Elementy koncepcji przyczynowości w wizji świata Piotra Teilharda de Chardin

Abstract

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin did not systematically elaborate the idea of causality. Considering chronology, three approaches to the mentioned question can be found in his works. The first of them is connected with the, by him developed, unity metaphysics and formulated in essays from the time of the 1st world war, namely in La lutte contre la multitude and in L’union creatrice. The cause, in such apprehension, is before all the cause of unification of being. Teilhard de Chardin leans here toward identifying the causative cause with formal one, refering but to Aristotelian tradition, which identified the activity of formal cause with the cantering of being unity. Teilhard de Chardin tries to handle the causality problem in another way in the essay Sur la notion de transformation creatrice. He refers here to the classic conception of causative activity. In such apprehension vanishes the question of unifying cause. Teilhard de Chardin stresses but the necessity of extending the creative influence of Primary Cause to all in the world occurring processes, the result of which is the development of qualitatively new being. The third approach to causality question appears, explicitly formulated, in Le phenomene humain. He limits here the sense of causative bond to the successing events and does not inquire into extra-phenomenal causative-consecutive connections. Such attitude corresponds with the represented by him tendency to construct the „scientific phenomenology of cosmos”. However, he did not avoid metaphysics. Even but in such apprehension there is evident the, adumbrated in the scope of unity metaphysics, conception of unifying activity, expressed by the „law of consciousness – compositeness”.