Movers and elemental motions in Aristotle

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Abstract (may include machine translation)

is possible only if they are made of a material endowed with a nature for circular motion, whereas elsewhere—notably in the Physics and in the Metaphysics—he stresses that as any motion needs a mover, heavenly motions also will require a separate unmoved mover, ‘located’ outside them. The two suggestions may or may not be incompatible, but if someone wants to entertain the possibility that the ‘introduction of the transcendent mover ... was not a negation but the completion of the view developed in the De Caelo’, we should like to know how the components of the resulting scheme were supposed to interact. One of my objectives in what follows is to scrutinize whether elemental nature and unmoved mover could be two facets of the same theory. To do this I will have to maintain that the circular motion of the heavens is performed by a special, celestial stuff in Physics bk. 8 just as this special celestial stuff was called upon in
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)81-118
Number of pages38
JournalOxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy
Volume15
DOIs
StatePublished - 1997

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