The Unmoved Mover in early Aristotle

Abstract

It is still worth discussing whether the Unmoved Mover is present in the early stages of the development of Aristotle's thought. Jaeger thought that the doctrine of the Unmoved Mover was formulated by Aristotle at the beginning of his independent career and that it was to be seen as the successor to the Theory of Forms'. Perhaps few scholars would subscribe to this extreme version of the thesis today, but there is currently considerable support for the belief that the doctrine was an early one and that it appeared in de Philosophia2. There has been a good deal of interest in the subject recently3, but no account has been taken in recent discussions of the references to the Unmoved Mover (or to an unmoved mover) in the earlier books of the Physics, which I wish to consider here. To anticipate my conclusions, I intend to argue that the passages containing these references, which occur in Physics B and F, are later additions and that the doctrine of the Unmoved Mover did not figure in the original version of these books. As there can be no doubt about the presence of the Unmoved Mover as a central topic in Physics (, the intention to treat the early books separately may need some justification. Though it is hard to be dogmatic about the structure of the Physics, it is perhaps safe to say that the proof of the Unmoved Mover's existence, which occupies 0), forms the culmination of the discussion of change that begins in E and