Condition

(Lat. conditio, from condo, to bring, or put, together; sometimes, on account of a

somewhat similar derivative from condicere, confused with this) is that which is

necessary or at least conducive to the actual operation of a cause, though in

itself, with respect to the particular effect of which it is the condition, possessing

in no sense the nature of causality. Thus the notion of a condition is not that of a

real principle such as actually gives existence to the effect produced (which is

the case in the notion of cause); but rather of a circumstance, or set of

circumstances, in which the cause readily acts, or in which alone it can act.

Thus a sufficient light is a condition of my writing, though it in no sense is, as I

myself am, the cause of the act of writing. The writing is the effect of the writer,

and not of the light by which it was performed. A condition is also to be

distinguished from an occasion, which latter imports no more than an event, or

thing, by reason of the presence of which any other event, or thing, takes

place--as, for example, the passage of the king in state is the occasion of my

removing my hat--while the action, or actual operation, of the cause is absolutely

dependent upon the presence of this particular one, or of some condition.

Condition is, for this reason, distinguished, with respect to the operation of any

particular cause,

as the condition sine quâ non, or condition without the presence of which

this cause is wholly inoperative, and

as the condition simply such--when some one of several possible ones is

necessary to the actual operation of the cause.

To the former class belong such conditions as can be supplied by no others,

such as, for example, that of the combustion of wood. A fire will not burn wood

unless applied to it. The application of the fire to the wood is said to be a

condition sine quâ non of the burning of the wood by the fire. A condition may

further be considered in one of two different forms, either as preparing, disposing,

or applying the causality of a cause towards its exercise in the production of an

effect, or as removing some obstacle that hinders the action of the cause. This

latter form of condition is sometimes known as the causa removens prohibens.

The blinds of a room must be drawn up in order that the sunlight may enter and

illuminate the objects in it. It is to be noted that this is really a condition, and not

a cause, of the event considered. The illumination of the objects in the room is

the effect of the sunlight entering it. This same distinction appears in the

"necessary", or "sufficient" conditions, much employed in mathematical science.

A sufficient condition is one in which, when the antecedent is present, it is

always followed by the consequent. A necessary condition is one in which the

consequent never exists unless this particular antecedent be given.

Some modern systems of Philosophy regard condition in the sense of what in

the Scholastic view would be called accidental modification. Thus Kant upholds

the assertion that time and space condition, or are the conditions of, our

experience, as a priori forms. In this sense also, Hegel makes the conditioned

entity equivalent to the finite entity; as it would indeed also be considered in

Scholastic thought. That which has accidents, or is conditioned in the sense of

limitations or definition, is necessarily, as contingent, in sharp distinction to the

absolute. John Stuart Mill would have the framework, or complete setting in

which anything exists accounted as its conditions; and all the necessary

antecedents, or conditions, the cause of the thing. Thus it would be conditioned

by its complex relationships--again an accidental modification in the Scholastic

sense. We consequently find, in modern philosophical usage generally, and

especially since Hamilton's theory of the Unconditioned was formulated, that the

"conditioned" and the "unconditioned" are used as equivalents of the "necessary"

and "contingent" of the Schoolmen, in the sense that the "necessary" entity is

conceived of as absolute of all determination other than its own aseity, while all

"contingent" entity is defined and limited by a composition in which one of the

factors is potentiality. Hamilton's philosophy of the Unconditioned works out

curiously in the department of ontology. His views were first given to the world in

the form of an article in the Edinburgh Review (October, 1829), in which he

criticized the philosophy of Cousin with regard to the knowledge of the Absolute.

Victor Cousin maintained that we possess an immediate knowledge of the

Unconditioned, Absolute, or Infinite in consciousness. According to Hamilton, the

Unconditioned is either the unconditionally limited or the unconditionally

unlimited. In either case the Unconditioned is unthinkable. For all human

knowledge is relative, in that, "of existence, absolutely and in itself, we know

nothing" (Met., Lect. viii). As a consequence of this doctrine of the relativity of

knowledge, it follows that we are incapable of knowing that which is

unconditioned by relativity. "The mind can conceive, and consequently can know

only the limited, and the conditionally limited". "Conditional limitation", he says

again (Logic, Lect. v) "is the fundamental law of the possibility of thought."

Hence, while the Unconditioned may exist, we cannot know it by experience,

intuition, or reasoning. Hamilton undertakes to explain his doctrine by the

illustration of the whole and the part. It is impossible to conceive a whole to

which addition may not be made, a part from which something may not be taken

away. Hence the two extreme unconditionates are such, that neither can be

conceived as possible, but one of them must be admitted as necessary. Of this,

the Unconditioned, we have no notion either negative or positive. It is not an

object of thought. From such considerations it follows that we cannot conclude

either as to the existence or non-existence of the Absolute. On the other hand,

while our knowledge is of the limited, related, and finite, our belief may go out to

that which has none of these characteristics. Though we cannot know, we may

believe--and, by reason of a supernatural revelation, if such be given, must

believe--in the existence of the Unconditioned as above and beyond all that which

is conceivable by us. Mill very carefully examines Hamilton's use of the word

inconceivable, and finds that it is applied in three senses, in one of which all that

is inexplicable, including the first principles, is held to be inconceivable. The

same doctrine was advanced, in a slightly modified form, by Dean Mansel, in the

Bampton Lecture of 1858. Whatever knowledge we are capable of acquiring of

the Unconditioned is negative. As we can rationally, therefore, form no positive

notion or concept of God, our reason must be helped and supplemented by our

faith in revelation. Both Mansel's and Hamilton's expositions of the doctrine of

relativity are in reality assertions of rational, or philosophical, agnosticism.

Thus, while professing to be theists, writers of this stamp are not properly to be

accounted such in the strictly philosophical sense. The rational agnosticism that

lies at the base of their theistic system, necessitating, as it does, an appeal to

faith and revelation, vitiates it as a philosophy. The thesis advanced by them

may, however, be criticized and amended in the following manner. It is true that

the entire content of the Universe must be regarded, in comparison with its

Creator, as limited or conditioned. It does not therefore follow that no rational

inference can be drawn from the conditioned to the Absolute. On the contrary,

the nerve of the theistic inference, tacitly, if not expressly, presupposed in all

forms of the theistic argument, lies in the Thomistic distinction between the

Necessary and the possible (or contingent). The existence of contingent beings,

limited or conditioned things, postulates the existence of the Necessary Being,

the one Unlimited and Unconditioned Thing. The argument in its developed form

may be seen in the article THEISM. But it may be here pointed out that the

inference from the contingent to the Necessary--necessitated, as it is, by the

normal psychological action of the discursive reason--presupposes certain

principles which are not always kept clearly in view. The Scholastic synthesis

recognizes the reality of the contingent. It asserts that the human intelligence

can rise above the phenomena of sense-perception to the actual substance that

provides a basis and offers a rational explanation, at the same time

psychological and ontological, of and for these. And it is in the changes and

alterations of "substance" (see HYLOMORPHISM) that it perceives the essential

contingency of all created things. From this perception it rises, by a strictly

argumentative process, to the assertion of the Necessary or Unconditioned--and

this with no appeal either to revelation or to faith. The knowledge of the

Unconditioned thus reached is of two kinds: firstly, that the Unconditioned is, and

that its existence is necessarily to be inferred from the existence of the possible

or contingent (conditioned); secondly, that, as Unconditioned, or Necessary, the

conceptions that we possess of it are to be found principally by the way of the

negation of imperfections. Thus the Unconditioned, with regard to time, is

Eternal; with regard to space, Unlimited, Infinite, Omnipresent; with regard to

power, Omnipotent; and so on through the categories, removing the

imperfections and asserting the plenitude of perfection. The argument may be

found stated in the "Summa Theologica" of St. Thomas (I:2:3) where it is given as

the third way of knowing Utrum Deus sit.

Francis Aveling

Transcribed by Rick McCarty

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IV

Nihil Obstat. Remy Lafort, Censor

Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

The Catholic Encyclopedia: NewAdvent.org