  Generally, Aristotle does not respect these sorts of commitments. Thus, to the extent that they are defensible, his approach to aitia may be regarded as blurring the canons of causation and explanation. It should certainly not, however, be ceded up front that Aristotle is guilty of any such conflation, or even that scholars who render his account of the four aitia in causal terms have failed to come to grips with developments in causal theory in the wake of Hume. Rather, because of the lack of uniformity in contemporary accounts of causation and explanation, and a persistent and justifiable tendency to regard causal explanations as foundational relative to other sorts of explanations, we may legitimately wonder whether Aristotle’s conception of the four aitia is in any significant way discontinuous with later, Humean-inspired approaches, and then again, to the degree that it is, whether Aristotle’s approach suffers for the comparison. Be that as it may, we will do well when considering Aristotle’s defense of his four aitia to bear in mind that controversy surrounds how best to construe his knowledge-driven approach to causation and explanation relative to some later approaches. 