In "The Relation of the Mover and the Moved" Aristotle asserts that, "A first mover, not as that for the sake of which but that from which the source of the motion is, is together with the thing moved." My initial question was going to relate to the nature of this first mover, but upon looking ahead to the next few books in the Physics I realized that whatever questions I have will likely be answered in the future.
So with that, I am still unsure about what the last mover would look like. We know that, "Nothing is between the mover and the moved with respect to place," so the first and last movers would be "touching" the thing moved in the same way. It would appear that these two movers would be opposites in some way, but I'm having difficulty conceptualizing this. As of now I'm thinking of the last mover, possibly, as the exhaustion of a potency of some thing, maybe in some way connected to coming into being at rest.....but I think that idea could use some (lots of) work!
If a philosophy student falls in the forest, but nobody is there to discuss it, is Aristotle still right about everything?
That's pretty funny. I think you have something interesting with your final point: the "last mover" is an exhaustion of potency of some kind. But, as Aristotle is always doing, we have to consider the "insofar" here as well. Insofar as the first and last movers are movers of a certain sort, the last is the last of that sort. But I would be appalled if Aristotle thought there is some definite, all-encompassing, 'insofar'-transcending "last movement." Or, to say it another way, every last movement of one kind relates in some way to movements of another kind. So the last movement of some particular human (a person on his deathbed) may be the first of many other kinds of movements (the lives of his children, the rotting of his flesh, etc.)
ReplyDeleteThe impression that I'm getting from Aristotle is that a lot less things are "last" or "finished" as we tend to think they are today - think of how important "being-at-work-staying-itself" is to Aristotle's thought. That said however, a "lot less" isn't absolute.
ReplyDeleteIt seems fairly straightforward that should be scenarios in which natures "lose potencies." As Trey has eluded to, the human being comes to mind. We can back it up even further from the deathbed. Does the potency to grow cease at the end of youth?
Fully realizing a potency might not be best thought as a loss but as a gain. After all, any potency is a potency-for and when the young person stops growing, it is because they are now at-work-being-full-sized, while growth was an incomplete-being-full-sized or a potency-toward-full-size, an unended-having-an-end (ateles enteles echein) (257b9). Always incomplete and on-the-way motion or change gives way to steady, full, self-same activity.
ReplyDeleteWould the last mover be the mover that initiates the last motion for a thing to become actualized? I ask because I am confused about why we are talking about last movers since I thought we established there cannot be a last mover.
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