Alpha Omega, XVI, n. 3, 2013 - pp. 399-414 From Aristotle’s Four Causes to Aquinas’ Ultimate Causes of Being: Modern Interpretations Jason A. Mitchell, L.C. In the concluding chapter of his The Metaphysics of Being of St. Thomas Aquinas in a Historical Perspective, Leo Elders deals with Aristotle’s four causes and determines that the study of material cau- sality has no place at all in Thomistic metaphysics. 1 He allows, though, that in metaphysics there are forms of causality that are analo- gous to material causality: the potentiality of substance with regard to its accidents, of a faculty with regard to its action, and of essence with regard to being. 2 This insight, in my opinion, needs to be pursued further, and there is a need to distinguish more precisely physical causality and meta- physical causality in both Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. The analog- ical nature of the four causes and Aristotle’s distinction between cau- sality in the Physics and causality in the Metaphysics has been studied extensively by Enrico Berti in Aristotele: Dalla dialettica alla filosofia prima (1977) 3 . After summarizing some of Berti’s conclu- sions, we can proceed to Aquinas’ metaphysical thought on causality, _____________ 1 See L. ELDERS, The Metaphysics of Being of St. Thomas Aquinas in a Historical Per- spective, E.J. Brill, Leiden 1993, 293. 2 Ibid. 3 It is one of the few treatises that attempts a global consideration of Aristotelian causality.