Submitted by: Submitted by monkeyonabus
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Words: 513
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Category: Philosophy and Psychology
Date Submitted: 03/27/2012 11:32 AM
Aristotle and the prime mover.
A) Aristotle believed that all movement depends on there being a mover. For Aristotle, movement meant more than something travelling from A to B. Movement also included change, growth, melting, cooling, heating…etc. Just like his predecessor Heraclitus, Aristotle recognised that everything in the world is in a state of flux. Aristotle argued that behind every movement there must be a chain of events that brought about the movement that we see taking place. Aristotle argued that this chain of events must lead back to something, which moves but is itself unmoved. This is referred to as the Prime Mover. In Aristotle’s view change is eternal. There cannot have been a first change, because something would have to have happened just before that change which set it off, and this itself would have been a change, and so on.
In his book Metaphysics (literally after physics), Aristotle calls this source of all movement the Prime Mover. The Prime Mover to Aristotle is the first of all substances, the necessary first sources of movement, which is itself unmoved. It is a being with everlasting life, and in Metaphysics Aristotle also calls this being ‘God’. The Prime Mover causes the movement of other things, not as an efficient cause, but as a final cause. In other words, it does not start off the movement by giving it some kind of push, but it is the purpose, or end, or the teleology, of the movement. This is important for Aristotle, because he thought that an effective cause, giving a push, would be affected itself by the act of pushing. Aristotle believed the prime mover causes things to move by attraction. Aristotle was keen to establish that the Prime Mover is itself Unmoved, or unaffected, otherwise the whole concept would break down. The Final Cause causes movement as the object of desire and love. If God did give things an initial push then he himself would be changed. Instead God draws things to himself and remains unaffected. The...