause of that kind, it is easy to apply it to all subjects that exert this kind of causality on accidents. The subject of an accident is, basically, the substance in which the accident inheres. Dico ergo, substantiam per seipsam […] posse esse causam materialem immediate in se recipientem aliquod accidens (DM 14, s. 2, § 4). I, therefore, say that a substance in itself […] can be the immediate material cause that receives in itself some accident. (In the left-out parts of the quote, Suárez denies that there is something distinct from the substance in or through which the accident is received. This denial is not relevant in the present context, though, as it is clear enough from the quote as it stands that a substance can be a material cause of an accident). This is one of the senses in which a substance can also be a material cause, then: as a subject of accidents. Third and last, Suárez’ treatment of prime matter can be understood from the point of view of the treatment of the form-matter-composition of substances, and the search for the “ultimate” subject in which forms inhere. Cum ergo omne naturale compositum ita per se sit, ut secundum se totum non pendeat in genere causae materialis ab aliquo subjecto, quod extra ipsum sit: necesse est ut intra se habeat aliquod subjectum, quod sit primum respectu omnium aliarum entitatum ex quibus constat, et in subjecto sunt. Sic igitur evidens est dari materiam primam, seu subjectum primum in rebus naturalibus (<em>DM </em>13, s. 1, § 4). As therefore every natural composite is in itself so, that in itself as a whole it does not depend on any subject in the order of material causes beside itself, it necessarily has within itself some subject which is primary with respect to all other entities, of which it consists, and which are in the subject. So it is therefore evident that there is prime matter or a first subject in natural things. So, from the causal role it plays in the form-matter-composite, prime matter can serve as a paradigm of material causes and material causality in general.