Causality in Early Modern Philosophy

At the beginning of the Modern Age, two important changes occur in relation to the understanding of causality. On one hand, there is a reduction of the four Aristotelian causes to the efficient one. On the other hand, causality passes from an ontological to an epistemological register. Much ground has been covered from the fourfold consideration of the cause as constitutive and explanatory of beings and their movements, to the conception of cause as the relation between two events whose reality and epistemological validity (or necessity) must be justified. This book seeks to tell part of that story. Eight authors are studied from a historical viewpoint: Suárez, Bacon, Boyle, Hobbes, Descartes, Pascal, Spinoza, and Leibniz. From a systematic viewpoint, the contributions gathered herein can be arranged in keeping with the three realms of inquiry that correspond to the threefold angle according to which Descartes develops his explanation of causality: the interaction between bodies, the interaction between body and soul, and the causal relationship between God and finite substances.