Page - 137 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

ble for change in quality, quantity and substance as well as for all other types of change in place, Aristotle at the end of Phys. VIII 8 is able to claim to have shown that no other change besides locomotion can be infinite and continuous, i.e. one without qualification.65 But in showing this he has not only presented a reason for saying that the primary kind of change in place is circular locomotion, but has also provided an argument for a claim already stated at Phys. VIII 2 and on which the whole theory developed in chapter 1–6 of this book depends, namely that a change that is one and eternal in the strict sense is possible and can exist at all.66 There certainly is much more that needs to be said with respect to the arguments presented for the claim that a special kind of locomotion alone, namely circular loco- motion, can be one and eternal; yet, for the purpose of getting a basic idea of what may be Aristotle’s reason for making this claim, this certainly is enough.67 Now that this has been shown, I will return to the discussion of the third argument. But before explaining how all of the arguments given above combine to show that locomotion has ontological priority over the other kinds of change, I will discuss the remarks that Aristotle makes about this kind of priority in connection with the passage in question, as they might tell us more about Aristotle’s view of ontological priority. 5.4 Locomotion has ontological priority 5.4.1 Ontological priority As we have seen in the discussion of the first two arguments, Aristotle does not explicitly qualify the way in which he thinks they show that locomotion is primary, but rather presupposes that the reader is acquainted with the 65 ὅτι μὲν οὖν οὔτ᾽ ἄπειρός ἐστι μεταβολὴ οὐδεμία οὔτε συνεχὴς ἔξω τῆς κύκλῳ φορᾶς ἔστω τοσαῦθ᾽ ἡμῖν εἰρημένα. Phys. VIII 8, 265a10–12. 66 See Phys. VIII 2, 252b9–13. For more on this see section 2.4.3. 67 A thorough analysis of these arguments, which after all are presented on more than three Bekker-pages of text, among other things for instance should also deal with Aristotle discussion of Zeno presented in Phys. VIII 8. For, Zeno’s paradoxes also might make one think that, contrary to what Aristotle claims, there may be an eternal change along a straight line: since the runner, although moving by traversing half the distance of the previous dis- tance by each step, will never reach the endpoint and thus keep on moving forever. A possible answer Aristotle might give to this could be that—if this indeed were an eternal change—it would presuppose that the runner at some earlier point traversed a distance that is larger than the finite cosmos. For, as the distance the runner needs to traverse by every additional step decreases into smaller and yet smaller parts, the distance increases ad infinitum as one goes back in time. Locomotion has ontological priority 137 ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen