I reexamine in this paper Aristotle’s apparently contradictory doctrines regarding the causality of the prime mover. In the scholarship to date on the problem, I argue, the best grounds for a “coherence theory” of the relevant difficult texts have not yet been eliminated or even considered. My findings lead me to call into question the received scholarly opinion that Aristotle’s prime mover is an exclusively final cause and to defend in a new way the efficient causal interpretation, using the greatest commentators on Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias and Averroes. Before embarking on this project in Part 2, I first identify what I mean by a “coherence theory,” and I locate the problems with theories that are current. In Part 1, then, there emerges an argument for how to proceed, as well as a foundation for an alternative position. At the center of Part 2, I introduce the key to dissolving the apparent textual incoherences: Aristotle’s absolutely first mover should be thought of first, not as an “efficient,” but as a “source cause” whence motion begins, since it moves, not as an artist, but as the art in the first artist’s mind. Part 3 proposes, as a result, a new reading of the “Problem Text” of Metaphysics Λ.7 that suggests an
“exclusively final cause.”