Abstract
Aristotle of Stagira (384–322 b.c.) moves far beyond Plato in his argumentation for the existence of God. For while Plato first employed the logic of the cosmological argument, it was Aristotle who developed it and argued that even Plato’s self-mover must have a cause in an utterly unmoved mover which Aristotle called God.
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Notes
Aristotle, Physica 1. 8. 191a25–30. All quotations of Aristotle’s works are taken from W. D. Ross, ed., The Works of Aristotle 12 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908–52).
W. K. C. Guthrie enumerates three stages in Aristotle’s thought: (1) he begins with the doctrine of Laws 10, heavenly bodies self-moved by their souls; (2) he then holds that the ether of the outer sphere moves naturally in a circle, and the doctrine of the soul tends to recede; (3) he finally arrives at the doctrine of the prime unmoved mover as the source of all motion. (W. K. C. Guthrie, ‘Development of Aristotle’s Theology’, Classical Quarterly 27 [1933]: 162–71.)
On the other hand, Easterling goes so far as to argue that even the passages which speak of an unmoved mover in Physics B and t are later insertions. He contends that while the notion of God as final cause was conceived early by Aristotle, it was not linked to the idea of the unmoved mover (H. J. Easterling, ‘The Unmoved Mover in early Aristotle’, Phronesis 21 [1976]: 252–65).
W. D. Ross, Aristotle’s Physics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), p. 96. Cf. Guthrie, ‘Development’, pp. 164–5.
This interpretation was suggested by Alexander of Aphrodisias and is accepted by Joseph Owens (Joseph Owens, ‘The Conclusion of the Prima Via’, Modern Schoolman 30 [1952]: 39).
For more on this interpretation see W. A. Wallace, ‘The Cosmological Argument: A Reappraisal’, Proceedings of the Catholic Philosophical Association 46 (1972): 46–7.
Jean Paulus, ‘La théorie du premier moteur chez Aristote’, Revue de philosophie 33 (1933): 259–94, 394–424;
Joseph Owens, The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian ‘Metaphysics’ 2nd ed. (Toronto, Canada: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1963), pp. 438–9. Buckley disagrees (Buckley, Motion p. 72). He supports our argumentation and underlines the fact that the unmoved mover cannot be ‘a world soul for it is moved neither accidentally nor essentially nor is it in any way possessive of magnitude…. The Unmoved Movers of Physics viii and of Metaphysics xii must identify because they are unmoved’ (Ibid., pp. 84–5).
See Philip Merlan, ‘Aristotle’s Unmoved Movers’, Traditio 4 (1946): 26–7;
H. A. Wolfson, ‘The Plurality of the Immoveable Movers in Aristotle and Averroes’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 63 (1958): 237.
Ross, Aristotle pp. 96–8. Cf. W. D. Ross, Aristotle’s Metaphysics 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924) 2: 384–7.
For a comprehensive study see Friedrich Solmsen, Aristotle’s System of the Physical World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1963).
Cicero, De natura 2. 37.95–6. A. H. Chroust believes this to be Aristotle’s first cosmological argument, but strictly speaking, it is an example of a teleological argument (Anton-Hermann Chroust, ‘Aristotle’s On Philosophy’, Laval théologique et philosophique 29 [1973]: 19).
For a fuller and thoroughly documented account of the same, see Chroust’s two chapters, ‘A Cosmological (Teleological) Proof for the Existence of God in Aristotle’s On Philosophy’ and ‘The Concept of God in Aristotle’s On Philosophy’ in Anton-Hermann Chroust, Aristotle: New Light on His Lost Works 2 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), 2: 159–74, 175–93.
G. W. Leibniz, ‘The Principles of Nature and of Grace, Based on Reason’, in Leibniz Selections, ed. Philip P. Wiener, The Modern Student’s Library (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951), p. 527.
See J. A. Bernardette, ‘Aristotle’s Argument from Time’, Review of Metaphysics 12 (1959): 361–9.
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© 1980 William Lane Craig
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Craig, W.L. (1980). Aristotle. In: The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz. Library of Philosophy and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04993-6_2
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