We may mainly pass over as uncontroversial the suggestion that there are efficient causes in favor of the most controversial and difficult of Aristotle four causes, the final cause.[19] We should note before doing so, however, that Aristotle’s commitment to efficient causation does receive a defense in Aristotle’s preferred terminology; he thus does more than many other philosophers who take it as given that causes of an efficient sort are operative. Partly by way of criticizing Plato’s theor