ABSTRACT
An important contribution of the criticism of causality performed by the Renaissance philosophy of nature and by the Romantic Naturphilosophie was to point out the insufficiency of the externality of causation. As in the criticism of the unidirectionality of causation, this chapter attempts to show the profile of the rational kernel of the Renaissance and the Romantic criticisms of the externality of causation. As understood in modern times, causal determinism asserts the universal operation of efficient causation. The slogan of causal determinism in connection with the problem of change is the Peripatetic dictum, “Omne quod movetur ah alio movetur”—”Whatever moves is moved by something else”. The Renaissance rediscovered the Greek materialistic ideas on the self-movement of matter and the self-sufficiency of nature, which had just vegetated during the Middle Ages. The problem of self-determination, spontaneity, or freedom has traditionally been regarded as an exclusively ethical one.
