Page - 118 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

5.2 The unity of the eternal change 5.2.1 Two ways in which change may be eternal As we have seen, the starting point of the argument is the assumption that change is eternal. Aristotle then presents the only two ways in which this in principle may be possible: εἴη δ᾽ ἂν συνεχῶς [1] ἢ συνεχὴς οὖσα [2] ἢ ἐφεξῆς6 As I will show in this section, these two ways in which change may exist continuously, i.e. be eternal, are that either (1) there is one single change which is “continuous” (συνεχής) as a whole, or (2) that change is eternal in virtue of there being a succession of changes that follow “one after another” (ἐφεξῆς) in some way and thereby so to speak would form an eternal change. The sentence quoted above could accordingly be translated like this: “it would exist continuously either [by being] continuous, or [by there being] one [change] after another.” That these are the two basic options for an explanation of how change may be eternal is clear from what the term ‘eternal’ represents: something x is eternal when there is no time at which x is not. As we have just seen, this accordingly means for change that, given that it is eternal as is stated in Phys. VIII 1, this is the case either because there are a number of different changes that somehow are responsible for there being eternal change, or because there is one single change; either of the two options being the case implies that there is no time at which there is no change.7 This, however, makes clear that the term ‘change’ in this con- text is used in two different senses, namely as a count noun, in order to refer to one or more individual occurrences of change, but also as a mass term in the sense that Aristotle points out that in general some change is always occurring, without making clear how many different individual changes this involves, i.e. which of these two options is correct.8 Aristotle basically argues that change, in the sense of a mass term, exists continuously, in that 6 Phys. VIII 7, 260b20–21. 7 This, of course, does not exclude the possibility that there is one single eternal change— or several eternal changes—and at the same time a number of changes, which taken by itself would already make change eternal. As I said, Aristotle here first of all points out the two basic ways in which it is possible in principle to account for the eternal existence of change. 8 As we will see there is yet another ambiguity with respect to Aristotle’s usage of the term change, namely insofar as ‘change’ as a count noun is applied in two significantly different ways that one needs to be aware of if one is to make sense not only of the argument presented here in Phys. VIII 7, but also of other arguments in Phys. VIII in general. 118 All changes depend on the first locomotion, but not vice versa ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen