Abstract

In his second book, The Psychology of Aristotle, Franz Brentano added an appendix on the causality of God according to Aristotle. In previous pages of this work, he had argued that the active intellect is part of the human soul, which is a spiritual substance. Since something spiritual cannot be originated in a physical way, each soul is created directly by God. Brentano knew that many interpreters of his time, especially Eduard Zeller, not only did not accept that Aristotle thought of God as creator, but they also understood the first unmoved mover only as a final cause. This article disregards the question of creation, but it does take into consideration the reasons given by Brentano in that appendix for understanding the first unmoved mover not only as a final cause, but also as an efficient one. It also briefly reviews some manuscripts from the same period that deal with this same topic. Although Brentano is heavily influenced by a Christian and particularly Thomistic philosophical framework, this does not prevent him from providing compelling reasons for defending the plausibility of attributing efficient causality to the first unmoved mover.