[MUSIC] The unmoved mover of the cosmos. In book eight of the Physics, when Aristotle asks why there is change in the cosmos, in particular why there is a continuous cycle of coming to be in passing away in the sublunary world, he traces back the causal chain to the movement of the outermost celestial sphere. He calls this the first heaven in the metaphysics. That's the cosmological picture we were examining in the last lecture. The question we now take up is why Aristotle doesn't identify that outermost sphere, or first heaven, as the first mover of the cosmos. Recall that he has claimed that there must be some everlasting first mover of change in the cosmos. The outermost fear cannot be the first mover, Aristotle thinks, because it is a moved mover. That is, if we ask how the outer sphere moves the other spheres, the answer is that it rotates around an axis and imparts this motion to the spheres nested inside it. So it is by being in movement, that is, moved, that the first heaven moves the other spheres. Aristotle, by contrast, has insisted that the first mover has to be unmoved. He says, there must be something that is itself unmoved and outside of all change, but initiates movement in something else. A moved mover cannot be the first mover because of another principle that Aristotle has insisted upon in his discussion of causal chains. He says, everything that is in motion is moved by something. Aristotle elsewhere denies that earth, air, fire, and water can be the first movers of natural changes because they are moved movers, or as he puts it in the De Anima, co-causes. The same principle holds for the outer most sphere. If it causes change by being in motion, then there must be a further mover that moves it. And so it can't be the first mover. Of course, if that further mover is also in motion, then we have the same problem all over again. We won't have a first mover, because the move's mover we just invoked itself must have a further mover and so forth. Anytime you cite a moved mover, there's another motion to be explained and hence another mover to be invoked. In order to bring this sort of causal regress to an end, or rather as Aristotle sees it, to a beginning, there has to be a mover that is not in motion. That is, an unmoved mover. Since this sort of mover does not cause change by means of a motion or change, then we have our ultimate explanation or first mover. That is, a mover that is not moved by any further mover. So that's why Aristotle invokes an unmoved mover to explain the motion of the outermost sphere. But what on earth is an unmoved mover? A very common misconception is that it is an uncaused motion. But we are in a position to avoid this error, by remembering what mover and moved mean in this Aristotelian context. In calling something a mover, we are using move in the transitive sense as in moving furniture. A mover is a cause of motion, not a motion. In classifying a mover as unmoved, we are using moved as in the distinction between mover and moved. We are saying that the mover is not a subject of motion. That is, it is not in motion. An unmoved mover then is a mover, or efficient cause, that exerts its causality without being in motion. Let's consider how this works in the case of the man who is the first mover of the stone. Now you might wonder why Aristotle is entitled to call the man the first mover since he moves the stone by moving his hand. Doesn't that make him a moved mover? Aristotle agrees that the hand is a moved mover, but he claims that the mover of the hand is still not something other than the man. The man, he explains, is moved but not by the agency of something else. Although the man moves the stick by means of a motion, that motion is not due to some further mover. And so the causal regress stops with the man. He is the first mover of the stone. In fact, Aristotle goes on to explain, a self mover, such as the man, and indeed any other living thing, is actually a compound of a moved mover and an unmoved mover. In the case of the man moving the stick, the moved mover is his hand, and the unmoved mover is his soul. This is the view of the soul Aristotle develops in the De Anima, in contrast to those of his predecessors who made the soul a moved mover. Plato in fact, makes the soul a self mover, but Aristotle argues that it is preferable to say that the living thing is moved by itself with the soul as the unmoved mover. But the important point here is that, for Aristotle, the unmoved mover of a living thing is its soul. Now let's get back to the unmoved mover of the cosmos. Is that a soul too, like Plato's world soul in the Timaeus? Aristotle never says so in as many words. Although what he does say about this cosmic unmoved mover invokes two activities that in the De Anima are attributed to the soul. In book 12 of the Metaphysics, Aristotle claims that the unmoved mover of the cosmos moves, that is causes motion, in the way the object of understanding or desire initiates motion. Let's think about each of these things, the object of desire, and then the object of understanding. The object of desire is a final cause, or a goal, Aristotle explains. How could it be an unmoved mover? Well, think about how your desire to win a race spurs you to put in extra hours of training. Winning the race is the object of your desire, and it moves you to run all those extra training miles. But winning the race is not moved, it's not something in motion, in order to bring about this effect. For winning the race is something in the future, not there to be pushing and prodding you to run that extra mile. But how can the first heaven, or outermost sphere, have desires, you might ask. Is it a soul, or an ensouled creature with the unmoved mover as its object of desire? That can't be the whole story, however, since Aristotle also tells us that the unmoved mover of the cosmos is the object of thought. He explains that, at least in some cases, the object of thought and the object of desire are the same, since we desire what we think is good. As he puts it, what is fine is the primary object of wish And we desire something because it seems fine. Now, Aristotle here appeals to a theme that he develops in the De Anima that thinking is the highest of the activities of the soul and that the knowing mind is identical with its object. This unity with the object of thought is what our own minds achieve in those brief moments when we truly understand things. Aristotle thinks this is when we grasp their forms. But this is an activity that the gods are capable of engaging in continuously and uninterruptedly. On Aristotle's theology, he says, god is always in the good state that we are in sometimes. Further, life belongs to the god, for the actuality of understanding is life, and the god is that actuality. We say then that the god is the best and everlasting living being. So that continuous and everlasting life and duration belong to god, for that is what god is. And he concludes by saying that this divine intellect understands what is most divine and most valuable; and it does not change, metabola, for change would be to something worse, and it would thereby also be a motion, a kinesis. So thus, this divine intellect is the unmoved mover of the cosmos.
