Aristotle on Metaphysics(2004) - Bibotu.com

THE ULTIMATE CAUSE OF CHANGE: GOD 267which are the explanations and causes that the naturalists recognize. So hisgeneral line of reasoning against the naturalists is this: you admit ofchanging things, and you also admit of their explanations and causes, asprimary beings; but I will argue that these explanations and causes includechangeless beings.So changeless beings must be admitted in one’s metaphysics becausethey are explanations and causes of changing beings. This line of reasoningis common to Plato and <strong>Aristotle</strong>. For Plato, too, argued that thechangeless forms are explanations of changing things, and this is why theymust be admitted as real and primary beings (see Chapter 9§1). So a singleproject is common to all parties, the non-naturalists, whether Platonists orAristotelians, and the naturalists alike, namely, how to provide adequateexplanations of those things that are recognized by everyone, namely,sense-perceptible, changing, material things. The disagreement concernswhether such explanations can be provided by the changing, material,sense-perceptible things alone, which is the naturalist position, orchangeless, non-material, intelligible things are also required, which is theposition of Plato and <strong>Aristotle</strong>.But once one is committed to changeless, immaterial things, theimportant question is how they are related to changing, material things.There appears to be just two possibilities: either changeless, immaterialthings are inseparable from changing, material things, or they are, on thecontrary, separable and perhaps even distinct, i.e. actually separated, fromchanging, material things. (We will use the term ‘transcendent’ for thingsthat are separable and perhaps even distinct, i.e. actually separated, fromchanging, material things.)<strong>Aristotle</strong>’s general commitment to inseparable changeless things isfamiliar, for this is the status that he ascribes to the forms of senseperceptibleparticulars (see Chapters 2§4i and 7§5vi–vii). But thereasoning behind this commitment is briefly rehearsed in book XII(chapters 2–5). What is distinctive and new about book XII (although itwas anticipated in a promissory way in books VII-IX; see 1028 b 13–15;1028 b 28–31; 1037 a 10–14; 1041 a 7–9; and 1050 b 3–8) is his commitmentto changeless things that are transcendent. He calls them ‘separate primarybeing’ (choristē ousia or kechōrismenē ousia, see 1069a34 and especially1073 a 3–5; see also XII. 10 in general, discussed below). So the question ofbook XII (especially chapters 6–10) is whether there really aretranscendent changeless beings, and the aim is to establish that there are.For he will argue that there is a single transcendent changeless being whichis the ultimate explanation and cause of change, in particular of the motionof the outermost heaven, and which eventually he will call ‘God’.