Page - 169 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

being. According to this example the man is prior in essence and form to the boy and in the same way the human being to the seed. The reason for this lies in the fact that the man and the human being, in contrast to the boy and the seed, “already have the form” (ἤδη ἔχει τὸ εἶδος), i.e. are fulfilling their respective form and in this way have reached the principle and end at which the process of their coming to be was directed. This is not true for a boy, who is not a man, but who in the process of becoming a man is pro- ceeding towards fulfilling the form of manhood. For example, he is not able to father a child at this stage of his development. In the same way the seed is on its way to become what its coming to be aims at, namely a human being, but it is still far from having reached its form, that is from being a complete human being. The man has more of the characteristics that are specific and essential to being a man, i.e. that represent its essence (οὐσία) and nature (φύσις), than the boy. For this reason the man may be called prior to the boy in essence and in nature. The examples from Met. IX 8 tell us something about the notion of priority in essence which the Physics pas- sage also seems to presuppose. According to this understanding x has prior- ity in essence over y, if x fulfils the essence of that which x and y are both becoming to a higher degree than y. But this also makes clear that priority in essence is a relation between things that belong to one and the same kind and therefore have the same essence or form, relative to which one may say that x fulfils this essence better than y.10 The man is prior in essence to the boy, because he fulfils the criteria for being a man, and accordingly its essence as well, to a higher degree than the boy. The example, of course, may be extended by adding further indivi- duals. For instance, we may include the seed out of which a man will develop and put it in relation to the boy and the man. The seed fulfils the essence of a man even less than the boy, for it lacks many of the features which the boy in his coming to be a man already acquired, so that the seed has less priority than both boy and man. These examples not only help clarify what Aristotle has in mind when he says that x is prior in essence to y, but also show another assumption that Aristotle presupposes in formulating the reversed priority claim and that one needs to be aware of: in its coming to be, every living thing passes through a certain succession of developmental stages. This order of devel- opmental stages is unvarying and specific to the kind to which the thing that is coming to be belongs, and this is why Aristotle is able to connect this order of coming to be with the notion of priority in essence. The principle (ἀρχή) towards which something is developing not only determines the goal of the coming to be, but also the stages through which something has 10 See Beere (2009), 314–315. Locomotion is prior in essence, since it is last in coming to be 169 ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen