Page - 162 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

claims it needs to be, a change that has its primary source in the first unmoved mover, and which for this reason also temporally precedes all of the finite changes that occur in the cosmos. 6.6 Conclusion What are the results of the analysis of the fourth argument for locomotion’s primacy? First of all I have shown in what way the fact that locomotion is the only kind of change eternal things may be subject to implies locomo- tion’s temporal priority over the other kinds of change: as was shown in the previous chapter, locomotion alone can be eternal and therefore is the only possible candidate for the change eternal things undergo, which also makes it the only candidate for the primary change that is directly caused by the first unmoved mover. In virtue of being eternal and having no beginning or end, the changes which eternal things undergo necessarily precede any instance of the other three kinds of change in time, as each of them is always finite. Accordingly, locomotion in virtue of being the only possible candidate for the eternal change that is directly caused by the first unmoved mover has temporal priority over any occurrence of each of the other three kinds of change, insofar as this eternal locomotion will always be going on before the occurrence of any of these other changes. Yet, in contrast to this it seemed that there are cases which rather suggest that locomotion with respect to time is the last of the changes. For, in the development that living beings are subject to, these things are only able to undergo their specific locomotion after they have already undergone altera- tion and growth. The discussion of this objection has also made clear that against this background one might even come to think that generation in general, and not locomotion, is the primary kind of change. For the three kinds of non-substantial change, and corruption as well, presuppose the existence of an object with respect to which they may occur, and that, as it appears, needs to be brought into being before it may be subject to a change. Since the fact of locomotion’s posteriority in this sense seems to contra- dict the claim about locomotion having temporal priority over the other kinds of change, Aristotle devotes the majority of the passage to rebutting this objection. And as we have seen, the case at issue is actually compatible with Aristotle’s claim about locomotion’s temporal priority. For, each gen- eration of some thing is partly caused by the sun and its eternal change in place, and hence the generation that, with respect to perishable things, pre- cedes locomotion is itself preceded by a locomotion that is not preceded by any change. By making use of this causal connection between the changes 162 Locomotion has temporal priority ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen