An Ontology for the In-Between of Motion: Aristotle’s Reaction to Zeno’s Arguments

• Authors: Michel Crubellier

Abstracts

EN

This paper proposes an interpretation of Books V and VI of Aristotle’s Physics as being (at least partly) a reaction to Zeno’s four “arguments against motion” that Aristotle expounds and discusses in Phys. VI 9. On the basis of a detailed textual analysis of that chapter, I show that Zeno’s arguments rest on a frame of a priori notions such as part and whole, in contact, between, limit, etc., which Aristotle takes over in order to account for the inner structure (here called “the In-Between”) common to all facts of motion and change. That frame allows him to develop a specific ontology for that inner structure – although it exists only potentially according to the Aristotelian orthodoxy – because he needs such an ontology in order to vindicate the reality of motion and change.

Keywords

EN

Aristotle; Aristotle’s Physics; change. continuous; dialectic; infinite; motion; ontology; time; Zeno of Elea

• Publisher: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
• Journal: Peitho. Examina Antiqua
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 123-149

Dates

published

2021

Contributors

author

Michel Crubellier

• University of Lille

Identifiers

DOI

10.14746/10.14746/pea.2021.1.7

Biblioteka Nauki

2016355