The First Cause Mysterious

A philosopher's willingness to tolerate what I called 'mystery' would be shown, I said, in his willingness to accept that something was true without his being able to say precisely, or without apparent paradox, how that was true.

I assume that it would not be appropriate for anyone to tolerate mystery generally. It would be appropriate to accept this in some domains only, and, furthermore, one should give some explanation as to why mystery should be accepted that domain in particular.

If Aristotle were like that as regards the First Cause, then, for instance, he might adopt some such position as: we can know that the First Cause moves the First Heaven, and yet we cannot explain clearly how precisely it does so (say, because we cannot understand exactly how a final and efficient cause coincide). And of course he would also provide some account of why we should expect that an account of the First Cause would thus be mysterious.

I wonder whether every philosopher isn't constrained to admit 'mystery' in the sense explained, and the dispute can only be over what one handles in this way. (To prove this, one might go to, say, Quine or Russell, and show how each inevitably admits mysteries--also, that the appeal of their viewpoints, as philosophical viewpoints, depends precisely on this.)

But then aren't there plenty of signs that Aristotle thinks that an account of the First Cause is a 'mystery'? I'll mention three:

1. His comparison in Little Alpha, viz. that the human mind is related to such things as the First Cause, as the eyes of a bat are related to sunlight. (Note: the bat is by nature not fitted to see things in bright light. That is, it never changes and develops good eyes for seeing things in sunlight.)

2. The character of his retrospective in Lambda 10. Here he looks back over his argument for a fully actualized First Mover. He seems to be aware that his view poses problems. And yet his response is not to say that the problems can be dissolved, but rather that any other alternative is beset with worse, intolerable problems.

3. The nature of his argument at the beginning of M. If Broadie were right, then Aristotle develops his account of the First Cause in such a way that it is clear throughout that this account is not vulnerable to objections such as those that Aristotle would raise against the Forms. But that is not the state of the argument at the beginning of M. There Aristotle shows a real concern that his account will indeed look to be as obscure and problematic as the Forms ("...if there is anything which they say wrongly, we may not be liable to the same objections"1076a14). That the Forms especially need to be criticized after the presentation of Lambda shows that he regards his theory as evoking a similar sort of perplexity.