Page - 151 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

Aristotle thinks this is no reason to deny locomotion’s general temporal priority. Having raised the problem, Aristotle then states what he thinks is an appropriate answer to it. In order to do so he makes the following four points: (1) any process of coming to be presupposes that there is some other thing that undergoes locomotion (ἕτερον κινούμενον) previous to the occurrence of this process.21 This assumption is further specified by point- ing out that (2) this previously moving thing needs to be the cause (αἰτία) of that which is coming to be22, and (3) that this thing (which one may call the generator) “itself is and is not coming to be”.23 (4) The relation between the generator and that which it causes to come into being is further quali- fied by being compared to that of the begetter (γεννῆσαν) and the begotten (γεννηθέν)24, for the former is what is causally responsible for the coming to be of the begotten. The cases Aristotle probably has in mind here are those of, for instance, a father that, serving as the generator, causes the coming to be of his child. For the father in contrast to his child already is a human being in the fullest sense possible, i.e. in actuality, and is no longer undergoing a process of coming to be (see claim (3)). But the relation between the father as the gen- erator and that which is generated, i.e. the child, lies not only in the fact that the former is the cause of the latter’s coming into being and that this is the case because of the father’s maturity, but according to what is stated in claim (1) also that the father for some reason needs to perform a change in place prior to the generation of the child. This is plausible insofar as the father in order to become a generator and to beget a child needs to come in contact with a female, that is, the potential mother of the child. Because they are not always in this state of contact, in principle either the father, or the mother, or both need to move towards each other, i.e. change in place. Yet, as Aristotle holds the view that the father as the bearer of the form of the human being, in contrast to the mother, who provides the matter, is the 21 ἀλλ᾽ ἕτερον ἀνάγκη κινούμενον εἶναι κατὰ φορὰν πρότερον, Phys. VIII 7, 261a1: “Yet, it is necessary that there is something else which is undergoing locomotion before”. The same thought is expressed five lines later: ἀλλ᾽ ἕτερον ἀναγκαῖον πρότερόν τι κινεῖσθαι τῶν γιγνομένων, Phys. VIII 7, 261a6: “but it is necessary that some other thing is changing prior to the things that are coming to be” 22 ὃ καὶ τῆς γενέσεως αἴτιον ἔσται τοῖς γιγνομένοις, Phys. VIII 7, 261a1–2: “and that will be responsible for the coming to be of the things that are coming to be”. 23 ὂν αὐτὸ καὶ μὴ γιγνόμενον, Phys. VIII 7, 261a7. Five lines earlier, in 261a2, basically the same claim was made, yet there it was only stated that the generator is οὐ γιγνόμενον and not that it “itself is”, which however, follows from the fact that it causes a change and is not in a process of becoming. 24 οἷον τὸ γεννῆσαν τοῦ γεννηθέντος, Phys. VIII 7, 261a2–3: “as for instance that which begets for what is begotten”. Coming to be presupposes an earlier locomotion 151 ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen