Eudemus' unmoved movers: Fragments 121-123b Wehrli

István Bodnár*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to Book/Report typesChapterpeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

The prime movers were unmoved to begin with, therefore by definition we should be able to stipulate that, provided they exist at all, they should be exempt from all sorts of motion. This, however, is not necessarily Aristotle's official line. In this chapter, the author with Jaeger's proposal: Eudemus introduced a totally unmoved mover for each of the celestial motions. The text Simplicius quotes from Eudemus, however, not only fails to bear out Alexander's interpretation, but also makes very little sense. What Simplicius found did not attribute a localisation directly to the unmoved mover. Eudemus' example for the first class, the earth which causes the bouncing ball to move upwards, is an elaboration on Aristotle's example of the wall being the accidental cause of the motion of the ball which ricochets after being thrown by the thrower, the genuine cause of motion both before and after the impact.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationRutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities
PublisherTaylor and Francis
Pages171-190
Number of pages20
Volume11
ISBN (Electronic)9781351324489
ISBN (Print)9780765801340
StatePublished - 31 Jan 2018

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