Page 9 - GALIET BEING´S KALEIDOSCOPE: The First Unmoved Mover: Aristotle IV

contrast to Zeno of Elea,3 Parmenides4 and Plato,5 Aristotle says that «there is (was) never a time when there is (was) not motion, and never will be a time when there will not be motion» (Phys. 8, 252b1, 6-7). Aristotle affirms that motion exists because change exists in nature as reflected in his first four categories of being: in substance (possesion and privation [not generation and corruption]), in quantity (increase and decrease), in quality (alteration) and in place (natural locomotion, change of place or local motion).6 Aristotelian motion or change; however, does not manifest itself in the same manner in all the spheres of reality. Instead, he suggests that in the manner in which elements or things elevate themselves into the realms and the hierarchy of being, movement becomes closer and closer to immobility. For example, while motion in the sublunar sphere includes change due to generation and corruption, motion in the superlunar sphere 3⁄4 the heavens
3 Zeno of Elea affirms that motion does not exist. In his famous paradox of the arrow,
he argues that before an arrow can hit its target, it must travel 1⁄2 a distance, but before
it can travel 1⁄2 a distance, it must travel a quarter, and so on into an infinite series of distances. Because of this, the arrow can never reach its target.
4 Similar to Plato, Parmenides affirmed that “everything that is is” (permanent, one, sphere) and that there are two roads: one leads to truth the other to doxai, the world of appearances. Waterfield, Robin. The First Philosophers, The Pre-Socratics and The Sophists. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 69-81
5 Plato affirms in his theory of forms that the first mover is one, infinite, unchanging and motionless. Aristotle responds that something that is whole and continuous can’t move by itself because only things that are divisible share activity and passivity, and hence, motion.
6 Aristotle. Aristotle. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Physics and De Caelo. Ed. Richard McKeon. New York: The Modern Library, 2001. Phys. 3.1, 201a1.
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