Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 2 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
Aristotle (Phys. V. 1) then goes on to movement as realized in a thing,
to change (μεταβολή) or to the physical processes—while before we had
pure movement. “In movement there is first something which moves, also
something which is moved, and the time in which it is moved; besides
these, that from which, and that into which it is moved.” (Cf. _supra_,
p. 141.) “For all motion is from something and into something; but
there is a difference between that which is first moved and that into
which and from which it is moved, as, for instance, wood, warmth and
cold. The motion is in the wood and not in the form; for neither form
nor place, nor quantity moves or is moved, but” (in the order in which
they follow) “there is that which is moved and that which moves, and
that into which it is moved. That to which movement is made, more than
that out of which movement is made, is named change. Hence to pass
into non-being is also change, although what passes away is changed
from Being: and generation is a mutation into Being, even though it
is from non-being.” The remark is to be interpreted as meaning that
for the first time in real becoming motion, _i.e._ in change, the
relation _whereto_ enters, while the relation _wherefrom_ is that in
which change is still the mere ideal motion. Besides this first form of
difference between motion and change, Aristotle further gives another,
since he divides change into three: “into change from a subject (ἐξ
ὑποκειμένον) into a subject; or from a subject into a non-subject; or
from a non-subject into a subject.” The fourth, “from a non-subject
into a non-subject,” which may also appear in the general division, “is
no mutation, for it contains no opposition.” It may certainly be merely
thought or ideal, but Aristotle indicates the actual phenomenon. “The
mutation from a non-subject into a subject is generation (γένεσις);
that from a subject into a non-subject is corruption (φθορά); that
from a subject into a subject, is motion as such;” because that which
is transformed remains the same, there is no becoming-another of
the actual, but a merely formal becoming-another. This opposition of
the materialized motion as mutation, and of merely formal motion, is
noteworthy.
In the sixth book Aristotle comes to the consideration of the dialectic
of this motion and change as advanced by Zeno, that is, to the endless
divisibility which we have already (Vol. I. pp. 266-277) considered.
Aristotle solves it through the universal. He says that they are the
contradiction of the universal turned against itself; the unity in
which its moments dissolve is not a nothing, so that motion and change
are nothing, but a negative universal, where the negative is itself
again posited as positive, and that is the essence of divisibility.