Page - 66 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

of the first argument for the priority of locomotion in Phys. VIII 7.73 And, as I have stated in the introduction, the discussion of the priority claim is essentially connected with the theory developed in the first six chapters of Book VIII, according to which change needs to exist eternally and there must be a first eternal unmoved mover to which all changes in the universe may be traced. Aristotle thus rightly thought that it is important to deal with this objection, which arises from the discussion that was just com- pleted in Phys. VIII 6. Therefore he starts with this rather specific argument before going into the details of the more general arguments for locomo- tion’s priority. This is made still clearer by the fact that the argument offers a tailor-made solution to the objection that is raised against the priority claim: the way in which change in magnitude and quality is explained makes it obvious that Aristotle is clearly referring here to processes of change that occur in living beings. For the aforementioned reasons it is therefore correct that the argument does not show that locomotion is primary to all kinds of change, but as we have seen, this is because it gives an answer to a specific objection which, if not faced would have seemed to contradict the priority claim. That the argument is so specific is not a problem, since the argument needs to be considered as one of many steps towards the goal of showing that locomo- tion is primary to all kinds of change. And, in fact, this argument is the first of five arguments that are supposed to establish locomotion’s general prior- ity and, hence, to show that this must be the kind of change which is caused directly by the first unmoved mover. This is also what one has to have in mind when reading the corollary sta- ted after the argument (260b5–7). Here the claim is made that if, as Aristo- tle argued in the first two chapters of Phys. VIII, change is eternal, then locomotion, as the primary kind of change, must also be eternal. But from the fact that alteration and change in quantity presuppose change in place only in the restricted sense that something must change place before an ani- mal can engage in alteration or growth, it does not follow, of course, that locomotion must be the eternal motion. Aristotle is certainly aware of this, for otherwise he would have stopped after the first argument, as there would be no need to present four more arguments for the priority claim. In addition, as I already mentioned, nothing has been said thus far about the relation between change in place and change in substance, i.e. generation and corruption; but this, as we shall see, will be done later on. The argu- ment presents one of the reasons why locomotion is correctly called pri- mary and therefore—from what we have seen so far—is a good candidate 73 The last discussion of the third eternity-objection is stated at VIII 6, 259b1–20, while the discussion of the first argument for the priority claim starts at VIII 7, 260a26. 66 Change in quality and quantity of living beings ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen