Page - 167 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

to be is incomplete (ἀτελές) and proceeding towards its principle (ἐπ᾽ ἀρχὴν ἰόν), that is, the state of full maturity in which it is complete and in which it begins its life as a full member of the genus to which it belongs. Having attained its principle, the former infant is now no longer under- going the process of coming to be a human being, but has completely received its nature and is now a member of this species in the full sense. In this sense the principle (ἀρχή) is the endpoint of the development of this living thing, but also the starting point at which the full being of the man as a full grown human being begins.5 That this is the picture that Aristotle has in mind in sentence (1) is also suggested by a parallel passage in Metaphysics IX 8 which is part of Aristo- tle’s argument for the claim that ἐνέργεια has priority in essence over δύναμις.6 In this passage it is also stated that what is undergoing the pro- cess of coming to be “proceeds towards a principle”, but in addition the principle (ἀρχή) is explicitly identified with the goal or end (τέλος) at which the process of coming to be aims.7 The end at which the coming to be of a living being aims is maturity, i.e. being what it is not only potentially but in the full sense. As in our passage from the Physics, this passage from the Metaphysics also seems to connect the assumption about the goal directedness of the development of living things with another claim, namely the one stated in sentence (2) that “what is posterior in coming to be is prior in nature”8, or, as it is put in Met. IX 8, is prior in form and essence: 5 See also Beere (2009), 300, who characterises the form as it is used in a similar example in Met. IX 8 in the same way and explains what this means in more detail. 6 See Met. IX 8, 1050a4–9. This passage and the kind of priority discussed there and in its context has been subject to intense scholarly debate (see for instance Witt (1994), Panayides (1999), Makin (2003), and Beere (2009), 293–324.). I shall only deal with it insofar as it is of relevance for developing an understanding of priority in essence that fits both arguments for locomotion’s priority in essence in Phys. VIII 7, which, as I will argue, have to be read in con- junction. Although most of the interpreters of Met. IX 8 at least refer to the first argument, none mentions or discusses the second one. For a minute analysis of the passage from Met. IX 8 that has proved essential to my understanding of the cited passage and its notion of priority in essence see Beere (2009), esp. 293–304. My understanding of this kind of priority is especially indebted to the connection Beere draws between x having priority κατ᾽ οὐσίαν over y and x’s fulfilling more of the norms that are relevant for the form that x and y have in common than y (for this see p.315). Note that, in contrast to Beere and most other inter- preters, I translate κατ᾽ οὐσἰαν with ‘in essence’ for reasons that will become clear later on in this chapter. 7 καὶ ὅτι ἅπαν ἐπ᾽ ἀρχὴν βαδίζει τὸ γιγνόμενον καὶ τέλος (ἀρχὴ γᾶρ τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα, τοῦ τέλους δὲ ἕνεκα ἡ γένεσις), Met. XI 8, 1050a7–9: “and because everything that is com- ing to be proceeds towards a principle, i.e. an end (for, that for the sake of which a thing is, is its principle, and the becoming is for the sake of the end)” (Transl. Ross, with mod.). 8 τὸ τῇ γενέσει ὕστερον τῇ φύσει πρότερον εἶναι, Phys. VIII 7, 261a14. I take it that Locomotion is prior in essence, since it is last in coming to be 167 ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen