Abstract

Aristotle’s conception of causality and the ones Modern philosophers have bequeathed us have been exhaustively discussed, although the contrast between them has not, in my opinion, been sufficiently highlighted. This paper proposes to fill this gap. I start with Aristotelian causality and his theses that causal explanation requires knowledge of causal laws and that the necessity associated with these laws presupposes the existence of causal powers. I discuss next Locke’s and Leibniz’s attempts to modernize Aristotle’s theses on causality. The third part of the paper presents two paradoxes Hume identified, on the one hand, between Locke’s and Leibniz’s theses about our knowledge of causal laws and, on the other hand, between the Aristotelian thesis that there must be causal powers and the scientific practice of Modernity. Hume’s proposal to eliminate these paradoxes is also discussed. I finish with some critical remarks on the humean model about our knowledge of causal laws as compared with his contribution to the analysis of the concept of causality.