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:
“When Philosophy with its abstractions paints grey in grey, the freshness and life of youth has gone, the reconciliation is not a reconciliation in the actual, but in the ideal world.”
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