Seite - 145 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

mary (because then everything that is changing would be perishable) it is clear that also none of the succeeding changes are prior, and by succeed- ing I mean growth, and then alteration, diminution, and corruption. For all are later then coming to be, so that if not even coming to be is prior to locomotion, also none of the other changes. The argument presented in these lines aims at showing that locomotion in general is prior in time to the other kinds of change. Aristotle thinks this follows directly from the fact that locomotion is the only change which can be eternal and which eternal things can undergo: in virtue of being the only possible candidate for the eternal change that is directly caused by the first unmoved mover, locomotion is temporally prior to any occurrence of each of the other three kinds of change insofar as this eternal locomotion will always be going on before any of these other changes occurs. In the majority of this passage Aristotle is discussing a possible objection that might contradict his thesis about temporal priority, namely that there seem to be cases which rather suggest that locomotion with respect to time is the last of the different kinds of change, since in the development that liv- ing beings are subject to, the relevant thing alone is able to undergo its spe- cific locomotion after it has already undergone alteration and growth, and first of all has come into being, i.e. undergone generation. This objection, however, will be rebutted by making reference to the eternal movements of the heavens that are the cause of every other kind of change and which also temporally precede the changes that occur in the sublunary sphere. In order to make this clear a more detailed analysis of the passage is necessary. Therefore, I will now present my examination of this passage, in which I will proceed as follows. I will begin by examining how the fact that the only kind of change eter- nal things can undergo is change in place shows that locomotion has tem- poral priority over the other kinds of change (6.2). After that I will discuss an objection that may be raised against this claim, namely that locomotion, with respect to individual perishable things like living beings, appears not to be the primary, but rather the last kind of change, which might make one think that not locomotion, but rather generation, is the primary kind of change (6.3). I will argue that the appropriate reply to this objection is that every generation of such an individual being is temporally preceded by an eternal locomotion and that the objection therefore poses no threat to Aris- totle’s thesis about locomotion having priority in time (6.5). Finally, I will end by summarizing the results of this chapter (6.6). Overview 145 ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen