Page - 152 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

generator of the child, the father must clearly undergo a change in place if the two are to come into contact.25 This obviously is the sense in which Aristotle thinks that any coming to be is temporally preceded by some other thing’s locomotion, namely that which serves as its moving cause. Accord- ingly, the locomotion that is responsible for the coming to be of something in this way is prior to, or, as one could also say, earlier than, the generation that is caused, because in order for the latter to occur the causer must first of all undergo a change in place. In this sense, however, it is clear that loco- motion, in virtue of being prior in time to generation, is also prior to altera- tion and growth, which according to the objection were also supposed to precede locomotion. If this is the solution to the problem, then the whole picture would be this: in living things at first glance it seems that locomotion is posterior in time, insofar as it is the last of the different kinds of change which this thing may undergo as a whole in the sense in question. Yet, as we have seen, this is not the case, since in order for the thing to come to be it is necessary that what serves as the moving cause of the thing’s generation change in place beforehand. This also fits very well with Aristotle’s assumption that a species in virtue of consisting of an infinite number of members is eternal.26 For it is not only the case that for instance one human being is caused by another human being, but of course the man who is the father of the next link in this eternal chain of beings himself was caused to come into being by his father, who again was brought into being in the same way. For this reason one might think that this is what Aristotle is referring to when he states that there not only needs to be a generator that changes in place before that which it generates can come to be, but also another thing which again is prior to the former in this sense.27 25 By this I therefore do not mean to say that generation can only occur by the male mov- ing towards the female, while the female does not or even must not be active at all; the point Aristotle wants to make here is that the begetter, and this can only be the father in the proper sense, needs to change in place—no matter whether the mother also does so. 26 For the claim about the eternity of a species in virtue of the infinite series of male members, each of which is “causally responsible for the subsequent members in the series” see Bodnàr (2010), section 4, who in this context also points to Phys. III 6, 206a25–27, where it is stated that there is infinity “with respect to man”, which probably means with respect to the generations of man as the translation of Hardie & Gaye suggests. 27 ἀλλ᾽ ἕτερον ἀναγκαῖον πρότερόν τι κινεῖσθαι τῶν γιγνομένων ὂν αὐτὸ καὶ μὴ γιγνόμενον, καὶ τούτου ἕτερον πρότερον. Phys. VIII 7, 261a6–7: “some other thing is changing prior to the things that are coming to be that itself is and is not coming to be, and another thing prior to this.” Note that the point about another mover that is previous again to the mover of that which is coming to be is left out in the first statement of claim (1). As I will show later on, this sentence has a different meaning than the one it seems to have in the current context. 152 Locomotion has temporal priority ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen