Teoria przyczynowania narzędnego jako przyczynowania sprawczego w tekstach Tomasza z Akwinu

The article is an interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’s theory of secondary causation, in which instrumental causation which plays the role of efficient causation. Since Thomas never wrote a complete theory of secondary causation, a reconstruction is needed. What is at stake is a coherent interpretation of the difference between God's efficient causation and secondary causation. Because Thomas claims that God is the First Cause in all orders of causation, secondary causation should be interpreted as instrumental causation. However, this leads to the problem of the autonomy of secondary causation. The article calls attention to five aspects of the issue. (1) Of the two different orders that appear in Thomas's metaphysics, those of creation and efficient causation, only the second is referred to in terms of "instrumental causation". (2) Since an instrumental cause acts only when the first cause gives its own power to it, the resulting double causation leads to two kinds of effects, those from the First Cause (the act of being) and those from the instrumental cause and the first cause (the nature or essence). (3) Thomas uses various terms to explain the theory of efficient causation. (4) Since he claims that accidentality is a result of secondary causal activity, the effect of instrumental causation in a particular remains to be defined. (5) Although Thomas claims that the human soul is exclusively an effect of God's creative causation, he never analyzes the soul in the order of efficient causation. Thus, one may ask about the ontological status of the soul in the order of efficient instrumental causation. I claim that this kind of inquiry would contribute to a reconstruction of Thomas's full theory of causation.