Abstract

For historiographical reasons, certain aspects of the philosophy of the Late Middle Ages have been neglected. One such area is the question of final causation, where there is a gap in our knowledge and understanding of how this notion developed from the mid-14th century up until the 1600s. Often pointed to as one of the most important points, or sometimes the most important point, on which so called Early Modern philosophy diverges from Scholastic philosophy, this lack severely impedes our ability to write an adequate history of philosophy spanning these centuries. In this talk, the notion of final causation as treated in the works of Chrysostom Javellus (1472–1538) and Francis Silvestri (of Ferrara) (1474–1526) will be presented. One can see here that the problem of final causation as involving something future and thereby not yet real is very much present in them. Javellus solves this problem by distinguishing between the final cause (which is not real), on the one hand, and final causation (which is a real relation), on the other. Silvestri, on the other hand, denies that the end can elicit an action (this rather pertains to efficient causation), but that the end can still be said to specify or shape an act. For both thinkers, final causation only takes place with respect to an act of will performed by a rational agent.