Final Causation in Thomas Aquinas and Contemporary Metaphysics

The medieval notion of final causation is often either maligned or ignored in contemporary philosophy, especially in metaphysics. In this dissertation, I contend that such treatment is ill deserved. In particular, I argue that the theory of final causation found in the work of Thomas Aquinas is both philosophically sophisticated and directly relevant to contemporary philosophical debates. Aquinas can be shown to share philosophical commitments with dispositional essentialists, those metaphysicians who believe that at least some sparse properties are essentially dispositional or powerful. This fact suggests some avenues for further research that draws on this connection between Aquinas and contemporary metaphysics.;In the first chapter, I survey both some commonly espoused reasons to reject final causes and existing literature on Aquinas's views about final causation. The second chapter contains my own exposition of Aquinas's views about final causation in the ordinary material world---I restrict my attention to what he has to say about matter-form composites, though many points are more broadly applicable. In the third chapter I discuss the three major contemporary views of causal powers (Humeanism, nomic necessitation, and dispositional essentialism) and demonstrate that dispositional essentialists are committed, de re if not de dicto, to final causes in Aquinas's sense. Finally, in the fourth chapter I explore the potential for two research projects that build upon this fact, one involving proper function in the philosophy of biology, and one involving a connection between debates over the intentionality of powers and Aquinas's Fifth Way argument for God's existence.