Page - 159 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

The following diagram may help us to summarize what was stated in this section, i.e. to reformulate in what way it is correct in general to say that locomotion is prior in time to any occurrence of generation, although loco- motion seems to be posterior in time in things that undergo this process: B A B → → locom tion of x’s father coming to be of x t1 t2 t3 t eternal locomPtion of the sun o Fig.2 This diagram shows three changes: (1) the eternal locomotion of the sun which has neither beginning nor end, (2) the coming to be of something x, and (3) the locomotion of x’s father, which precedes x’s coming to be. The coming to be of a new living being x, of a man for instance, begins at t2. At t3, that is at a rather late point of its coming into being, x has devel- oped to such a high degree that it is able to move itself as a whole from one place to another, i.e. it has the capacity to perform its specific locomotion from then on. Since x has already undergone both alteration and growth as a whole before t3, locomotion with respect to this process of coming to be is the last of the four kinds of change. Yet, Aristotle points out that for x to come to be there must be some cause that undergoes locomotion prior to x’s coming to be. As we have seen, it is x’s father as well as the sun that are responsible for x’s coming to be, and both of these undergo locomotion that is prior to the process of generation started at t2. Yet, the sun’s locomotion temporally precedes not only the coming to be of x, but also the locomotion (as well as the coming to be) of x’s father. In this way, every process of com- ing to be depends on an eternal change in place that is always temporally prior to the respective case of coming to be. Thus, one can conclude that with respect to any process of coming to be there is a locomotion that is prior to it in time, that is not preceded by any other change, and without obviously takes Aristotle to be referring to an infinite chain of perishable beings here, i.e. that ἕτερον merely refers to another member of the species and not, as the argument presupposes, to some eternal thing that undergoes locomotion. The locomotion of the sun as a cause of generation 159 ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen