Key Terms: Ancient Greek Philosophy 1: Aristotle

Question	Answer
Material cause	That out of which a thing is made. The material cause of a statue is its marble or bronze.
Formal cause	The blueprint which guides the thing towards its full realisation
Efficient cause	The process which brings the thing to thing to completion (eg, the growth of the acorn).
Final cause	That for the sake of which (as, for instance, in the case of the oak tree, to produce more acorns, to produce timber, to please the eye, etc.) a thing comes to be.
Brute facts	Things that are just there, without any explanation.
Potentiality	Imperfection, partiality, finalisability
Actuality	Perfection, completeness, totality.
Actus Purus	Pure actuality.
The Prime Mover	Aristotle’s term for God. God moves without being moved in return.
Necessary	Something self-explanatory: it has to exist, and cannot be conceived not to.
Contingent	Something whose explanation lies outside itself. It therefore might have existed differently, or not at all.
Aseity	From the Latin a se esse, being from oneself, usually translated as “self existence”. Has at least four aspects.
Don Cupitt (1934-)	An English philosopher of religion and scholar of Christian theology. He is an Anglican priest and an emeritus professor of the University of Cambridge
Sempiternal	The quality of being inside time but lasting for ever. Not the same thing as eternal, which involves being outside time.

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	Created by Izzy Noone over 6 years ago