Unmoved Mover - First Philosophy

First Philosophy

Aristotle argues, in Book 8 of the Physics and Book 12 of the Metaphysics "that there must be an immortal, unchanging being, ultimately responsible for all wholeness and orderliness in the sensible world. And he is able … to discover a good deal about that being”. In the Physics (VIII 4–6) Aristotle finds "surprising difficulties" explaining even commonplace change, and in support of his approach of explanation by four causes, he required "a fair bit of technical machinery". This "machinery" includes potentiality and actuality, hylomorphism, the theory of categories, and “an audacious and intriguing argument, that the bare existence of change requires the postulation of a first cause, an unmoved mover whose necessary existence underpins the ceaseless activity of the world of motion”. Aristotle's "first philosophy", or Metaphysics (“after the Physics”), develops his peculiar stellar theology of the prime mover, as πρῶτον κινοῦν ἀκίνητον: an independent divine eternal unchanging immaterial substance.

Read more about this topic:  Unmoved Mover

Famous quotes containing the word philosophy:

    The philosophy of hedonism means little to lovers of pleasure. They have no inclination to read philosophy, or to write it.
    Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

    The fact is, mental philosophy is very like Poverty, which, you know, begins at home; and indeed, when it goes abroad, it is poverty itself.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)