Caleb’s Reviews > Self-Determination: The Ethics of Action, Volume 1 > Status Update

This view of action explanation and motivation has historically been of considerable importance. It lies at the heart of scholastic action theory’s appeals to formal causation. In scholastic action theory, the goal or object of an action is seen as giving it content and psychological definition and thereby intelligibility. Put in Aristotelian terms, the object is understood as providing form for the action’s matter.